This unit provides a practical overview of the sound recording process. Aspects of creative production are examined alongside project planning, management and the professional delivery of master recordings to professional standards. Students will gain insight into the recording process through practical recording projects taking advantage of the concert venues and studios and will integrate into the existing musical activities that occur at the Conservatorium

The Graduate Composer Performer Workshop provides both composers and performers with the opportunity to work together in the performance and development of new and experimental works each semester.

Through a critical program of artistic self-assessment and practical business tasks, this Unit of Study seeks to equip students with the tools to successfully present their creative product and carve out a unique artistic space for their future endeavor. The program is relevant to independent-minded performers, composers, producers and curators seeking to identify and contextualise their individual artistic voice within a broader arts community. In addition to providing students with ongoing tools to evaluate personalised artistic goals, completion of this unit will provide practical and strategic skills in analysing their potential market, securing stakeholders and developing planning approaches that successfully bring creative enterprises to fruition.

Vocal ensembles and choirs have become an important part of Australian musical fabric, from community-based groups through to professional a cappella ensembles. This seminar aims to provide necessary skills and experiences in composing for groups of voices in an experiential learning environment. Students workshop their compositions in class, gain experience in text-setting, experiment in extended techniques. Classes focus on the literary nature of the form and analyse relevant historical examples and techniques from a diverse range of styles. Students will be able to take these skills developed in this course into future professional situations as both composers and performers.

This course examines historical performing practices up to the present day aiming to widen understanding of the extent to which musical notation and written evidence preserve the performing practices of past eras. The wealth of sound recordings from the turn of the twentieth century provides a window into the near past. Issues to explore include: sound production (vibrato, non-vibrato and portamento in the case of string and wind playing and singing), expressive keyboard techniques (manual asynchrony and arpeggiation), and more general issues such as tempo rubato, tempo modification, ornamentation, articulation, and phrasing. The course will introduce students to varying performance styles, some of which are no longer generally in fashion, increasing the palette of musical choices and solutions and increasing the dimensions of understanding of specific repertoire.

This unit explores some of the most important theories on music and culture. It will introduce students to scholarly discourses and critical thinking potentially relevant to their own research. It will address questions such as what are we doing when we analyse music; how does our view of history shape our hearing and understanding; does music articulate collective human experience; etc. Topics covered include historiography, memory, musical analysis, semiotics, narrative theory, gender and sexuality, national identity, genre theory and hermeneutics.

As an analytical method, ethnography concentrates on the experience of life as it is lived. Following the development of the fieldwork-based discipline of ethnomusicology, ethnographic approaches to music have come to examine: historical and archival data, objects and artefacts in collections, cyber networks, digital communications, and medical and therapeutic understandings of sound, among other aspects of everyday life. This unit of study engages ethnographic methodologies to examine the myriad ways music informs and enriches people's lives and contributes to defining how humans flourish in their natural, social and cultural environments.

Opera has a unique capacity to capture the imagination by grappling with enduring cultural and social concerns. This graduate seminar examines opera's engagement with themes including politics, history, myth, sexuality, national identity, popular culture, film, otherness, social class and power, religion, and the supernatural. Selected operas engaging with these themes will form the basis of each weekly session. Students can then choose to focus on a selected area, or choose to offer a broader perspective for assessment.

Empirical research in music performance employs a variety of innovative methods to investigate music teaching, performing and perception. Knowledge of current areas of research and the techniques used to investigate them is relevant to all music researchers. This unit of study will focus on recent social science methods to investigate music practice with an emphasis on musically and pedagogically driven research. Students will be introduced to different types of experimental study designs, methods of data capture, perceptual and acoustic techniques and acquire new skills and knowledge to approach interdisciplinary studies in music performance.

This unit of study aims to provide students with an overview of the intellectual and methodological trends underpinning artistic research in music - a field composed of both practice-based and practice-led research projects. Participating in this course will enable students to participate productively in artistic research by increasing their familiarity with current debates surrounding research integrity, the strengths and weaknesses of various methodological approaches and the narrative strategies artists employ in order to demonstrate research significance to a spectrum of stakeholders.

The number of eminent thinkers and artists who have engaged seriously with Wagner's art has no parallel in the field of music. In this unit we will scrutinise those aspects of his art and thought which provoked such strong reactions, by looking at critical responses from figures as divergent as Baudelaire, Mann, Adorno, Äi×ek and Scruton (to name but a few of those to be studied). By looking at what made his dramas so rich and provocative, students will come to see how music can be situated within various humanistic and political discourses, while still capable of providing pure escapist pleasure.

This unit is designed to introduce students to the current state of music analysis, and to enable them to develop expertise in analytical methodologies relevant to their research interests. A range of analytical approaches to Western Art Music 1700-1945 will be explored in the seminars, including systematic consideration of chromatic harmony; Formenlehre theories and their recent offshoot, 'deformation' theory; pitch-based analysis of (post-tonal music); and narrative and semiotic approaches. The focus of the course will be balanced between theoretical exposition of the principles involved, and practical applications of the various methods to relevant repertoire.

This course is designed to prepare students for undertaking their own research projects in music. It will introduce and develop students' awareness of recent musical scholarship and research methodologies and equip students with skills to design and conduct research across a wide variety of musical topics. Students will begin exploration of the topic area that is the intended focus for their research during their degree. Students will situate their performance/composition research in the current field and present their research proposals to students and staff for discussion.

The postgraduate Arts and Creative Industries Placment allows students to undertake a professional practice internship placement (including regional conservatoriums) within a music focused creative industry context. Students preparing for a career in composition, performance, arts administration, music education, historical studies etc. are afforded the opportunity to apply their advanced musical knowledge to the broader creative industries music community. They will undertake a specially designed internship placement (designed by themselves or the host) in an arts based organisation and/or 'buddy' Pulley program in one or more of the seventeen NSW regional Conservatoriums with the purpose of extending their current professional practice. The goal of the unit is for students to extend their knowledge of the arts and creative industries sector combined with a knowledge and understanding of WiL through the internship placement. Students will extend their collaborative skills and techniques for working in a teamwork setting using knowledge and skills learnt as graduates.

This is a special purpose elective.

This is a special purpose elective.

This is a special purpose elective. Note that some research areas may have particular requirements or recommendations for choice of seminars.

This is a special purpose elective.

The unit promotes dialogue across teaching specialisations and focuses on three broad areas related to studio pedagogy. First, aspects of educational psychology, such as the cognition, motivation, and self-regulation will be examined within a developmental context. Second, the psychology of music learning and teaching will be applied to the development of musical performance and perceptual skills. Third, research on effective teaching within and beyond the music studio will be addressed, including aspects of cultural context, curriculum, and assessment. A critical engagement in a range of research literature and scholarly writing skills are developed throughout the unit of study. Online reading and research tasks through the LMS will be a part of this unit in preparation for students' creating an electronic portfolio development which may include enhancing an existing website. A practical implementation of pedagogical principles is practised through peer-teaching. Expert studio pedagogues from a variety of instrumental disciplines share their principles and practices in seminar classes.