Music (Professional Placement Year)
Entry requirements
A level
A Level grades BBB-BCC preferred.
Access to HE Diploma
Access to HE courses – typical offers for applicants with Access to HE will be the Access to HE Diploma or Access to HE Certificate (60 credits, 45 of which must be Level 3, at Merit or higher) together with evidence of a high level of experience in music, composing, music technology or music performance.
International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme
A minimum of 32 points are required.
Pearson BTEC Level 3 National Extended Diploma (first teaching from September 2016)
BTEC – Extended Diploma grades from Distinction Distinction Merit (DDM) to Distinction Merit Merit (DMM) in a related subject.
T Level
T Levels – grade Merit preferred in a relevant subject.
UCAS Tariff
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About this course
**Discover who you are as a musician and develop the skills you need to thrive in your future career.**
- Develop your skills through practical music-making: play, sing, compose, or collaborate every working day.
- Learn how to make a difference in the world through your music: in communities, for wellbeing and in education settings.
- Ready yourself for a viable and sustainable career in the wider music sector.
Music is central to everything you do. You like playing it, making it, listening to it, and thinking about it. It is who you are.
The course draws on your passion for music and your inquisitiveness to open up ways that your interests and skills as a musician can be applied in different professional situations. In addition to developing your core skills as a creative musician, you'll explore how music can be used in education and community settings, for health and wellbeing, and as artistic practice, framed by experience of managing projects from an initial idea to its realisation.
The focus is on practical work, whether this involves devising music in an ensemble, putting on a public event, recording your own podcast series or developing a professional music service. We focus first and foremost on what you can do as a musician, guiding you to be entrepreneurial in all of the projects you undertake.
Throughout the course, you’ll gather evidence of what you can do as you build your career and talk to employers. You’ll also be given the creative space you need to make the kind of music you love.
Modules
Course structure - year one
Your first year focuses on developing and refining your core practical musicianship skills as a performer and/or composer. Through this practical work, you’ll learn about current music in relation to societal contexts, showing you the areas in which your practice can make a difference in people’s lives . Across the year, you’ll undertake a series of short projects that give you a chance to explore new aspects of music making and ways to share it with others, working in groups as well as on your own ideas.
Course structure - year two
Building on what you have learnt in the first year, we help you professionalise your work in relation to specific and applied industry contexts. You’ll collaborate with others and participate in external projects with our industry partners. As part of this work, you’ll be mentored to expand what you can do as a musician at a higher technical level and explore ways to work with people from other disciplines. You’ll also present your creative work in public events, including our annual University arts festival, Sparkfest.
Year three - Professional Placement
Course structure - final year
In your final year, you’ll be supported in transitioning to work as an independent industry professional. You’ll design and deliver creative projects and events in areas including education, community music, health and wellbeing, and arts management. You’ll be able to focus on your individual career aspirations as a professional musician, and build the CV you need to get you there, supported by placement opportunities. We help you plan and manage projects, balancing creative and entrepreneurial decision-making, which lead to a large-scale final professional project in an area of your choice.
Assessment methods
All of our assessments are based in practical and applied music-making. In addition to the creative work you make through performances and compositions, you’ll create outputs such as high quality audio-visual documentation, podcasts, websites, teaching materials, project proposals and public events.
As a result, taken together, your assessment projects will form a portfolio. This portfolio can be used to evidence your skills to employers, as part of a showreel, or CV.
On your return to University for your final year, you'll submit your Placement Portfolio, detailing your development on your placement.
Tuition fees
Select where you currently live to see what you'll pay:
The Uni
Bath Spa University
School of Music and Performing Arts
What students say
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Music
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Who studies this subject and how do they get on?
Most popular A-Levels studied (and grade achieved)
After graduation
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Music
What are graduates doing after six months?
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Top job areas of graduates
What about your long term prospects?
Looking further ahead, below is a rough guide for what graduates went on to earn.
Music
The graph shows median earnings of graduates who achieved a degree in this subject area one, three and five years after graduating from here.
£14k
£18k
£22k
Note: this data only looks at employees (and not those who are self-employed or also studying) and covers a broad sample of graduates and the various paths they've taken, which might not always be a direct result of their degree.
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While there are lots of factors at play when it comes to your future earnings, use this as a rough timeline of what graduates in this subject area were earning on average one, three and five years later. Can you see a steady increase in salary, or did grads need some experience under their belt before seeing a nice bump up in their pay packet?
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