Popular Music: Electric Bass Guitar in Cork Institute of Technology, Ireland

Popular Music: Electric Bass Guitar in Cork Institute of Technology

Course summary

Each student is assigned a matched group of peers to form a small popular ensemble, this becomes the centre of the learning experience. Lectures, classes, and music technology labs provide supporting skills to the core training in performance.

• Ensembles – everything from rock, pop, hip hop, blues, soul, metal, jazz, salsa, disco, electronica, funk, ska, reggae, etc.; 
• Musicianship and Harmony – play by ear, harmonise, notate your favourite songs and solos; 
• Music Technology – live sound and PA, studio engineering, computer-based music applications including ProTools and Logic Studio; 
• Song Writing – mentored guidance and practical experience in realising your own composition; 
• Arranging and Musical Direction – coordinate, arrange for, and direct a group of your musical peers.

Additionally, BAPM students will have the opportunity to devise and develop personal live and recorded music projects. Along with their BMus counterparts, BAPM students will be introduced to Community Music and Music Therapy as potential pathways. Students will also have access to specialist modules embracing arts marketing, professional promotion, and business for artist practitioners and career development.

Career

• • Musician in a band
• • Singer songwriter
• • Session/Pit Musician

Graduates will be able to compete in the busy world of commercial music in Ireland, for recording contracts, gigs in clubs and concert halls, TV and stage shows, corporate entertainment, and the fertile melting pot that is the Irish singer-songwriter circuit. Synergies with the classical, jazz and traditional musicians on the BMus course will open creative doors and career opportunities such as those fostered in the famous performing arts schools and colleges of the UK and the USA.

There are many employment opportunities for popular music graduates apart from the obvious one of performing. Composition, music for multimedia, songwriting, playing in recording sessions, in theatrical productions, and TV. Outside of this field is the associated area of promotion, festival and arts administration, and the business side of the industry.

However, taking an Honours Degree in popular music does not mean that a graduate is restricted to a music driven career for the rest of their life. In addition, a growing number of employers outside the specific music business favour music graduates because of the combination of intellectual training, digital skills, interpersonal sensitivity and greatly enhanced general response rates represented by a musical training.