Music Performance - Guitar (Integrated Masters)

Channel your inner performer. Become a world-class guitarist.

The ACM Musicianship & Guitar Pathway entails all of the essential knowledge and skills required to excel in the contemporary music industry, and more! Several key areas that thread throughout the programme include, but are not limited to, technical performance excellence, modern improvisation and session skills, as well as musical directorship & cutting edge ensemble skills. Your guitar performance skills will develop holistically through applied theory and disciplined practical execution across all musical genres that fall within, or have contributed to contemporary popular music. Technology features highly within the programme, and students and ensembles are expected to embrace and develop with emerging and changing technologies. Technologies including digital software packages, online applications including real-time and async work, various hardware components and effects units, specialised equipment and audio interfaces, and computer-integrated performances as applied to live and (audio/visual) recording sessions.

Key knowledge and skills that students develop across their studies include extensive fretboard and fingering systems, a controlled palette of dynamic and expressive playing, and applied advanced music theory and modern melodic, harmonic and rhythmic vocabulary. Extensive genre based musical settings, both contemporary and retro-fitted, allow the guitarist to discover and develop their unique sound and voice across all potential performance styles and settings, both as an ensemble player and featured soloist, showcasing their advanced musicianship and highly-tuned performance skills. The all encompassing ACM Musicianship & Guitar Pathway introduces, develops, inspires and launches student guitarists as specialised performance artistes and cutting-edge instrumental visionaries!

Our tripartite commitment to our students’ academic, professional and personal development is recognised in a brand new curriculum, specifically purposed to bridge the gap between what industry needs and what education has traditionally provided. ACM's pioneering Creative Industries Future programme framework treats our students as individuals. We build bespoke programmes of study for each of them, based on their own history and aspirations for the future, with over 100 different modules and numerous unique module combinations to choose from. On UCAS, we actively publish a certain number of career destinations that are commonly stated as aspirational by our applicants and desirable by our industry, advising you as to which module combinations you might want to consider in pursuit of those particular career goals. If you’d like to pursue something different, however, it’s also completely possible to build and personalise your own programmes, as you see fit. Of course, we also understand that not everybody has a specific career destination yet, and so for those of you who haven’t quite made up your mind, the first thing we ask you to think about and choose from is one of six broad study routes. These study routes are described as Musician, Creative Artist, Producer, Management & Entrepreneurship, Games Development and Live Production and Sound. Choosing a route will dictate a selection of route-specific modules that you will study. Further into your course, in addition to the route-specific modules, you can then select from a suite of zero-credit elective modules and credit-bearing elective modules as you start to formulate your ambitions for the future more clearly. We also believe that there are some things that every Creative professional needs to learn about and understand. Things such as copyright, who the main players in Industry are and how the various sectors of artist management, records, publishing and live are changing in an ever more digital world. That’s why our Creative Industries Futures qualification also includes a small number of mandatory modules that every student must engage with. Whether students choose to focus on music performance, songwriting, production, live sound and production, games development and business management, we pride ourselves on delivering an immersive creative industry education in which we match the highest quality of teaching and learning with an unparalleled student experience. With its students representing every corner of the field they one day hope to work in, ACM is a microcosm of the creative industry in which they really can work together and learn by doing. We’re interested in our students’ careers as much as their studies, dedicating an entire department to supporting their professional development and helping them take their first steps into the creative industry. ACM’s Industry Link team ,through regular networking events, work placements, performance and audition opportunities, students are able to showcase their knowledge and talent to music industry executives (from labels, publishers, management companies and more) and gain first-hand feedback from those in the know. The department connects students to a network of top-tier industry partners in the music and wider creative industries, and also offers regular tutorial and masterclass opportunities with visiting guests. ACM students also enjoy an access all areas pass to Europe’s largest recording complex, in which the likes of Queen, Adele, Amy Winehouse, Will.i.am and countless others have recorded, and some still record, today. This joining of educational and professional environments, where over 50% of the UK Music chart is recorded, mixed or mastered in an average year, has created a unique end-to-end proposition for those wanting to pursue a career in the music and wider creative industries, not to be found anywhere else in music education.