His compositions include Flight, adopted as the "Official March" of the National Air and Space Museum of the Smithsonian Institution, and Eternal Father, Strong to Save, commissioned in 1975, that premiered at a Kennedy Center celebration of the 50th anniversary of the United States Navy Band.
The following excerpt from the finding aid of his collection at the University of Maryland, College Park describes his style: His pitch language is essentially analogous to Western common practice traditions, with particular emphasis on striking melodic material and bass lines that articulate functional harmonic progressions.
Multiple scholars have noted, however, that toward the end of his life, Smith was using "dissonances" with increasing frequency and postulated that had he continued writing, this aspect would have become a more pervasive characteristic of his music.
Smith is perhaps best known for his rhythmic practice, particularly introducing asymmetrical meters into the band idiom in 1964 with the 7/8 and oddly subdivided 9/8 measures of Emperata Overture.
Taking these two facets in combination, it is apparent that through the majority of his career, Smith's use of pitch was firmly rooted in 19th-century practice, while his rhythmic syntax owed much to certain composers of the early to mid 20th-century such as Igor Stravinsky and Aaron Copland.