Portfolio requirements

Your portfolio should take the form of a Word, PDF or RTF file, and should include:

• Links to two recorded examples of your creative work
• A short critical assessment, provided in written form or as a link to a video

Recorded examples of your creative work

These can be audio only, or videos. Ideally, they should be original songs, compositions, or substantially changed versions of existing repertoire.

One of the examples should include you performing on what you consider to be your main instrument, or singing if you work primarily as a vocalist. If you are a multiinstrumentalist or producer, the examples should demonstrate an equivalent degree of specialism.

The performances should be a maximum total duration of 10 minutes.

Your portfolio document must contain links to the recordings on a host platform such as Google Drive, SoundCloud, YouTube, Spotify or similar. Ideally, the links will not be password protected, but if they are, please include the password / log-in details in your application.

Your document should also include a lyric sheet and brief details of your role in each piece’s creation (composer / lyricist / producer / performer, etc.).

Please indicate which tracks, if any, are covers of other people’s work.

Critical assessment

Please also provide a critical assessment of either a) an aspect of one musical artist’s work (whether a single piece, an album, or a larger body of music), or b) a scene, stylistic context or genre of your choosing.

We ask for this so we can understand how you engage with the work of other artists, and how you research and construct an argument.

You can approach the task either by describing how your work relates to the music / context under discussion, or by providing a traditional academic survey of the topic.

Your piece can take one of two forms:

Either

• A written text of 750-1200 words. In this piece, feel free to engage with and quote from other sources in your writing.

Or

• A video of 5-7 minutes, in which you deliver your ideas and analysis to camera. Feel free to quote from and engage with sources, images and/or audio examples. The video should be provided via a link, as above.

Contact us

If you have any questions, please email Joe Newman, j.newman (@gold.ac.uk).

Good luck – we are looking forward to your application.