Aims

On this module, students will develop an essential toolkit for studying music in an academic setting. Through a range of activities they will:
Discover new music from pop, art, jazz, folk and traditional and world music traditions, broadening their knowledge of different cultures and historical periods.
Master core academic skills from critical reading and listening to musical analysis.
Explore a diverse set of research methods from interviewing and archival research to textual analysis.
Learn how to find and use high-quality sources to create work that is strong, credible and convincing.
Explore the ethics of academic research and writing, tackling improtant questions around originality, fairness and integrity and learning the basics of referencing and citation.
Sharpen their communication skills and learn to express themselves with greater confidence in written work and class discussions.

Outline Of Syllabus

Music is everywhere – from gigs and social events to playlists, film soundtracks and adverts, and from digital platforms to public spaces. As a fundamental dimension of our social lives, it shapes our sense of who we are and how we connect with one another. Studying music from a range of historical, cultural, social, and political perspectives thus not only enriches how we listen and create but offers new ways to understand the world and our place within it. In an era of rapid social, technological and political change, musicology offers a space for thinking critically about meaning, power, and identity and how they are reflected in everyday musical life.
Understanding Music: Concepts, Skills and Methods is an introductory musicology module designed to provide the essential tools for studying music at university level. Across the semester, students will complete five two-week units, each consisting of four 2-hour workshops. These sessions will introduce key topics and approaches, which may include:
An introduction to musicology, the academic study of music, and its core concepts and methods
Ethnographic/sociological methods: Studying music within social and cultural settings through interviews, surveys, and participant observation.
Textual/analytical methods: Understanding musical sounds, forms and structures and their meanings.
Creative practice research: The research aspects of performing and composing music.
Historical/historiographical: working with primary and secondary source materials to study music in historical contexts.
The workshops will employ a dynamic blend of taught elements, small group discussions, and hands-on skills development. Throughout the five units, students will encounter a range of musical repertoires and communities of practice - groups who share a common set of musical interests, values and expertise that develops through their musical interactions with one another - expanding their knowledge of both historical and contemporary musical practice as a focus of academic study. The module will provide students, whatever their musical background, with new ways of thinking about music, and the knowledge and skills necessary to critically engage with the world of contemporary music scholarship.

Teaching Rationale And Relationship

The module seeks to employ an engaging combination of classroom teaching, practical skills-based activities, discussions, and small group tasks, focussing on active, experiential learning where possible. Workshops will cover core content with an interactive, problem-solving ethos, and may include lecture-style content, discussions and group skills-development tasks. Depending on the topic some sessions may be entirely classroom based, while others might take place in PC Clusters, the University Library’s Special Collections, and other relevant locations on campus.

Assessment Rationale And Relationship

Formative Professional Skills Assessment (PSA) tasks test students’ grasp of unit content and support development of writing and research skills (e.g., referencing and citation, library skills, and using academic sources).

The Portfolio component requires students to develop the work undertaken for these tasks in greater depth, demonstrating their individual understanding and command of the workshop content.