BA (Hons) Music Production Bachelor's degree at Northampton

Music Production Analysis enables students to understand music and production essentials from the perspective of a digital audio workstation (DAW) user. Through this module, they will recognise the components of professional music production styles.

This module will explore creativity in music production. It will require the student to engage and experiment with creative techniques so as to unearth and sculpt original sonic results. Both audio and MIDI will be explored with a keen eye focused on the innovative techniques found across 70 years of experimental electronic music.

Introducing core principles of using a Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) with a focus on the industry-standard software. Essential skills necessary for effective operation creatively, and professionally. Emphasis is on contemporary music production techniques, through exploration and implementation of workflows across a diversity of contexts for both MIDI and audio.

Introducing the safe working in a recording studio. Operating an analogue mixing console, core skills in routing, gain structure, and dynamics processing. Using studio grade digital audio tools, steps of mixing and managing audio sessions, recording studio workflows through technical and communication skills needed to capture and process sound effectively.

A contextual examination of the popular music and production cultural, and economic industry. Set in a broad sweep of developments of the recording industry, with its engine of commodification of units e.g. vinyl, singles/ albums to digital forms including the mergence and impact of streaming services.

Building on core recording studio skills, students will explore and refine their techniques in recording, processing, and mixing music. Working individually and collaboratively, students will engage with more complex workflows and creative approaches achieving more polished and professional outcomes. Technical proficiency, critical listening, and creative problem-solving is emphasised.

This module enhances students' comprehension of the interplay between sound and visuals, emphasizing their symbiotic relationship in creating meaning and mood. It fosters technical proficiency in recording and audio software while promoting critical listening. Students will create soundtracks and approach visual sequences from an auditory perspective.

Understanding how music & sound behaves both acoustically and psychoacoustical is a necessary requisite for a successful career in music performance, music production and sound engineering. Many areas of work within the music industry require knowledge of sound processing and acoustic principles including studio recording, live sound engineering, the design of musical instruments, music production studios and synthesis. This module is therefore one that will underpin everything you do during thi

This module develops professional skills relevant to working both in the music industry and further afield. With a focus on enterprise, entrepreneurialism and professional development, students will explore a variety of ways by which they might manage their professional careers. Students undertake an industry placement.

Sound Design for Games and Apps enables higher education music production practitioners to develop both a contextualisation specific to soundtracks as deployed in the service of Gaming and Apps, as well as develop the ability to produce soundtracks for a given media.

This module develops advancing recording and mixing skills, focuses on complex workflows, advanced techniques, and refines creative approaches. Students will develop proficiency in multi-microphone setups, advanced signal routing, and critical mixing processes, producing professional-standard projects while solving technical challenges and experimenting with sound to enhance their creative and technical capabilities.

Students are introduced to more advanced production methods found in popular music production and sound design: synthesis and sampling. The advanced use of a digital audio workstation (DAW) is integral to the completion of the production tasks, where students will develop their knowledge and understanding of synthesis and sound design, and sampling techniques required to succeed in the industry.

This module is designed to develop skills in audio production and sound design. Through lectures, seminars and workshops, students will gain an understanding of the context of sound design in media applications including location based media, film and computer games.

Innovation in Music Production enables higher education music production practitioners to develop new ways of thinking about, creating and producing through an object-based programming approach.

This module looks closely at the role of the mastering engineer, the reasons behind mastering, the environment required for critical listening and how commercial needs have shaped the way we master music and sound.

The purpose of this module is to deliver a series of projects typical of those presented to sound designers and media composers in industry. Students will develop material for a wide range of mediums, for example: podcasts, radio programmes, games, software applications and the moving image.

This module is for students intending to work in practice-based areas of contemporary music and for students interested in developing a project in a related field of popular music that may be either more entrepreneurial or theoretical.

This module provides an opportunity for students to develop, at length, a particular disciplinary interest. This may derive either from study in the first two years of the degree, or from reading and/or practice activities on their own initiative. In either case, they will bring to bear on their subject matter the analytical techniques learnt during their degree.