Music
Composition
Eleven lessons. The complete composition process — from first idea and motif through all 7 elements of music to a polished, placement-ready track. Self-paced, delivered by email.
Composition is a craft.
Here’s the complete process.
Most composers learn by feel — writing what sounds right, fixing what doesn’t, hoping the result lands. This course teaches a different approach: a deliberate, structured process built on the 7 elements of music, applied step by step from the first motif to a finished arrangement. Whether you’re writing for sync, for the stage, or for your own catalog, the process is the same — and it’s teachable.
Course Objective
Give you a complete, repeatable composition process grounded in the 7 elements of music — rhythm, timbre, form, melody, harmony, texture, and dynamics — so every compositional decision you make is intentional, not accidental.
Course Format
11 lessons delivered by email — one per week at your own pace. Each lesson covers a focused element or process stage with practical guidance, techniques, and an actionable exercise you can apply immediately in your DAW or notation software.
Who Teaches It
Dr. William E. Smith — composer, published author of Compose and Produce Music Like a Pro, and Associate Professor of Music Technology at Bowie State University. This course is the live, updated extension of a textbook used in university classrooms for over 10 years.
Built for composers who want to write with intention.
Whether you’re finishing your first piece or trying to build a licensable catalog, this course gives you a vocabulary and a process for every compositional decision — from the first note to the final mix.
11 lessons. The complete process.
The course runs in two parts: process first, then a deep dive into every element of music — with a practical exercise in each lesson and a capstone that brings all 7 elements together as one unified compositional language.
Approaching Composition — Where Every Great Piece Begins
Finding your inspiration, choosing a form, and building the motif that becomes the DNA of your entire piece. The first decisions that shape everything that follows.
How to Compose — The Full Step-by-Step Process
Chords that fit your melody, instrumentation choices, crafting intros and outros, building an interlude, creating harmonic backgrounds — and the advanced techniques that separate good pieces from great ones.
Composition with a Timeline — What to Do on Each Day
A practical day-by-day production roadmap so you always know exactly what to work on — and an overview of the 7-part element deep dive coming in Lessons 4–10.
Rhythm — Making Time Work for You
Pulse, meter, syncopation, displacement, augmentation, and diminution — and why composers who think about rhythm first write music that feels right before a single melody note is played.
Timbre — Your Sonic Palette
The character and color of sound — why instrument choice is as important as pitch choice, how articulation multiplies your palette, and the timbral associations that shape listener emotion before a melody is heard.
Form — The Architecture of a Great Piece
A–B–A, through-composed, verse–chorus, strophic — how each form creates expectation and delivers (or subverts) it, and why deciding on structure before you write a note changes everything.
Melody — Writing Lines That Stick
Shape, peak, stepwise motion and leaps, rhythmic identity, memorability — and the 8-bar blueprint applied with full intentionality, including how to write melody that works under dialogue and sound design.
Harmony — Color, Tension, and Narrative Drive
Extensions, modal borrowing, suspended chords, harmonic rhythm as a variable — how to go beyond I–IV–V and make every chord choice serve the emotional story your melody is telling.
Texture — Controlling Energy Through Layering
Monophonic, homophonic, polyphonic — how many voices are active and how they relate, why texture is your most direct lever for controlling the energy of any moment, and how to build a counter-melody that works.
Dynamics — The Breath of Your Composition
Build and release, subito shifts, terraced dynamics, the dynamic arc — why contrast is what creates emotional impact, and why over-compressed tracks lose the editors and supervisors who need range to work with.
The Complete Composer — All 7 Elements Working as One
How rhythm, timbre, form, melody, harmony, texture, and dynamics interact as a unified compositional language — and what it means to make every decision in service of the same emotional goal.
Practical knowledge you can apply immediately.
Every lesson includes an exercise you can work through in your DAW or notation software — so the theory becomes muscle memory, not just vocabulary.
Taught by the author of the textbook.
Dr. Smith is a working composer, producer, published author, and Associate Professor of Music Technology at Bowie State University with over 30 years of experience at the intersection of music composition, production, and education.
He is the author of Compose and Produce Music Like a Pro — a comprehensive guide to composition, arranging, and production that has been used in university classrooms since 2016. This course is the live, updated extension of that book: the same framework, applied to today’s sync licensing marketplace.
His compositions have been licensed across major television networks, sports broadcasts, and nationally syndicated programs. This course is drawn directly from that practice — the structural and harmonic knowledge behind tracks that get written, finished, and placed.
Compose with intention.
Finish what you start.
Get the complete composition process — 11 lessons covering every element of music, with practical exercises in each one and a capstone that brings them all together.
