BA (Hons) Music Performance (Film Acting)

Ensemble

You will produce a professional standard performance, demonstrating confidence within your chosen repertoire(s) and technical and expressive maturity. You will need an appropriate balance in programming and the ability to lean towards either a supporting or leadership role and develop your skills in hosting events and presenting the work to others.

Iconoclasts to Icons

You will explore the importance of observing and contrasting screen acting technique and styles through lectures and screenings, and will be expected to articulate the context of performances in group discussion.

Introduction to Film Industry

This module walks you through the various paradigms within the film industry and the use of filmic devices for dramatic and expressive intention.

Masterclass

This module develops your basic performance and communication skills and your sense of performance context. You will develop your repertoire, your understanding of style and your skill in preparing for audition or performance.

Performance Development

This includes your 1 to 1 tuition in your selected instrumental or vocal study.

Professional Resilience

This module will explore a range of different strategies designed to offer support to the emerging arts practitioner and will introduce students to a number of different models of successful self-development.

Screen Acting 1

This module explores the complete timeline of a screen acting performance; from initial preparation through to final delivery. You will examine aspects of performance practice relevant to your individual choice of discipline development.

Classicism

This module will consider the Classical style in music primarily through the work of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven.

Special consideration will be given to problems of formal analysis and the application of the conventions of a musicology to an artistic period so much defined by the work of a very small group of outstanding composers.

You will study a variety of work: solo, ensemble and orchestral, sacred and secular. You will undertake the preparation of a presentation or lecture recital relating to a movement from a late 18th century work, as chosen by the individual.

Ensemble

You will produce a professional standard performance, demonstrating confidence within your chosen repertoire(s) and technical and expressive maturity. You will need an appropriate balance in programming and the ability to lean towards either a supporting or leadership role and develop your skills in hosting events and presenting the work to others.

Film Story

In this module, you will use weekly film study to explore the elements needed in the creation of story, specifically in the process of devising for film. Through analysis and criticism, you will broaden your understanding of the connections between film making and performance.

History of Modern Jazz

This module will look at jazz from two perspectives.

Initially, the module will look at the history of jazz, starting with its birth in New Orleans and examining its stylistic developments concentrating on a number of key figures and movements in its evolution up to present day. However by the 1960s, the free jazz movement began to blur the boundaries and definitions of what jazz is.

Therefore, this module will also address the issue of the process that jazz has fore grounded as an evolving art form which constantly borrows from other musical influences to create ever-renewing hybrid forms of music. In looking at these two perspectives, the answer to the question ‘what is jazz?’ will be clarified alongside an appreciation for its rich and varied musical legacy.

Music and Society

This module will explore a range of topics, including:

• The canon
• Music and gender
• Music and mediation
• Music and education
• Music and cultural identity
• Popular and elite traditions.

You will be encouraged to discuss your own positioning and understanding within each of these subject areas, as well as drawing upon a variety of social and cultural theories including those held within musicology.

Music and the Community 1: Music and the Mind

This module considers how music defines and identifies communities. Through an exploration of your own relationship with music, you will analyse the nature of musical experience and perception, with reference to selected musical texts.

You will identify and discuss functions of music that extend beyond entertainment. This will include examining the esoteric functions of music, shamanic practice, music and ritual, healing and therapeutic functions of music and concept of ‘communitas’.

As part of this, you will examine the musical techniques that develop within such functions, including: overtone singing, collective improvisation, group drumming, chanting, vocal improvisation, intuitive harmonic voice work and interactive composition.

Performance Anxiety

Examine the problem of performance anxiety and stage nerves and study the theoretical background and how to effectively deal with anxiety.

You will look at the performance itself and the surrounding physiological and psychological factors that lead to stage nerves during performance.

This module introduces a wide range of theories from relevant disciplines including cognitive behavioural therapy and neuro-linguistic programming.

Performance Development

This includes your 1 to 1 tuition in your selected instrumental or vocal study.

Preparing Young Musicians for Assessment and Performance

The practical, placement experience allows you to become a beginner all over again by learning a ‘new’ instrument during this term, recreating the feelings experienced by beginners.

Reflections on this experience will inform and shape your approach to teaching in placement contexts.

You will also observe school children in the early stages of learning to sing and will reflect on how the observations relate to their personal experience during the module. Various repertoire, aural tests, scales and sight reading will be included in a broad exploration of assessment, and discussions will cover the pressures or constraints that exams place on students.

Professional Resilience

This module will explore a range of different strategies designed to offer support to the emerging arts practitioner and will introduce students to a number of different models of successful self-development.

Reading Popular Music

You will explore key critical texts and concepts such as authenticity, anthropology, ethnography and textual analysis, applying these to a variety of models in contemporary popular music.

Screen Acting 2

This module explores the role and importance of group communication within practice, as you analyse your own skills and knowledge around performance techniques.

The Baroque

You will explore a broad range of musical genres, ideas, styles and constructional devices from the birth of opera in 1600, through the rapid development of concerti grossi, the mass and the oraotorio, to the seminal theoretical and compositional writings of Jean-Phillippe Rameau.

The Roots of Jazz

You will explore the roots of jazz and focus on the development of jazz between 1890 and 1930 as you critically analyse the social, political and cultural context in New Orleans.

Through the Lens

In this module, you will dissect and discuss the way in which actors interpret scripted characters to create a screen performance that is further moulded by a director.

Arranging for Jazz

You will develop your ability to take standard repertoire from the jazz canon and rearrange it into your own personal vision, which is a key skill within the jazz domain. You will develop a personal repertoire of arrangements and compositions to prepare you to secure gigs in the future.

Classics On Film

You will be challenged to fully research, prepare, rehearse and film a short monologue or duologue from a choice of scenes from classical works.

You will be encouraged to display attention to detail in terms of vocal and physical characterisation. Furthermore, they will meet predetermined technical camera requirements in your performance.

In addition, you will learn the arts blocking, sequencing and eye-line to maximise the relationship with the camera and screen audience.

Club Music

Examine how music is used in clubs, the motivations of clubbers themselves, and the development of the role of the DJ.

You will consider the way technology has shaped the experience of club music, and how legal and marketing issues have shaped its consumption.

You are encouraged to explore the influence of club culture on mainstream commercial music, and the significance of symbols associated with a variety of club cultures and subcultures.

Communicating Music Through Movement & Gesture

This module explores the opportunities that exist for enhanced communication within the formal performance context, using the performer’s own physical projection of self and personal narrative of intention.

Work will also be developed in a broader context, allowing a deeper understanding of the semiotics of movement – the kinesic variables which impact upon the viewer – and the generic codes which attach to the music they play.

Ensemble

You will produce a professional standard performance, demonstrating confidence within your chosen repertoire(s) and technical and expressive maturity. You will need an appropriate balance in programming and the ability to lean towards either a supporting or leadership role and develop your skills in hosting events and presenting the work to others.

Film Combat

In this module, you will organise, prepare, rehearse, perform in and edit a short filmed fight sequence. You will be encouraged to display attention to detail in terms of vocal and physical characterisation. You will have access to film and sound equipment as well as editing facilities.

Group Teaching

You will engage in workshop activities to explore the potential of strategies and material that could be used in a range of teaching contexts.

You will reflect on relationships between this activity and your practical workshop experience and complete practical experience with a musical group/class/ensemble at the university, a school, or a performance centre where you will observe the methods, manner, and style of the teacher and then design a piece for that group.

Introduction to Fundraising in the Arts

The module will consider the third-sector in relation to the other two sectors, the legal structures for non-profit organisations and regional variations in regulation, alongside the charity model in at least one other country.

Musical Event

You will focus on one or more major performance projects which will involve opportunities to work creatively with a variety of ensembles and collaborations, including those which cross arts disciplines. Connections will be made with current projects in other institutions and at performance venues outside the university.

One to One Teaching

This module introduces a range of techniques in structuring lessons, communicating expressive and performance based concepts and problem solving designed to create an exciting and stimulating learning experience for individual singers, dancers and actors embarking on the early stages of study.

You will set your own goals in teaching and develop skills in analysing and measuring the outcomes of lessons, using this information to inform planning for effective teaching practices.

Opera

This module takes a chronological approach to the study of the genre, beginning with the early Baroque and offering examples of differing musical styles up until the first half of the 20th century, with a particular focus on the late 18th to mid 19th centuries.

The relationship between narrative and the musical expression of dramatic tension will be explored.

Your lectures will make connections between the function of musical structure and form within individual works and the development of character and plot.

Performance Development

This includes your 1 to 1 tuition in your selected instrumental or vocal study.

Personal Study

You will have an opportunity to select an area of study of your choice over an extended period, to research and present their findings in written form.

Personal Study (Recital)

This module sees you select an area of study in performance, and develop it over an extended period.

For performers, this is an opportunity to present a longer and more challenging programme of work.

Personal Study (Written)

This module provides you with an opportunity to select an area of study of your choice, to research it and present your findings in written form, and to develop this over an extended period.

Post Modern Jazz

You will seek to find answers in a postmodern jazz world and ask if the intrinsic identity of jazz has been lost and where it can go from here. You will gain an understanding of its evolution since Coltrane by listening, playing and analysing jazz from the ’50s to the present day.

Professional Resilience

This module will explore a range of different strategies designed to offer support to the emerging arts practitioner and will introduce students to a number of different models of successful self-development.

Romanticism

This module will develop your confident and probing analytical style with a close exploration of compositional intention, particularly where this is allied to programmatic or narrative elements in the models you study.

Screen Acting 3

The importance of achieving high standards of creativity and communication within performance work will be emphasized in group lessons and in formative performance assessment.

Discussion about performance practice relevant to your individual choice, or combination of disciplines, will help in focusing ideas and planning in relation to career aspirations.

Structures and Politics of Rock Music

You will examine a broad range of contemporary musical texts to develop a broad definition of rock culture and use an in-depth study of a selection of significant artists and groups to provide insights into a range of stylistic and structural devices employed by rock musicians.

You will learn to demonstrate the political space inhabited by their music and complete creative tasks in song-writing and collaborative composition and improvisation.

The Four Hander Project

You will be challenged to fully research, prepare and rehearse all four roles for two scenes, then perform one scene in one of the roles at very short notice for filming in a multi-camera set-up. You will be challenged to meet predetermined blocking and technical camera requirements in that performance.

A professional approach to rehearsal will be encouraged, and you will be required to keep a written log of all information needed to effectively take part in the live-filmed performance in any of the given roles.

At the conclusion of the module, you will have acquired a filmed scene for your show reel for future employability.