Welcome to the Popular Music course at Canterbury Christ Church University. We are delighted that you have chosen to study with us and are really looking forward to working with you in your studies to help you achieve your goals as a student. Please don’t hesitate to get in touch if you have any questions.
The Course Team
Academic Calendar: Semesters
View key dates for this Academic Calendar for 2025-26 including when teaching starts and finishes and when you break for holidays.
Your Welcome Week is an essential introduction to your course and the wider University, helping you to feel confident and prepared for your studies right from the very start.
It is important to check your Course Welcome Week for all the activities you are required to attend as part of your course induction. If any of your welcome activities are in groups, your course team will contact you before you arrive to let you know which group you will be in.
In addition, check the Student Events Hub for a range of fun activities. including the Students’ Union Welcome Fair, to help you make friends and live your best CCCU student life.
Your teaching timetable
UniTimetables provides an overview of all teaching activities for a course. If your course is taught in groups, it will display information for all groups, not just the group you will be assigned to.
Your individual student timetable will show you what modules and groups you are expected to attend via MyTimetable. This will be available for when your teaching starts.
Learn more about timetabling for new students including user guides and videos.
The Popular Music course is for students who want to develop skills in popular and commercial music. The staff and students on the degree are part of a wider community of creative practitioners that includes game designers, photographers, film makers and theatre practitioners, and we hope you’ll take advantage of the opportunity to gain inspiration from this diverse group to help expand and enhance your own creative practice.
Follow us on Instagram @cccu_music
Also, follow our student-led CCCU Social Music Society on Instagram @cccu_social_music
In Welcome Week there will be a number of activities for you to get to know the academic team and your fellow students. During this week you’ll find out about your timetable and any groups that you might be in for practical classes, and you’ll start to gain access to Blackboard, our online repository of learning materials for your modules. You will also be assigned a Personal Academic Tutor.
Please prepare a piece to play in your first performance class. This can be a solo piece or something with a backing track. We are really looking forward to hearing you perform, and this will help the tutor to assign you to a relevant performance group for your group rehearsals and performance classes.
All students on the Popular Music course have individual instrumental/vocal lessons (e.g. drums, bass, guitar, piano/keyboard, vocals etc.). Students tend to focus on one instrument (especially in the second and third year) and have weekly lessons on this, but you can take two instruments if you would like to, alternating each week (for instance, if you are a singer and a guitarist and would like lessons on both). We’ll ask you to confirm your choice in Welcome Week so that arrangements can be made for these lessons.
Your welcome and induction will be w/c 15 September 2025 - we look forward to meeting you then!
The following texts are recommended to help you in preparation for your semester one modules.
You may find it helpful to look at the following book in preparation for the theory element of the Performance Skills module:
You may find it helpful to look at the following book in preparation for the Popular Music Making module.
Alternatively, have a read through the online manual for the software to familiarise yourself.
It is useful to note that the University Bookshop offers 10% discount on most titles in print and have some price-beating book bundles. They also price match Amazon on core texts recommended in the module handbooks you will receive when you start in September.
International students: don't miss out! Make sure you register for our international student success programme which provides practical advice on preparing to live and study in the UK.
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