Melissa Forbes

USQ’s School of Creative Arts is a fantastic place to teach and learn – as a lecturer, I feel like I’m learning all the time! I teach music practice to all first year students (which includes ensembles and co-ordinating performance outcomes), popular song writing and popular music history, as well as giving individual tuition to singing students.

My area of specialty is singing for contemporary commercial music (CCM). This field is relatively new to tertiary education, and USQ is a market leader in offering this style of music learning to students. I have a particular interest in the science of the singing voice, and I was awarded a USQ Learning and Teaching Grant to attend a course in Sweden by Professor Johan Sundberg, one of the world’s eminent singing voice scientists. In 2011, I travelled to the USA on a Churchill Fellowship to study with leading CCM singing teachers, including Jeanette LoVetri and Robert Edwin. My goal in teaching students is to balance excellent singing technique (based on scientific evidence of how the voice functions) with musicality and artistry.

Music at USQ is leading the way in innovative tertiary music education. We’ve created an exciting and dynamic environment where we challenge our students to collaborate and create, as well as hone their technical skills. There are many incredible opportunities for students to perform through our productions with Artsworx. We regularly have visiting professional artists who perform and work alongside our students (recent artists include Emma Dean, Mark Sholtez, Topology and Jeremy Brennan).

If you study music at USQ, our goal is to enable you to become a highly functional and versatile musician. For both staff and students, music at USQ is about understanding, performing and creating music together.