Composer and Music Producer Programme

The Composer and Music Producer programme offers:

• • 2 x residential opportunities per year
  • Opportunity to participate in SWMS’s menu of genre and instrument short courses
  • A bespoke mentoring and tuition package

  The residentials are an opportunity for all students to learn and explore music together. SWMS runs these courses on the philosophy of self, peer and professional evaluation to enable you to explore and push your learning boundaries to the limits.

  Each Composition and Music Producer student is assigned a professional mentor who also delivers one-to-one composition tuition. Your mentor will have been individually selected for you, taking into account your areas of interest, level of expertise and geographical location. The results of these discussions with your mentor will help you form learning goals for the year.

Composer and Music Producer residential – October 2022

Wow! What a great portfolio of work produced by our Composers at their residential this week. Thank you to our tutor team from Bath Spa University – led by Matthew Sergeant.

Working with our theme of ‘Music In Nature’, students worked with Matthew and his team of PHD Composition students, Aaron Moorehouse-Everett and Harry Matthews, to collect various field recordings from our beautiful rural environment. They then used various techniques and specialist software to find ways to integrate these field recordings into their own compositions. Some students even managed to find time to make short films to accompany their pieces! We were all impressed with their ingenuity and creativity.

We were all treated to a wonderful informal sharing of work in the Barn, enjoying not only the gloriously diverse and imaginative work by the students, but their own photographic and film footage accompanying their recordings. Well done to all!

Composer and Music Producer residential – October 2021

Our students were treated to the expertise of the fabulous Eddie Parker and Alexandra Hamilton-Ayres for 3 days over the October half term.
The theme of the residential was Music to Pictures.

Everyone showed creativity and natural flair with their compositions. Each student approached their work differently, working with instrumental recordings, software and special effects. Unfortunately, because the students were allowed access to up to the minute film clips for scoring, we cannot share their finished work on our website (permission). However the showcase to parents was exciting and very professional.

“We just wanted to say a HUGE thank you for organising the workshop on composing for film this half term. Our daughter E had a wonderful time. She said that the mentors were brilliant and that it was great to have a really challenging deadline to compose for. She was so grateful to Alex for her encouragement and help with the tech and to Eddie for his help with synthetic sounds. Thank you so much to all of you who were involved for devising this workshop which has been a highlight of her year.”