Admission and Unit Information - Bachelor of Music

This unit maps a rich panorama of musical works, styles, genres and composers from the Middle Ages to the mid-nineteenth century. It shows how music evolved through the centuries and suggests that stylistic changes are linked to creative, musical minds, manifesting as innovative music on the one hand and as conformity to established practices on the other. Out of the abundance of new and old possibilities, the unit asks why composers choose to replicate some patterns to the neglect of others. What is meant by innovation and creativity? How do different genres and styles in different periods in music history come to the foreground while others recede into the background? The unit offers an appreciation of Western art music while considering the popular and folk traditions of the day. It explores how music gives rise to flights of the imagination as it connects with composers, performers and listeners.

This unit introduces basic theoretical knowledge such as scales, intervals, chords, progressions, melody-writing, transposition, etc. It provides ear training, some keyboard skills and an introduction to Finale software. Students will learn to compose simple melodies against primary chords and other simple chordal accompaniments, leading to the ability to compose in simple pastiche styles. Some classes will entail working with keyboards and the aural classes will build on the theoretical content presented in lectures.

In this unit, students will expand their performance skills through workshops involving rehearsal and performance. They will be taught how to improvise in a variety of musical styles and, in large and small group combinations, they will learn the art of spontaneous music-making. They will compose a substantial piece in collaboration with each other. Through a series of lectures, students will be introduced to various approaches to improvisation and other modes of musical performance from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The lectures will draw on the repertoires of popular, experimental, Western and non-Western musics. Students will undertake a written and analytical task to contextualise the material from lectures and workshops

This unit replaces 101140 - Digital Musics 1: Musical Contexts. This unit is the first of two foundation level units providing a practical and conceptual overview of the basic concepts and applications of electronic and digital sound technology in current music and media arts practice. Areas to be examined include the fundamentals of acoustics, elementary microphone, recording and mixing techniques, and an introduction MIDI systems and sequencing. Technical concepts are contextualised within a survey of contemporary electroacoustic music and sonic arts practice.

This unit explores music from the mid-nineteenth century to the twenty-first century. It considers how the overarching paradigms of modernism and postmodernism shape our understanding of music. Performer and composer case studies will be used to illuminate philosophies and practices that underpin the music studied. The unit provides a socio-historical context for music and investigates the practices that produce innovation. It explores the ways in which technological developments have given rise to a bewildering array of music in the popular and classical traditions in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. The unit includes some rudimentary music analysis and key terminologies and music vocabularies.

This unit replaces 101087 - Composition, Craft and Theory 2. This unit continues to study techniques used in writing music of a variety of styles, from different places and periods of history as well as on compositional voice related to composing. Course work includes composition in set styles, and the freer exploration of techniques in creative writing especially with regard to texture. Keyboard and aural classes will include practical experience in areas relating to the lectures. The unit aims to accommodate students who possess both score and aural literacy skills

Free and Notated Music Performance will extend the improvisational component of Introduction to Music Performance. In the present unit, students will develop their improvisational and collaborative skills by working in groups. Students will engage in a variety of approaches to improvisation, including score-based and non-scored formats, the latter drawing on non-traditional modes of performance. A written task will focus on the analysis of performance practice with respect to musical, performance and production elements

As the second of two foundation level units, this unit builds on conceptual and practical work from Introduction to Sound Technologies, deepening students' practical and conceptual understanding of technology in contemporary music and media arts practice. Areas to be examined include digital field recording and soundscape techniques and concepts, an introduction to sound synthesis procedures and musical acoustics, creative sound design and synthesiser patch editing. Technical concepts are contextualised within a critical survey of contemporary electroacoustic music and sonic arts practice.

This unit builds a critical theoretical foundation for music which informs the studio/practical studies, as well as preparing students for more advanced theoretical and critical studies. It is non-linear in approach, examining paradigmatic shifts and cultural theories, and their relationship to music. It includes the study of theories of authorship, corporeality, aesthetics, and power. It examines the field of musical production and the intersection of music with technology. It considers how musical taste is formed and explores the role of institutional practices in shaping music, musicians and musical taste. It situates music within the cultural paradigms of humanism and neo-liberalism, and modernism and postmodernism. It provides students with a broadly informed view of current issues informing contemporary music practice.

This unit provides students with a firm grasp of and practical experience in the range of compositional techniques and skills required as a composer within a range of commonly-employed artistic media and genres. These skills will provide the basis for professional compositional activity. Students will cover issues at a theoretical level through lectures and tutorials, and in a practical fashion through assigned composition exercises and collaborations with musicians.

The unit explores the impact of globalisation on codes, practices and modes of music production. It examines debates in music about the personal and the political, and the cultural and the economic. Adorno’s theories of standardisation and Attali’s idea that industrialisation gives rise to music becoming silenced through the mechanism of repetition (mass production, stockpiling and control by the music industry) will serve as the starting point for the unit. The unit will look at how music is positioned within global and local contexts. It will include topics on the operations of ideology and constructions of identity, including that of musical identity. How does the concept of genre have relevance to politics and aesthetics in music? How do technology and the digital revolution subvert the genre categories which have taken shape in music over the 20th century and beyond? The unit will uncover the multiple ways in which listeners, composers, operators, and producers give rise to an infinite array of possibilities in ‘music’.

The arranging of music is both a phonocentric and a notational practice: producer/arrangers of popular music workshop and rehearse ideas in a performance context, and arrangers of popular and art music score instrumental and vocal parts in notated form. This unit seeks to develop students' skills in the notational area via regular workshops, rehearsals and demonstrations, and a program of intensive listening and transcribing of idiomatic style elements and instrumentation.

The unit introduces a range of approaches to research used by musicologists and music practitioners. It includes methods which are empirical and theoretical, qualitative and quantitative, ethnographic and analytical, and those emergent in practice-based research, including the idea that practice is research. Students will delineate their own research topics and work on research papers which may involve a creative practical component. Students will propose and report on their research in progress, including its theoretical underpinnings, retrieve and critically evaluate an appropriate literature for their project, and discuss the methods they intend to use for their data collection and analysis. The tutorial will give students an opportunity to present work for feedback and critique.

Analysis enables students to acquire a deep and rich understanding of music. This unit presents a variety of analytical methods that have been used on a diverse range of musics from both notated and non-notated traditions. Students will learn to apply these methods to a variety of musics through lectures and tutorials. They will gain knowledge of standard and non-standard structures. Models of analysis will range from those which are designed to focus on music as a meaning-making system in and of itself and those which encompass models developed outside the discipline of music, such as those that utilise critical theories.

Music and Philosophy tackles the big questions. It considers definitions of music and how music is constituted. It asks how we encounter and experience music, and what makes a piece of music aesthetically pleasing and who decides. The unit ponders issues to do with ethics and morality, and whether the meanings attributed to music are as much intrinsic as they are cultural. The unit considers emotions and feelings in music, and why we would listen to music if it makes us feel sad. When music is used as an instrument of torture is it still music? How do we view the composer in the musical work? Is there a difference between musical thinking and thinking about music? Is music representational? Is music political? The unit provides an historical overview of the important debates and considers the poststructuralist critique of these debates. Students will design a question chosen from the topics covered in the unit, and retrieve and critically evaluate the appropriate literature for their project.

This unit is a study of music practice that provides students with the opportunity to create and present musical projects in music composition, music performance and electro-acoustic performance and composition, and/or a combinations of these. This work is conceptually connected with the endeavours undertaken in students sub-major units. It allows students to generate extended material and to bring together skills and knowledge developed in previous years, and is designed to offer students insight into the practical realities of music practice post tertiary education.

Research in communication arts utilises a range of investigative procedures appropriate to the theory and practice of each creative discipline. This unit will introduce fundamental research languages, methods and outcomes relevant to the communication arts disciplines, and encourage students to develop approaches best suited to their theory and practice. Students will write and defend a research proposal and paper for a research program; the unit will enable students to apply a rigorous research framework to their work. Students will engage with a range of significant and critical texts which address broad implications of practices and theories in creative disciplines.

This unit provides training in practical applications of research in the communication arts. Students delineate project-based research topics in their fields. Students may produce research papers, or focus on projects involving creative practical works with accompanying documentation. Students will work in class and with their supervisor, to propose and create an artistic presentation with comprehensive documentation (including theoretical underpinnings), or propose and submit a research paper. These will include literature surveys or works reviews that demonstrate the students' knowledge of their areas of specialisation. Participation in Research Seminars will give students an opportunity to present work for feedback and critique.

These are major projects undertaken by fourth-year Honours students in the School of Communication Arts. They are substantial projects of individual research, in theoretical and/or practical areas, with topics decided in consultation with Supervisors and the Honours Course Advisor. The major projects provide opportunities for students to undertake research projects under academic supervision. Students develop detailed and sophisticated understandings, knowledge of research skills, writing practices, and analysis through production of original work. Major research projects in Communication Arts take two forms: 1) an academic research paper (thesis), 2) a substantial body of creative practical work with accompanying exegesis and documentation.