Songwriting and Vocal Performance

Songwriting and vocal performance is a specialist degree for musicians who want to develop both the craft of creating songs and the technical and artistic skills of delivering them as a performer. Songwriting is a discipline with its own structural principles, drawing on melody, harmony, rhythm, lyric, and production to create pieces that communicate with listeners in the direct and emotionally immediate way that the best popular songs do. Vocal performance develops your voice as an instrument, building range, control, tone, and the interpretive depth that enables a singer to inhabit a lyric and convey its meaning with authenticity.

At Nottingham Trent University you will study this three-year full-time degree with a typical entry tariff of 120 points. The programme is built around sustained creative practice, with significant amounts of time in studios, rehearsal rooms, and performance spaces developing your songwriting output and your vocal abilities. You will study song structure, lyric writing, music theory as it applies to songwriting, arrangement and production, and the industry contexts in which songwriters and performers work.

Vocal technique sessions develop your voice across a range of styles and registers, while performance modules prepare you for the reality of performing your own material in front of audiences, the ultimate test of both the songwriting and the performance elements of your craft. Contextual study engages with the history of the singer-songwriter tradition and the contemporary music landscape.

Graduates from this programme pursue careers as songwriters, recording artists, session vocalists, live performers, music producers, and music educators. Many work across several of these roles simultaneously, building the portfolio career that characterises much of the music profession. The industry knowledge developed during the degree is also valuable in music publishing, artist management, and the wider music business.

Further study in music performance, music production, or arts management is taken by some graduates seeking to develop particular aspects of their practice or to move into management or education roles.