Composition for New Media Major
The Department of Music offers a Bachelor of Music degree with a major in Composition for New Media. It is a rigorous program balancing established coursework in musicianship, performance, and liberal arts with hands-on contemporary training in music and sound composition for all facets of commercial and artistic media. Students in this program compose, mix, design, and arrange music and sound assets for movies, web, television, animation, mobile and educational platforms, games, artistic installations, advertising, industrial media, interactive live performance, virtual reality systems and related outlets. This prepares the undergraduates for work in a wide range of professional fields that share sound and music at their core, requiring high quality original music, soundscapes and sound design. In addition, this degree prepares students to be both highly competitive for, and successful in, graduate programs in composition and futures in academia should they choose that career path.
Composition for New Media places the broad endeavor of “composition” within a balanced context of music and sound, contemporary and traditional, and both commercial and artistic endeavors, combining the strongest elements of traditional music composition and blending them with an immersive, technology-focused set of courses that primes students for commercial and artistic pathways alike.
Like all music major programs at UMass Lowell, this program requires an entrance audition on an instrument or voice, but also requires the submission of a portfolio of scores/recordings/creative work for admission. Once matriculated, students will continue to build their portfolio throughout the program, and will present that work for review at the end of both sophomore and junior years, and will be required to do an additional capstone project culminating in a public recital, installation or portfolio presentation in their final semester.
For additional information, contact the Department of Music.