Coventry University lecturer Tom Willams shares with UK Music the fantastic new music courses on offer at Music Academic Partnership (MAP) partners Coventry University.

Coventry University has launched two new MA music courses, alongside a re-vamped BSc  in Music and Audio Production.

These new and updated courses are running alongside the popular and well-established BA in Popular Music Performance and Songwriting degree, that has been running successfully for a number of years now.

A Coventry University Faculty of Humanities and Arts event in 2019.

The new MA Popular Music and MA Music Production courses are recruiting now for September 2023, and aim to develop creative/co-creative, critical, technical and culturally aware skills required to operate in the music industry as innovative interdisciplinary collaborators and confident practitioners.

Both these music MAs have three points of entry in the academic year (January-May-September),  where each semester has set modules that do not recur until the academic cycle is completed.

They offer the opportunity to collaborate, across MA courses and/or externally, on project-oriented modules, which allow natural interdisciplinarity and promote a greater contextual understanding of your chosen specialism within the broader media and performing arts sectors.

The aim of the course is to train students to operate confidently in a range of professional environments as critically astute practising exponents applying established and innovative approaches in a chosen field of popular music or music production.

The course Music and Audio Production BSc (Hons) develops the principles of music and audio production including recording music in the studio, composing, arranging and producing music with technology, live sound, sound design, immersive sound, synthesis and interactive sound design (e.g. computer game audio).

The course is designed to equip students with a range of practical, technical and critical skills to be agile operators in the new music industries.

This may be as music producers, sound engineers, composers, sound designers; other such areas may include audio post-production and game audio technicians and its related fields of radio and television sound.

One of the studios open to students to use at Coventry University.

While the Popular Music Performance and Songwriting BA (Hons) course aims to develop creative, critical, technical and culturally aware skills as a popular music practitioner to develop, craft, perform, co-create, immerse and share in the field of popular music.

The focus is on applied musical skills in performance and songwriting in a vibrant and creative environment which gives you access to professional practices, new research and outstanding graduate support.

On the course students engage with a range of technology in the creation, performance and recording of music, including recording studios and live performance.

The course also explores the music industry, careers and employability and students can develop their own personal website, which by the later stages of the course, is intended to be a professional-looking, outward-facing website that demonstrates the breadth of learning and professional experience.

All our music courses have full access to fantastic facilities, which includes several state-of-the-art recording studios (including SSL, Neve and Nuage desks), band rooms and performance spaces, and the Media Loan Shop, that houses a plethora of available technical equipment.

In Autumn 2023 the Delia Derbyshire Faculty of Arts and Humanities building fully opens. Named after the famed British electronic musician, the building includes two dedicated immersive studios: a 4x10x1 Dolby Atmos/ambisonic studio, and a VR/AR studio with motion capture technology.

Find out more about music courses at Coventry University here.

For further information on all our MAP partners see Music Academic Partnership: MAP – UK Music