Creative Music Technology (Games and Interactive Media)

Great sound design has the ability to enhance the gaming experience while creating emotional narrative and dynamic impact. Gain valuable insights into sound design, composition and dialogue on this specialist course.

You'll source original sound through Foley-studio style recording, synthesis, and location or site-specific sound capture. Within gaming, music composition ranges from traditional orchestration and arranging through to more abstract, electronic or urban production. You'll explore composition and the dialogue / voiceover recording and editing that often complements it. You'll also learn audio post-production skills such as editing, processing, producing and mixing, with a strong focus on the techniques used to implement this audio content into interactive game environments through industry-standard software known as Middleware. 

Our goal in designing this course is to give you the freedom to explore creatively, while instilling the technical skills you'll need to forge a career in this exciting industry. As your studies progress, you'll collaborate on industry-style projects, offering insights into team working and responding to a game designer or director's brief. Collaborations with students across other areas such as Creative Computing, Acting and Music (game designers, voice actors, producers and musicians) are encouraged.

Year one
Build the foundations. We'll encourage you to continue to explore and grow your existing creative activities alongside important practical and interpretive skills. You'll explore topics such as audio recording and production, sound design, critical listening, and the relationship between music / sound and game / moving image.

Year two
Take your skills and creativity into the professional arena. You'll attend a series of high-level industry guest lectures and engage in collaborative opportunities with external professionals, an internship or an industry placement. You'll also be guided toward greater technical competence in the core areas of sound design and critical listening, and undertake a collaborative project with game designers on the Creative Computing (Games) course.

Year three
Specialise. A number of creative and industry-level optional modules will enable you to select a specialised route to support your creative and professional aspirations. You'll combine interactive audio and professional game design in dedicated projects. You'll also design, develop and present a large-scale project, which takes the place of the traditional dissertation on this programme. All third-year assignments are designed to be the foundation of your professional portfolio, and may be used publicly to promote your skills.

The vast majority of assessment is through coursework, with most assignments aiming to develop your professional portfolio. We're also committed to developing your communication skills as a way of empowering you to discuss your own work and the work of others. Tutors are always available to support assignments and particular assessment style preferences if needed.

You'll learn through a combination of lectures, music lab workshops, large and small group seminars, individual tutorials, online delivery and self-directed study. The majority of taught sessions are in specialised music studios, audio suites and fully-equipped computer labs that give you individual access to your own workstation with relevant software and audio materials. Access to specialist rooms such as the recording studios and our comprehensive equipment hire system allows you to work on coursework and undertake directed and private study.

To find out more about how we teach and how you'll learn, please read our Learning and Teaching Delivery Statement.

As part of your degree, you could study abroad on a placement at one of Bath Spa’s partner universities.

You'll attend presentations and question and answer sessions with an array of professional guests throughout the course. In the second year, you'll be able to attend our Think Tank lecture series of industry professionals at the top of their respective fields, and in your final year, we run a two-day question and answer series with game audio professionals from all over the world via Skype.

The industry landscape and opportunities change constantly, and self-employment and entrepreneurship are likely to feature strongly in your career path.

Professional graduate destinations include:

• Audio production
• Composition
• Sound design
• Game audio
• Audio post production
• Teaching / education
• Audio / mix engineering
• Sound recording/Foley-studio style recording.

If you’re a full-time undergraduate student starting your first year at Bath Spa University, you can apply for the Certificate in Global Citizenship, which you’ll study alongside your degree.

You’ll gain global awareness and add an international dimension to your student experience, and funding is available. On successful completion of the programme, you’ll be awarded a Certificate in Global Citizenship. This is in addition to your degree; it doesn’t change your degree title or results.

You'll be based at our Newton Park campus. Course facilities are specified and maintained to a high standard. They include three fully-equipped ProTools HD recording studios and a number of mixing suites, all with professionally installed and calibrated industry specification monitoring. You'll use across two Apple Mac labs with up to 50 workstations in our main presentation lab, specialist audio suite and Foley rooms.

As a Creative Music Technology student, you'll also make use of other facilities, including:

• Commons building
• our Virtual Learning Environment
• Newton Park library
• Writing and Learning Centre
• Specialist resources and subject librarian
• Free access to software, creative, design and business skills courses via Lynda.com
• English Language Unit.

You can also hire out equipment using SISO, Bath Spa University’s free equipment loan service. 

Our course facilities include a full range of hardware and software to support the curriculum content, including ProTools, Logic Audio Pro, Ableton Live, Max/MSP, and numerous plug-ins and processing software including Waves bundles, Native Instrument suites, GRM tools, Lexicon reverbs, and surround-sound encoders. We have a growing array of hardware modular synth components and we also support visual and media based work with a full range of multimedia software. 

You'll also be able to use a comprehensive equipment loan system with everything that you might need for extended project work, including an array of microphones and pre amps, specialist field recorder equipment, portable high specification monitors, and professional still and movie cameras with lighting. 

We are all too aware that the software and technology of music making and production is in a constant state of development, so our approach is to equip you with transferable techniques, artistic approaches, and working practices that'll continue to evolve and keep you ahead of your game throughout your career.