Want to turn your voice into a career? Whether you're a singer, rapper, or spoken word artist, find out why a vocal artistry degree could be the best decision you ever make, and how dBs Institute of Music can help you get there.
Your voice is your instrument. It's been with you your whole life, in the shower, at karaoke, in the booth with your friends, on stage at open mics. But knowing how to use it professionally? That's a different skill entirely. And yes, you can absolutely study it at a degree level.
At dBs Institute of Music, we offer a BA (Hons) Vocal Artistry degree taught by industry professionals who have been where you want to go. This isn't a classical conservatoire training programme, it's a contemporary, practice-led degree built for modern artists who want to understand not just how to sing, but how to write, produce, perform and sustain a career in music.
Yes, and it's more comprehensive than most people expect.
A vocal artistry degree isn't just about hitting the right notes. It's about understanding your voice as a professional instrument, like how to protect it, develop it, perform with it under pressure, and shape it into a distinctive artistic identity that stands out in a crowded industry.
At degree level, you'll study performance, songwriting, vocal technique, music theory, and, depending on the course, music production and the business side of the music industry. By the time you graduate, you won't just be a better singer, you'll be a more complete artist.
There's a common misconception that singing is something you're either born with or you're not, and that formal education has no place in a discipline so rooted in natural ability, but that's simply not true.
The artists who sustain long music careers, the ones who aren't just one-hit wonders or overnight sensations, are the ones who understand their craft deeply. They know their instrument inside and out. They know how to write songs that connect with people. They know how to record themselves professionally, how to work with producers, and how to navigate the industry without getting burned.
A vocal artistry degree gives you all of that. It takes what you already have, your voice, your instincts, your ideas, and gives you the technical knowledge and industry experience to build something lasting around it.
Beyond the practical skills, studying alongside other serious musicians in a dedicated creative environment is transformative. The connections you make, the collaborations you fall into, the feedback you receive from tutors with real industry experience, these are things you simply can't replicate in isolation, no matter how many YouTube tutorials you watch.
Vocal artistry degrees aren't exclusively for singers in the traditional sense, and they absolutely shouldn't be.
If you're a rapper, an emcee, a spoken word artist, or a beatboxer, your voice is your primary creative instrument, and there is just as much to learn about it as any other performer. In fact, many of the skills that define elite MCs, breath control, rhythmic precision, tonal variety, stage presence, storytelling, are exactly what this kind of degree is designed to develop.
Think about the rappers whose craft you most admire. Their flow isn't accidental. The way Kendrick Lamar shifts his cadence and vocal persona between verses, the precision of Dave's delivery, the way Little Simz commands a room, these aren't innate gifts that arrived fully formed. They're the result of serious artistic development, a deep understanding of language, rhythm and performance.
Studying alongside singers gives rappers and emcees a broader creative vocabulary. Understanding harmony, melody and musicality makes you a more versatile performer and collaborator, and opens up creative possibilities that pure rap training rarely explores. You'll also develop a stronger understanding of how your voice sits in a mix, which is invaluable when it comes to recording.
Perhaps most importantly, a vocal artistry degree gives you the space to develop your artistic identity in an environment that takes you seriously as an artist.
A singing/rapping degree opens up a wider range of career paths than most people realise. Here are some of the directions graduates pursue.
The most obvious path, but one that a degree equips you for far better than going it alone. You'll understand the recording process, know how to communicate with producers and engineers, and have a body of original work to show for it.
Many of the most successful songwriters aren't household names, but they write for artists who are. Songwriting is a craft that can be studied, developed and monetised, and a vocal artistry degree puts serious focus on it.
Session vocalists work across recording, live performance and TV and radio production. It's a competitive field, but a well-rounded degree, particularly one that includes production knowledge, gives you a significant edge.
Understanding vocals from the inside out makes you a better producer. Many graduates use the production skills they develop during their degree to build careers behind the board as well as in front of the microphone.
The ability to teach what you know is a valuable career in its own right, and one that many working musicians use to supplement their income between projects.
The business and industry modules that form part of a contemporary music degree equip graduates for careers on the other side of the desk, too.
One of the most significant shifts in the music industry over the last decade is the blurring of the line between artist and producer. The artists who are shaping contemporary music, from Billie Eilish, who co-produces her own records with her brother Finneas, to the generation of UK rappers and singer-songwriters building entire worlds in their bedrooms, are the ones who understand both sides of the glass.
At dBs Institute, we believe that vocal artists should understand music production. Not necessarily to become full-time producers, but to understand how a track is built, how a vocal sits in a mix, what a producer needs from them in the studio, and how to realise their creative vision without being entirely dependent on someone else.
This means learning how to use a Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) to record and arrange your vocals, understanding how EQ, compression and reverb shape the sound of a voice, and developing the ability to communicate clearly and collaboratively with engineers and producers.
For songwriters, this knowledge is transformational. When you can demo your own ideas to a professional standard, you remove a creative bottleneck that holds back a lot of talented artists. And when you bring those demos to a co-writer or producer, you're walking in as an equal, not someone who needs everything explained from scratch.
dBs Institute of Music offers industry-standard, degree-level training for artists who are serious about building careers in music. Our BA (Hons) Vocal Artistry degree is taught by working professionals who bring real-world experience into every session, people who have written, performed, recorded and toured at a professional level, and who can share not just their knowledge but their industry contacts and insights with you.
Our campuses in Bristol and Manchester are purpose-built creative environments, with professional recording studios, performance spaces and production suites that give you access to the kind of facilities you'd expect to find in the industry itself.
If you're not sure whether dBs is the right fit, the best thing you can do is come and see for yourself. We run regular Open Days at all of our campuses, where you can meet the team, tour the facilities and get a real sense of what studying here is like.