BA (Hons) Music and Sonic Media will prepare you to join the fast-changing creative industries. The course encourages you to be flexible in your approach to digital sound production, yet be specialised enough to allow you to pursue your chosen professional career as anything from an electronic music producer to a post-production sound designer to a music researcher.

The course provides a challenging and thought-provoking understanding of sound and music in a variety of cultural and media contexts. It offers insights into social and technical issues in contemporary music and enables you to independently produce new sonic solutions in your creative production work.

Through theory and practical work you will engage with imaginative sound design for film and other media, digitally produce and remix music, as well as produce critical essay and research work. Throughout the final year, students are supported through a set of bespoke production and research projects that require reflective analysis and independent planning, providing you with a career path and a showcase portfolio.

Your practical work will utilise our resources in the Digital Media Arts Facility, housed in LSBU’s Keyworth Building. Here you will have access to five labs with high-spec computers with up-to-date music; software, mainly using Logic; a digital audio mix studio; a range of editing suites; dialogue recording cabins; and high-end digital field sound recording equipment.

Study hours

In the first two years, (Level  4 and 5), class contact time is typically 12 hours per week, plus independent study supported by tutorials.

Course modules

Year 1

• Introduction to sonic media
• The soundscape
• Sample and sequence
• Digital music design
• Sound and image

Plus select one elective module from:

• Critical culture
• Media analysis

Year 2

• Music, image and text
• Sound design for film
• Remix
• Sonic project
• Sonic research
• Media sound design

Year 3

• Dissertation (double module)
• Independent sonic project (triple module)
• Professional practice in creative sound

Brief assessment outline

Modules are assessed in ways that are relevant to their outcomes, such as creative sound production work with analysis, research reports or essays. We also encourage you to gain experience in presentation and peer evaluation, which is invaluable for your future career.

Employability and academic progression

This course will prepare you to respond to the rapid changes occurring in the music and media industries so that you can carve out your own entrepreneurial career path within this turbulent creative environment.

The majority of our graduates set up their own businesses, running their own studio or production companies, or they find regular work in music publishing, with record companies or in film production environments.

Recent graduates have become specialists in sound design for film, digital music production, sound art, audio management, and music research for media (working with a range of companies including Ninja Tunes, Nought2Sixty Productions and Incentive Music Ltd). If you graduate from this course, you will be able to apply for further study at postgraduate level. Our graduates typically progress to further study in a range of sound and music production areas, as well as entrepreneurship, at MA and MSc level.

LSBU is committed to supporting you develop your employability and succeed in getting a job after you have graduated. Your qualification will certainly help, but in a competitive market you also need to work on your employability, and on your career search. Our Employability Service will support you in developing your skills, finding a job, interview techniques, work experience or an internship, and will help you assess what you need to do to get the job you want at the end of your course. LSBU offers a comprehensive Employability Service, with a range of initiatives to complement your studies, including:

• direct engagement from employers who come in to interview and talk to students
• Job Shop and on-campus recruitment agencies to help your job search
• mentoring and work shadowing schemes.

Professional and industry links

Production lecturers are all actively involved in electronic music production, media sound design and live music shows. Contextual lecturers publish research in relevant areas, such as popular music studies. The Course Director, Dr Hillegonda C Rietveld, is Reader in Cultural Studies and is currently Editor of IASPM Journal: Journal for the International Association for the Study of Popular Music; she was pioneer in electronic music with Factory Records and is author of numerous research publications in electronic dance music cultures.

We prepare you for your future career through independent study with a focus on professional practice and a critical awareness of its wider contexts. In addition, we encourage work experience for our students at relevant establishments, such as:

• BBC
• SARM Studios (the world-famous recording studios based in Notting Hill) .
• Dean Street Studios (renowned recording studios based in Soho).
• Ninja Tune (well known pioneering recording label) based in South London.