Your Personal
Conservatory
The method that trained Mozart, Beethoven, and Brahms —
rebuilt as a complete practice system with a personal composition professor.
Not videos. Not passive reading. You write music from day one —
and every tool, every lesson, every score study exists to make you a master craftsman.
10 stages · Maestro composition professor · composition challenges · 458 annotated works · 14,500+ expert annotations · score prediction exercises · personalized dashboard · 39 composer profiles · complete orchestration reference
Every Room Is Open.
Click any page below to explore exactly what students see and use. No account required — each preview is a live look at the real thing.
The Method
Young Composers Track
Composition Studios
Score Study
Practice Tools
Reference & Library
For Teachers
This is not a course.
It’s a practice system.
Most music education is passive. Watch a video. Read a chapter. Move on and forget.
Gradus is different. Every lesson ends with a composition challenge — real writing, live notation, automated voice-leading feedback. Score studies ask you to predict what the expert will say before you see the annotation, building judgment instead of just recognition. Your composition professor doesn’t just explain — he tests you, adapts to your weaknesses, and makes sure nothing slips through the cracks.
Every page — history, orchestration, reference, practice tools — points toward one thing: your ability to write music.
Meet Maestro —
Your Personal Composition Professor
A conservatory-level teacher available on every page — every lesson, every composition tool, every practice session. Maestro knows your progress, the scores you’ve studied, and the challenges you’ve completed. He doesn’t just answer questions — he tests you, surfaces your gaps, and actively helps you build mastery rather than hoping you absorbed it.
Explains Theory in Context
Ask "why does this chord work?" mid-lesson and get a direct expert answer — not a Wikipedia page. Maestro knows exactly what you're working on.
Real-Time Composition Feedback
Share your work and Maestro analyzes it: voice leading, harmonic rhythm, orchestral balance — with specific, actionable notes, not generic advice.
Active-Recall Testing
Ask Maestro to quiz you on anything you've studied — intervals, form, voice-leading rules, orchestration principles. He generates questions, checks your answers, and reinforces what didn't stick.
Peer Teaching Mode
Maestro can role-play as a confused student who doesn't understand a concept — you explain it. Teaching is the deepest form of learning, and this mode builds mastery you can't get from passive review.
Suggests What to Work On Next
Maestro knows your practice history, your current lesson, and the challenges available. Ask "what should I work on?" and get a specific, personalized recommendation.
Available Everywhere, Always in Context
Lessons, sketchbook, counterpoint workshop, score study, history pages — Maestro is always one click away, and always aware of what you're looking at.
A Method That Proves You’ve Learned.
Not One That Hopes You Have.
Reading about parallel fifths doesn’t mean you can avoid them under time pressure. Watching a score annotation doesn’t mean you can predict what the next bar will do. Gradus closes the gap between knowing and doing with an integrated practice engine: real writing exercises, adaptive reviews, and a dashboard that shows exactly where you stand — so you always know what to work on next.
Personalized Dashboard
Your unified learning hub: next lesson, due reviews, recommended challenges, and recent activity — all in one place. Start every session with clarity instead of indecision.
Intelligent Review
The review engine schedules practice based on your actual challenge and prediction performance. Concepts resurface right before you would have forgotten them — not on a fixed calendar.
Composition Challenges
Hands-on writing exercises with live VexFlow notation and automated validation: parallel fifths detection, voice spacing checks, and more. Not theory quizzes — actual composition, with real rules enforced.
Score Prediction Exercises
Analyze a passage and predict what the expert commentary will say — before you see it. You build analytical judgment, not just pattern recognition. This is how great ears are developed.
Adaptive Difficulty
Exercises adjust from guided to open-ended based on your performance. The challenge always matches where you actually are — structured enough to learn, demanding enough to grow.
Everything Connected
Curriculum steps link to relevant score studies. Challenges link back to the lessons that taught them. Maestro knows every connection. Everything in the method reinforces everything else.
Ten Stages.
One Complete Path.
From your first interval to composing for full orchestra — ten stages of study, with ear training woven throughout and score study integrated at every turn. Every step links directly to annotated repertoire examples so the theory is always grounded in real music. The roadmap shows the recommended route, but every section of the site is open to you from day one.
Study the Masters —
50 Annotated Works.
Fifty works — from Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos to John Williams — each with expert annotations explaining the compositional decisions measure by measure. Not biography. Not chapter summaries. The actual choices the composer made, explained in plain language so you can study them and apply the same techniques in your own writing.
14,500+ Expert Annotations
Harmony, orchestration, melody, form, voicing, rhythm, texture, and dynamics — each annotation explains a specific compositional decision you can learn from and apply.
Prediction Exercises
Before reading the expert commentary, you predict what it will say. This single exercise builds the analytical ear that separates a composer from a listener.
Linked to the Curriculum
Each curriculum step points to relevant score study passages — so the theory you learn is always grounded in real repertoire. Ask Maestro about any passage mid-study.
Bach to Williams
Works spanning the Baroque through the modern era: Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, Debussy, Ravel, Stravinsky, Shostakovich, and dozens more.
The Primary Sources.
Not Textbook Summaries — the Actual Material.
Gradus integrates scholarly editions of the primary pedagogical sources that trained generations of composers — cantus firmi, Bach chorales, fugue subjects, thoroughbass collections, and more. These aren’t summaries or excerpts — they’re the working materials, converted for interactive use in the browser.
Cantus Firmi
Historical fixed melodies from Gregorian chant, Fux, and Palestrina — graded by difficulty. The starting point for every species counterpoint exercise.
Bach Chorales
371 four-part harmonizations: the most concentrated textbook of tonal voice leading ever written. Play them, analyze the doublings, trace every suspension.
Fugue Subjects
Bach, Handel, and beyond — real fugue subjects to study, imitate, and write answers for. Each illustrates a different strategy for subject design.
Voice-Leading Patterns
150+ patterns across cadences, sequences, rules of the octave, bass patterns, and schemata — the vocabulary of tonal motion, drawn from the historical compendium.
Figured Bass Collections
Graded thoroughbass exercises from five historical collections — Insanguine, Handel, Kellner, Ristori, and Mozart — with real-time voice-leading validation.
Chorale Harmonization
Bach chorales with soprano given — write the alto, tenor, and bass. Voice ranges enforced. Part-writing rules checked in real time.
Boulanger Harmony
Nadia Boulanger’s systematic approach to tonal harmony: principles, doubling tables, seventeen graded exercises, and sing-and-play practice.
Marpurg Fugue Treatise
140+ exercises from Marpurg’s two-volume Abhandlung von der Fuge — exposition, middle entry, stretto, and more.
Mozart-Attwood Counterpoint
Species counterpoint exercises and solutions from Mozart’s own teaching sessions with Thomas Attwood.
Professional Composition Tools.
Three Studios. One for Every Level.
You learn by composing — that’s the Fux principle. Whether you’re writing your first melody or scoring for full orchestra, there is a composition environment built for exactly where you are right now. The Master Sketchbook supports multi-staff scoring with instrument selection, live playback, and drag-and-drop MusicXML & MIDI import — everything you need to sketch and develop professional-grade compositions.
Sketchbook
Simple melody writing with guided prompts. Write your first composition in minutes, hear it play back instantly. Perfect as your very first piece.
Open Sketchbook →Counterpoint Workshop
Species counterpoint exercises with real-time grading. Daily practice routines. A full cantus firmus catalog from historical sources. Track your progress over time.
Open Workshop →Master Sketchbook
Professional multi-staff score editor with instrument selection and live playback. Write for string quartet, full orchestra, or choir. Drag-and-drop MusicXML and MIDI import. Export as MusicXML. The full compositional toolkit.
Open Studio →Orchestration Is Composition.
We Treat It That Way.
Writing notes is half the work. Knowing which instruments play them — how they blend, balance, and color a phrase — is the other half. Gradus gives you everything you need to orchestrate: a complete reference for every instrument family, a searchable catalog of doublings and timbral combinations, and progressive assignments that take you from four-part chorale scoring to a full orchestral movement. The instruments, the colors, the balance — it’s all here, integrated into the method from the start.
Instrument Reference
Every family covered in depth — ranges, registers, timbres, extended techniques, and idiomatic writing. A practical reference you keep open while scoring.
Combinations & Doublings
Which instruments blend, which clash, which create the color you hear in your head. Searchable by timbre, mood, and dynamic weight.
Orchestral Balance
How register affects projection, how to balance winds against brass, how to voice a chord across the full ensemble. The practical knowledge every scorer needs.
Graded Assignments
From Bach chorale scoring to full orchestral reduction and expansion — structured practice with master solutions so you can compare your choices against a professional standard.
Repertoire Examples
Every technique links to specific passages in the standard repertoire — Mahler’s horn writing, Ravel’s string harmonics, Strauss’s brass.
Historical Context
How the orchestra evolved, how each era’s compositional problems shaped the writing, and how the great orchestrators solved them.
From Fux to Boulanger.
Theory as It Actually Unfolded.
The Gradus curriculum follows the history of composition itself. You don’t study theory in the abstract — you learn it the way it was discovered: era by era, problem by problem, through the composers who shaped it. Each era introduces the harmonic language, the forms, and the compositional challenges of its time — so that by the end, you understand not just what the rules are, but why they exist and how they changed.
Every composer is studied through the lens of their compositional approach — not biography. What problems did they face, what tools did they invent, and what can you take from them into your own writing?
Train the Ear That Writes.
A composer’s ear is not a passive listener — it is a precision instrument. These tools build the inner ear and the reading eye, so when you sit down to compose, what you hear in your head is what comes out on the page.
Ear Training
Interval recognition quizzes with real audio playback. Identify intervals, chords, and progressions by ear. The foundation of writing what you hear.
Sight Reading — 10 Levels, 3 Modes
Graded exercises from simple melodies to four-part Bach chorales. Three modes: standard reading, rhythm-only, and interval recognition. Ten progressive levels that track your improvement.
Metronome with Tap Tempo
A full-featured metronome with adjustable BPM and tap-to-set tempo. The tool you keep open while composing, practicing, and drilling rhythmic precision.
MIDI Keyboard Support
Connect any USB MIDI keyboard and play directly into the score editors and practice tools. Hear your compositions in real time as you input them.
Everything, Instantly.
Press ⌘K anywhere in Gradus to search every lesson, every instrument page, every composer profile, and every reference — all at once. When you need to know something mid-composition, you find it in seconds, not minutes.
Try Search →“The art of counterpoint is the true foundation of all composition.”— Johann Joseph Fux, Gradus ad Parnassum, 1725
In 1725, Johann Joseph Fux published the treatise that defined how composers are trained. Haydn studied it. Mozart carried a copy everywhere. Beethoven annotated his edition. Brahms called it essential. For three centuries, it was the conservatory method.
We live in an era of quick tips, shortcuts, and software that can generate music for you. But a generated score is not composition — any more than a calculator is mathematics. There will always be a place for the composer who actually understands the craft: who knows why a voice-leading rule exists, who can hear a harmonic progression before writing it down, who has done the rigorous work that separates real mastery from imitation.
That is what Gradus is for. We brought Fux’s method back and built the practice system it always demanded: composition challenges with real feedback, score study that builds analytical judgment, and a composition professor who tests you as rigorously as he teaches you. The craft is earned through practice. This is where you earn it.
Stay Close to the Method
New lessons, score studies, and curriculum updates — sent directly to serious students of the craft.
Begin Your Journey
The method that shaped every great composer. Now yours.
10 stages · Maestro composition professor · composition challenges · score prediction exercises · intelligent review · personalized dashboard · 458 annotated works · 14,500+ expert annotations · 39 composer profiles · complete orchestration reference · cantus firmi & fugue subjects · 200+ notation terms · 3 composition studios · MIDI & MusicXML import