Students will discover the joy of writing their own music by learning the fundamentals of musical structure. These fundamentals include creating motifs and melodic forms (sentences and periods), combining melody with accompaniment, and expanding a melody into a small form piece (binary or ternary).

Weekly assignments will be short, but by the end of the course students will have completed a full composition. In class, we will analyze each other's contributions and compositions by famous composers.

This course is for students who are very comfortable reading music and have played an instrument for at least two years. The textbook "Fundamentals of Musical Composition," by Schoenberg, will serve as a guideline and provide all materials. Any assignments or reading excerpts will be distributed in class, so there is no need to buy supplies.