Summer Sale
off
Write the Music You've Always Wanted!
Establish a solid foundation and confidently develop your skills in harmony, melody, counterpoint, and form
Never Get Stuck Again!
Learn to develop your musical ideas into longer pieces and unleash your full potential
Dive into theory, the fun way!
Join hundreds of students in learning professional music theory in a fun, engaging, and highly practical way without compromise
Pillars of Composition | Music Composition Online Course
Ryan Leach's flagship course "Pillars of Composition" has already helped hundreds of students to improve their music composition skills. It provides fundamental training for composers, presented in a unique and modern way. Music luminary Ryan Leach, with credits like Disney and Netflix, guides his students through over 13 hours of high quality content.
Students will get a deep understanding of the four pillars: Melody, Harmony, Accompaniment and Counterpoint. The course follows a spiral approach, with each turn Ryan expands on previous lessons.
This music composition course is well suited for beginners who want to build a solid fundamental knowledge, as well as experienced composers seeking to strengthen, develope and refreshing their core skills.
Ryan Leach
As an 8 year old growing up in South Australia, Ryan started studying guitar so that he could play Beatles songs, which marked the beginning of a lifelong passion for music. Now an award winning composer for Film and TV, his music has been heard on every major network with clients including Disney, The California Lottery, MTV, Lowe’s, Rainn Wilson's SoulPancake, and the Netflix Original film Candy Jar. Before branching out as a freelance composer, Ryan earned a degree in Film Scoring from Berklee College of Music and worked as assistant to veteran composer Michael Levine at Hans Zimmer's Remote Control Productions.
Check out the Trailer
"I learned so much from watching your work and from the knowledge you shared. Anyway, i submitted two pieces to the Film Scoring Academy of Europe's online Master's Degree Program and i got accepted into the program! So i just wanted to say thank you!
Michael Johnson
Composer
Fundamental Training For Composers
The course follows a spiral approach, with each turn of the spiral Ryan expands on the previous lessons:
This course is divided by the following steps:
Module I
In the first module Ryan covers the fundamental concepts for each of the four pillars: melody & form, harmony, accompaniment, and counterpoint.
You’ll learn what makes a memorable and useful motivic idea and how to use it to craft a musical phrase. The harmony lessons explain how to think about harmony for function, not just for color. With the accompaniment lessons you’ll learn how to actually voice the chords you’ve chosen.
And for the counterpoint lessons you’ll learn the basic concepts of counterpoint as well as how to write a 1:1 first species counterpoint to a given melody.
- motives
- phrases
- harmonic functions
- chord voicings
- counterpoint basics
Module II
The second module goes deeper with the fundamental concepts. Motives and phrases now expand into 8 bar themes with the Period and Sentence forms, two melodic formulas that once you learn will help you never be stuck writing a melody again.
The harmony lessons will take you beyond basic diatonic harmony with secondary dominants and harmonic sequences, and explain the importance of harmonic rhythm.
You’ll take the chords you learned how to voice in Module I and create interesting background accompaniment parts with them, and start to make your counterpoint sound like real music with second species counterpoint.
- the sentence and period forms
- harmonic rhythm
- secondary dominants
- accompaniment figures
- 2nd species counterpoint
Module III
Things start to get serious in the third module! Ryan walks you through the small ternary, a basic ABA musical form that can serve you well for a vast majority of video game, library and film music.
Your harmony will become more colorful and emotional as you learn about modes and how to use them, and the counterpoint starts to serve a practical purpose as we learn how to use counter melodies as an accompaniment part.
And of course the counterpoint lessons keep getting deeper as third species counterpoint teaches you how to write four notes against one.
- small ternary form
- modes
- counter melodies
- 3rd species counterpoint
Module IV
The fourth module and final module is where everything gets a final polish and shine. Your musical form expands in all directions with introductions, interludes and codas. You’ll take the modal harmony you learned in Module III and learn how to mix and match modes for powerful cinematic effects!
The final polish on accompaniment includes ways to bring music to life with fills, accents, and ornaments, and the fourth and fifth species of counterpoint will turn your counterpoint exercises into elegant flowing musical lines.
- introductions and endings
- blend sound design with orchestral elements
- modal interchange
- fills and ornaments
- 4th and 5th species counterpoint
BONUS: Final Projects
As a bonus section Ryan walks you through three complete projects, starting from a blank screen all the way to a final output.
Explaining every decision and idea along the way, Ryan writes an adventurous video game loop, a dark and moody production library track, and a refined TV main titles cue.
Follow along as all of the lessons and concepts from all four modules come together into real pieces of music!
- introductions and endings
- blend sound design with orchestral elements
- modal interchange
- fills and ornaments
- 4th and 5th species counterpoint
Course Curriculum
Walkthroughs
First Adventure
Ryan Leach
"First Adventure" is an uplifting and energetic track for full orchestra that uses course elements like themes, modal interchange, and active accompaniment patterns. Built out of two main sections, the piece is designed to make the most of the Small Ternary Form by coming back around to the beginning for an endless loop.
Emerging From the Depths
Ryan Leach
"Emerging From the Depths" is created in Logic to show you that the principles of the course can be applied just as usefully in a DAW. The cue is composed and produced exactly like the real tracks Ryan writes for production music libraries that get major network TV placements, while adhering to the core musical principles of the course.
The Bridge Over the Abbey
Ryan Leach
Written as the main titles cue to a fictional BBC drama, "The Bridge Over the Abbey" is an original composition for small orchestra. Ryan walks you through every step from initial motivic idea to final arrangement and incorporates lessons from the course like contrapuntal bass lines, flowing counterlines, and a well balanced.
.webp)
