• Offered for Year: 2025/26

• Module Leader(s): Dr Bennett Hogg
• Lecturer: Ms Nancy Kerr Elliott, Dr Rob Mackay

• Owning School: Arts & Cultures
• Teaching Location: Newcastle City Campus

Semesters

Your programme is made up of credits, the total differs on programme to programme.

Aims

This module introduces students to some of the different approaches to composing music in the present day, through a series of projects that include notated composition, improvisation, and other creative approaches. Material covered may include modal musics (folk, jazz, and classical), alternative approaches to harmony, and the creative potential of sketching and improvising. It is a practical and experience-based course, delivered through a rich learning environment of online work packages, "live" lectures/workshops, and seminar discussions of student work. Each week there are also directed listening assignments covering a wide range of different musics, with examples drawn from medieval to experimental musics, jazz to electronica, classical to folk, covering the wide range of different kinds of music we make in the present day. The module will creatively build on the skills covered in the semester 1 music theory module.

MUS1097 students will:
- develop imagination and confidence in their creativity
- encounter new working processes in the realisation of musically creative works, broadening the range of techniques and approaches to contemporary creativity
- be able to work effectively in response to set creative challenges within the diverse field of contemporary musical practice
- be able to constructively and critically evaluate one’s own work and that of others
- acquire a broader knowledge of the different types of contemporary music practice through focussed listening to selected repertoire as well as exploration of the creative potential of various different music-making approaches.

Assignments are set each week which build into portfolios of creative work. Students may be required to work independently or in groups depending upon the nature of each specific projects. Students will also be guided through ways in which to engage in self-reflection and critical debate through peer-review. A working knowledge of music notation is required, and the module includes tutorials and assignments in how to use music notation software. As the nature of the material is mostly modal and post-tonal musics, no actual music "theory", in the sense of 18th-century harmony, is required, though knowledge of the terminology of this tradition could also be an advantage.

Outline Of Syllabus

This module introduces students to a some contemporary approaches to composing music through a series of directed creative projects. The module may at times be enriched with projects involving improvisation and other forms of contemporary creative practice. It is a practical and experience-based course, delivered through a combination of online work packages, lectures, feedback seminars and workshops. The module does not cover pop songwriting or studio-based production, which are covered in other modules.

An important aspect of the module involves listening to a very diverse range of repertoire, critically evaluating it, and reflecting on ways it may inform the student's own creativity.

Students will be required to work independently, both on their own and in small groups, in order to develop their creative projects. Projects will include critical discussion and evaluation in modes appropriate for the different approaches, encouraging peer-review and self-critical reflection.

The module usually consists of four different creative projects, with small-scale projects and listening assignments set every week that build material for four separate portfolios of work done.

The module is designed to challenge some assumptions about musical creativity, and at the same time open up new possibilities for ways of making and listening to contemporary musics, and consolidate skills and confidence in working with music notation. Though some skills in music notation will be required, an ability to harmonise Bach Chorales is not.

Teaching Methods

Teaching Activities

Teaching Rationale And Relationship

Rationale and relationship to learning outcomes:

- workshops introduce and critically discuss creative composition techniques, demonstrating how they can be used, and illustrating this through reference to selected examples from the contemporary repertoire. Guidelines and examples of practical projects to be carried out by students are included. Workshop will also often involve a degree of practical participation that may then break out into smaller group sessions.

- skills practice has students working through their own responses to the weekly assignments, or more ambitious creative projects associated with the different projects throughout the module.

- structured research and reading activities will mostly involve listening assignments, with set pieces of repertoire, evaluating and critically reflecting on them, and finding ways to adapt what has been learned in creative ways within the students's own work. Listening assignments lead to greater awareness of the diversity of creative opportunities in the present day, develop critical skills in evaluating the work of others, and by reflection on the student's own creative work, as well as developing listening skills more generally.

Assessment Methods

The format of resits will be determined by the Board of Examiners

Other Assessment

Assessment Rationale And Relationship

- this is an experiential and practice-based course, and the success, or otherwise, of the students’ work is measured by the success with which they produce an engaged and creative response to the challenges set. This is most appropriately assessed by a cumulative portfolio of weekly assignments (which are marked and feedback is given every week)

- the group work also at times evidences the degree to which the students have mastered techniques for working collaboratively in a positive and productive manner

- written reports are included on each portfolio to act as both a measure of each individual student’s engagement with, and understanding of, the context of their creative work, and allows students the opportunity to evidence their critical skills, imaginative insights, and to show that they can appropriately contextualise their own creative work in relation to selected contemporary repertoire.

- portfolio of listening assignments evidences completion of this aspect of the study testing the student's ability to identify and comment upon selected repertoire studied.

Reading Lists

• MUS1097's Reading List

Timetable

• Timetable Website: www.ncl.ac.uk/timetable/
• MUS1097's Timetable