Popular Music: Production and Performance

Popular music production and performance addresses two of the most fundamental activities in the contemporary music industry, treating them as complementary skills that the modern music professional needs to combine. Performance develops your artistic voice, technique, and ability to communicate with audiences, whether in live settings, in the studio, or through digital media. Production develops your understanding of recording technology, sound design, arrangement, and the craft of shaping musical material into finished commercial and artistic recordings.

Together they reflect the reality that today's successful musicians are typically both creators and producers, comfortable in a studio as well as on a stage. This three-year full-time degree at the University of Winchester places performance at its core while building genuine production expertise alongside it.

You will develop as a confident, creative, and versatile artist, working on your performance skills across the genres and contexts relevant to your own practice, while simultaneously building a strong understanding of production technology and technique. The programme recognises that the music industry is evolving rapidly, and it prepares you to navigate that evolution with the creative adaptability and technical understanding that professional music careers in the twenty-first century require.

A typical entry tariff of 120 UCAS points reflects an accessible admissions standard for a vocationally focused creative programme. Graduates from popular music programmes move into careers as performing musicians, recording artists, music producers, sound engineers, session musicians, music educators, music supervisors, and in a wide range of other roles across the music and entertainment industries. Many build portfolio careers combining performing, producing, and other music-related work.