Musical Direction (Taught)

This one-year programme is designed to teach you the core skills and processes required to progress into the industry or on to full-time master’s study.

Studying within a safe and collaborative environment, you will have the opportunity to work closely with key skill practitioners, performers, actors, musicians, and other artists from across RCS.

We want to work with aspiring Musical directors on this exciting new Professional Graduate Diploma in Musical Direction at Scotland’s national conservatoire.

This one-year programme is designed to teach you the core skills and processes required to progress into the industry or on to full-time master’s study. Studying within a safe and collaborative environment, you will have the opportunity to work closely with key skill practitioners, performers, actors, musicians, and other artists from across RCS.

The design of this programme is weighted towards skills, with a focus placed on grounding, developing, and gaining fresh insight.  By allowing space to prepare and learn from each session, students are given the opportunity to ground and develop the essential skills needed as a growing Musical Director.

These skills are structured into the 5 areas highlighted below:

• Keyboard skills

• Conducting skills

• Scoring and arranging techniques

• Vocal technique and repertoire coaching,

• Programming and Sound

Once confidence and consistency are gained in each area, project preparation sessions are then introduced. These sessions are designed to break down and explore the process of Musical Directing out with a larger process, before giving the opportunity to integrate this learning into a small project.

These sessions will include:

• Note learning sessions

• Voice warm-ups

• Keys depping processes

• Conducting small and large ensembles

• Techniques for coaching the voice

• Working with a creative and production team

You will work with specialist project and Industry mentors to support your individual aims and goals, and to gain insight into how your artistic practice relates to musical theatre more broadly. Opportunities to observe, assist and lead on projects will be explored as you grow in skill and experience, with the aim of supporting the next generation of innovative and highly skilled musical directors.

Course Modules

This programme is designed to support the development of Skills and Project work across a full academic year. There are both core skills and project preparation modules across each the 3 terms, each with a different focus, level of responsibility and degree of autonomy.

Core Skills

The focus on skills runs at the core of the programme providing a grounding in technique across the main associated skill areas.

• Keyboard skills — explores both the technical and creative challenges of keyboard skills alongside further sessions in harmonic awareness, transposition and sight-reading skills.

• Conducting — explores the development of the technical and creative skills associated with a range of repertoire and genres.

• Scoring and arranging — supports knowledge and understanding of scoring techniques appropriate for a range of varying ensembles and the successful notation of the main sound worlds.

• Voice – provides each student with both the technical and anatomical understanding of the voice and the processes of warming-up through both theoretical and stylistic coaching of the voice.

• Sound work — allows each MD to engage with the several key programmes used in the world of contemporary musical theatre.

• Artist in Development — provides each student with an insight in themselves in relation to the professional world while the exploration of their process through repertoire coaching sessions, performance class and auditions would provide each student with valuable experience in integrated core skill with their professional practice.

There will be support and guidance offered to ground all the core skills associated with Musical Direction, with flexibility offered for the varying levels of knowledge and experience on entry. There will be an opportunity to gain new insights across all skills, while also striving for more detail and depth through Terms 2 and 3.

https://www.rcs.ac.uk/courses/professional-graduate-diploma-in-musical-directing/#programme-structure

Please see our departmental web page for more information about the course.