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.

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 of Study offers students a scaffolded experience that will help them to develop research skills and ability to embed, articulate and demonstrate research through and in the form of a research performance or composition. This would normally be composition or performance-based research output related to the student's overarching research topic. Following the project's development through the semester, the student will present the work undertaken in an appropriate format at the end of semester for formative feedback. Students will attend the weekly multidisciplinary Creative Work Seminar which will provide regular opportunities to present creative work research and to explore and hone presentation skills.

This Unit of Study offers students a scaffolded experience that will help them to develop research skills and ability to embed, articulate and demonstrate research through and in the form of a research performance or composition. This would normally be composition or performance-based research output related to the student's overarching research topic. Following the project's development through the semester, the student will present the work undertaken in an appropriate format at the end of semester for formative feedback. Students will attend the weekly multidisciplinary Creative Work Seminar which will provide regular opportunities to present creative work research and to explore and hone presentation skills.

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 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 Formenlehre theories and their recent offshoot, 'deformation' theory; nineteenth-century chromatic harmony and Neo-Riemannian approaches; set-theoretical analyses of post-tonal music; and semiotic or narrative approaches which relate analysis to humanistic inquiries. The focus of the unit will be balanced between theoretical exposition of the principles involved, and practical applications of the various methods to relevant repertoire.

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 and Zizek (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.

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.