MA Songwriting at Bath Spa University

Songwriting remains one of the UK’s biggest exports, with UK music stronger than ever. Popular song is the heart of the industry, and global demand for new songs is high. On our MA Songwriting you will nurture your musical creativity, focus and develop your professional portfolio, forge new collaborative networks, and engage in research designed to support your career as a songwriter.

The course is aimed at unpublished songwriters wishing to develop their craft to professional level, and published songwriters wishing to achieve academic accreditation while exploring their creativity.

We maintain strong links with industry professionals, guest artists, and guest lecturers. Also available as a distance learning route.

From day one, you’ll write songs, using alternative strategies designed to work alongside your current creative approaches.

Applying practice-based learning at our world-heritage research centres, through a range of creative strategies and critical perspective on your songs’ relationship with audience and industry, you’ll develop and focus your output. This is informed by a blend of practical, theoretical and scholarly practice.

Lyric-writing, and a fluent command of imagery, metaphor, and narrative is nurtured, as chords and melody take shape around language’s meaning, and vice versa. You’ll investigate the power and potential of song forms, modes of address, perspectives, time-frames, and characters.

Having stretched the range of creative options available to you within your own artistic palette, you’ll turn your hand to research; this is your entry to the postgraduate world. You’ll identify the industrial context relevant to your songs; your knowledge of your field will become intensified through primary research, secondary research, and contact with guest speakers from industry.

Collaborating with songwriters from near and far will increase your creative and networking range. Ahead of your Major Project, contextual and collaborative research perform the vital task of shaping your song outputs.

Careers

There’s a broad range of professional outcomes from this course and our graduates now work as:

• Performers
• Lecturers
• Researchers
• Agents
• Signed artists
• Signed writers
• Teachers
• Therapists
• Publishers

This course also provides an excellent grounding if you’re interested in going on to PhD study.