Having your own style and sound is always good - it is thing thing that all composers strive for! Our own unqiue compositional voice!
I wouldn't wait on inspiration, it usually comes at the wrong and unexpected time. :wink:
Also, don't always revolve your music around a tune, think about ostinato's or chord sequencies or even bass lines. In my expeience too many people wait for a tune - The testpiece I've just finished, Partita is one such piece of musical ideas using minamalist technqiues and 20th century techniques like Iso Rythms (sorry for the spelling of rythms - one word I keep forgetting how to spell)
Iso Rythms are great devices!!! and often solve the dasterdly problems of sustaining ideas.
The important thing is not too have too many idea, but only a few basic ones that you can develop into a full piece of music. Think of Bethovens Fifths Symphony - simple idea but what Beethoven does to it to develop it in a full piece of music is genius! :wink:
Devices and styles like Fugue's, Passacaglia's and Chaconne's can help give you a solid base for the construction of ur piece instead of just working blind.
Devices like Repetiton, Sequence, Retrograde, Inversion, Modulation, etc can all be useful devices to develop the music further.
It is a good idea to limit yourself to what u write in a single piece of music, having a theme or a plot for your music can often help in some cases.
Sometimes the sheer size of the Brass Band is too much sometimes and it can be easy to load too much on, sometimes it's better to write a four-part harmony score or skelton score just to gain a little more perspective on the actual music and that might take some weight off ur brain since u won't have to worry about problem solving in score writing. Although this is only a suggestion and not nessesarily the most time (and hence cost) effective method.
Try and compose everyday (I may have said that already at the beginning of the thread???) keep the mind active.
