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Conservatory training, at the cost of a private lesson once a year.
Built on the Theory of Tonal Movement: tonal music as a story of pulls and resolutions, taught the way the ear actually meets it — sound first, label second. Twelve stages from your first interval to writing for full orchestra, ending in an original capstone. A composition tutor who knows where you are in the curriculum and critiques the music you actually wrote. You write from day one.
In a world where software writes music on demand, there will always be a place for the composer who actually understands the craft. There is no shortcut to that understanding — and no substitute for it.
Gradus exists to make you that composer.
Most music education teaches theory labels and calls it composition. Knowing the name of a chord and being able to write eight bars that use it well are two entirely different skills. Gradus was built because that gap is real — and closeable.
You start with a single melodic line. By Stage X, you are writing for orchestra. Every step follows the history of music itself — each era’s theory taught as it emerged, so you learn why the rules exist by living through when they were discovered.
Everything is connected. The curriculum informs the score study. The studios put the theory to work. Maestro ties it together. This is not a feature list — it is an integrated method.
Study how Beethoven built a development section. Hear how Ravel colored an orchestral texture. Understand what Brahms was doing harmonically at the moment every other composer thought chromaticism had gone as far as it could go.
Then go write.
Every work in the library is cross-linked to the curriculum step where those techniques are taught. Score study and composition are the same act — reading to write, writing what you’ve read.
Not a chatbot. Not a quiz engine. A composition tutor built into the method — context-aware, knows exactly where you are in the curriculum, gives structured critique on your compositions in three parts: what works, what needs attention, and one concrete technique to try at your next sitting.
He reads your counterpoint against the standards Fux articulated. He hears your harmonic progressions against the voice-leading tradition Boulanger codified. He doesn’t return a Wikipedia page — he tells you what to fix and how.
The craft is earned through practice. Not through watching, not through generating, not through labeling. Through sitting down, writing music, getting critique, and writing again.