Composition is an artistic process involving the invention and expression of ideas in sound (Paynter, 1992). However, within an educational context there is limited knowledge of how students actually learn, interact with, or are influenced by the types of compositional tasks used to initiative compositional activity at the senior secondary level. The purpose of the study was to investigate how tasks designs influence students' experience of composition. Participating in the study were eleven students in a music class at an independent girls' school where the researcher was a teacher. Students completed four compositions in response to four different tasks, one each term over one school year. Task designs offered opportunities to operate with a variety of constraints and freedom in decision making. Referred to as prescription, choice, or free response, tasks were viewed as 'preconditions guiding the generating of options' (Perkins and Leondar, 1977: 256). In addition to the collection of compositions, further data were obtained from self report documents including 'composer's diaries', 'composer writes pages', and questionnaires. The following aspects of compositional experience were reported: student execution of tasks though description of compositions; compositional approaches in response to varied tasks; and self reflection on experiences with different task designs. The findings of this study show that students experience constraints and freedom differently. It was found they utilised tasks to function in different capacities, in part determined by their working style, background, and self concept as composers. The conditions of artistic learning set by tasks determined how they related to each composition and the nature of the musical outcome. Significantly, in the absence of task imposed constraints students construct their own. It seems that providing task options promotes the individual, allows access to varied banks of knowledge and experiences, stimulates imagination, and extends artistic learning. The conclusions emerging suggest that constraints and freedom are artistically significant in the realisation of a composition. Tasks should differentiate between 'instruction' tasks for learning and skill acquisition of 'accumulated lore' (Howard, 1977), and ' composition' tasks which allow students to participate as makers of the role of artistic creator, valuing individuality and unpredictable outcomes.