Course summary

If you’re looking to establish yourself as a composer or producer of music for the moving image, then this highly specialist music production course is for you. Set against the backdrop of the booming film, television and games industries, you’ll explore audio composition and production requirements across a host of moving image platforms. As you progress the three years of your study, you’ll develop the technical and creative skills you need to create and produce high-quality music content for the broadcast media world. This practical course will see you confidently grasp the spectrum of studio production techniques including recording, signal processing, audio editing, post-production skills, and multichannel mixing and mastering. You’ll also develop advanced skills in using digital audio workstations (DAWs), industry-standard plugins and our large selection of studio equipment. With guidance from ICMP’s expert music production tutors, you’ll delve into theoretical areas of production, including musical language, composition and arrangement, while exploring those concepts in practice across film scoring, composition design for games, spatial 3D audio, Dolby Atmos, and Virtual and Augmented Reality sound design. There will be plenty of opportunity to develop your creative side, with subjects such as sampling and synthesis, and ongoing chances to participate in the worlds of foley and SFX. The course offers extensive opportunities for emerging composers, producers and sound designers to work and be assessed on real-world projects – particularly writing to brief. Lessons take place in ICMP’s state-of-the-art Mac labs and impressive in-house recording studios featuring an Avid S6 specialist desk for post-production and sound and music for film, tv and games. Our teaching spaces are solidly equipped with high-quality production kit, including instruments, PAs, microphones, controllers, vocal processors, loop stations, effects pedals and more. Other rooms include Audient's 5.1 expansion pack, which powers a complete 5.1 monitoring system from Genelec. All facilities can be booked for your personal use outside of class hours, free of charge, seven days a week. The course is highly collaborative, with regular chances to make music with your fellow film, TV and games students, and others across ICMP’s whole spectrum of courses. Real-world music events are frequent and include masterclasses, guest lectures, gigs, songwriters’ circles, careers days, industry conferences and more.  Across all three years of the degree, you’ll evaluate the music and wider creative industries – particularly from the perspective of a composer–producer – so you’ll gain a deep understanding of how it operates and connects together. You’ll explore areas of business, marketing, project management and entrepreneurship so you can hit the ground running in your future music-industry career. In your final year, you’ll have the opportunity to choose an area of music production for film, TV and/or games to focus on, creating a professional production project like a film soundtrack, audio for a video game or mobile app, or sound for a TV episode or ad. The project will see you undertaking significant research across your area of expertise and delivering creative work to a very high production standard. Successful completion of the course will see you graduate with the background knowledge, technical skills, creative vision and entrepreneurial spirit to embrace a successful career as a composer–producer, sound designer, foley artist, supervising sound editor, audio designer or dubbing mixer in the world of audio for film, television and/or video games. If you’d prefer to continue your studies, you can access a direct pathway into ICMP’s MA Creative Music Production or MA Songwriting postgraduate degrees.