Newbie needing a few ideas!

Hello,

I'm new and not that good at composing.

I play piano and clarinet.

I have one week off school to compose !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I don't know what to compose though....

-blues/New Orleans?

-new age type thing with clarinet and piano

-SATB thing for voices (I'm doing grade 6 theory so I'm doing Bach harmony type stuff)

-pop ballad type piano thing

thanks,

please say whichever would be easiest.

I'd also quite like to know a simple way to compose a kind of classical tune, like a gavotte/gigue/sonate , it's time signature/form and rhythmic patterns. Whichever gets chosen, I would like it to be able to be a 'stand alone' piece, not like a "1st movement" or "Allegro" part of a huge piece. Neither a piece that's supposed to be part of a suite. Maybe a theme and variation?

I know it's a bit of a rambling thread, sorry!!

thanks

will

Write whatever you're interested in writing. It's as easy or hard as you make it.

The New Age I would find easiest. It's a lot of static harmony and simple melodies. But with that the trick is all in the post-recorded mixing. Alternatively, you can use crazy orchestration and specific notation to get similar effects, but that requires a good bit of knowledge.

I'd personally find the New Orleans piece very easy. I can give you some pointers on that, since I live here and hear it. Doing that would require either some transformation of genre or a funk ensemble, and it'd be very hard to convey that with notation, since there's an element of improvisation. But there's crucial knowledge of second line rhythms that needs to be addressed.

Pop ballads are pop ballads. Don't think of a pop ballad as a form in and of itself, maybe take elements from each of the concepts. SATB-style harmony is based around voice-leading, and those rules are relatively unchanged into pop music in general. Using them directly (with a few necessary changes) would create a more stately-sounding ballad. Take that with a second-line rhythm implied the the left hand... stuff like that. Throw a clarinet line as a countermelody...

Anyway, I got off-track. But yeah, it's all the same if you're doing non-stylistic music.