Music

Commitment to professional instruction and development of musical leadership

Students can choose among the following degrees: Composition, Instrument, Music Education, Popular Music, Conducting and Choral Conducting.

In recent decades, the music market has greatly expanded. It is no longer just about playing an instrument, singing, composing, conducting and teaching, but also about developing research into audio, computer music and sound design. New technologies have become a constant feature in the lives of new musicians, from the necessary experience in recording sessions to knowledge of the fundamentals of computer music, acoustics and electronics that will allow them to enter a similarly new marketplace.

Distributed into different areas, the practice of music comprises performance (instrumental, vocal and conducting), creation (composition), musicology (studies in the field of ethnomusicology, historical musicology and analytical musicology) and music education.

In the full-time Music course offered at the Unicamp Arts Institute, students have the opportunity to keep abreast of innovations in these areas of music research and production, not only in the different degrees offered by the Department of Music, but also thanks to the mobility afforded by the curriculum, which allows them to develop part of their studies in other institutes and courses within the university.

Aiming to address these new fields of activity in music-related professions, Unicamp’s Music course offers facilities such as acoustically adapted and equipped classrooms, as well as teachers-researchers qualified for research and musical practice, recognized in Brazil and abroad. The course also has the support of Research Centers, such as NICS – Interdisciplinary Center for Sound Communication – focused on research in sonology and new musical technologies, and CIDDIC – Center for Cultural Integration, Documentation and Dissemination. It has several research groups certified by CNPq – National Council for Scientific and Technological Development – led by researchers, composers and instrumentalists working at Unicamp. The course currently offers international exchange programs and systematically encourages interaction between undergraduate and graduate activities.

Composition and Conducting

The Composition and Conducting degrees are the earliest offered by the Music course, since 1979. Students receive the training required to exercise these specialties and also experience the various professional and musical situations they may encounter over their career.

Instruments

The options available in the Instruments degree are: violin, viola, cello, double bass, flute, trumpet, trombone, percussion, piano, harpsichord and voice. In all of them the emphasis is to give students comprehensive instruction, enabling them to perform in the most diverse areas, whether as soloists or members of orchestral and chamber music groups.

Music Education

The main goal of the Music Education degree at Unicamp is to train students as both musicians and educatorsl. Besides having a solid musical background, they must be equipped with specific tools in the field of education. Music educators work at various different levels and find opportunities to develop in varied sectors. In addition to providing theoretical knowledge, the course offers the possibility of applying such knowledge through internships.

Popular Music

Unicamp’s Popular Music degree is the first of its kind in Brazil. One of the major concerns of the course is to provide students with the tools required to perform professionally in all possible specialties of popular music, whether as instrumentalists, arrangers or producers. The Music Department has the necessary infrastructure to reach this goal, provided by specific laboratories such as the Computing Lab, where students are in permanent contact with equipment, state-of-the-art software and studio/recording facilities that allow them to work with all strands of music-applied computing. The course includes guitar, electric guitar, bass, piano, saxophone, drums and voice instructors.