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This is great!I definitely enjoyed every little bit of it.

I have long considered writing some kind of manual suggesting exercises to practice composition. I think being exposed to, and trying out, as much as possible is key - far too many young composers simply imitate one or two favourite composers without bringing anything new, and as a result their work just sounds second-rate and derivative. In general you should try and do exercises that introduce ideas so far unfamiliar to you. For example, writing for untuned percussion forces you to think about using rhythm and timbre as the main variables, rather than harmony or melody. One thing my second-year composition teacher had us do was write pieces that were a maximum of ten seconds in length. This again forced us to focus on devising very small units of material and condensing ideas as far as possible. So, off the top of my head, I would reccomend: - Write for instruments you have little or no knowledge of. This will make you read up on their capabilities but also introduce new sounds. - Write exercises in which a certain parameter is fixed or removed (melody, timbre, note values, etc). This will make you more creative with the other variables. - As above, write very short pieces, maybe a few seconds in duration, for as many sizes of ensemble as possible. How can you use a full orchestra in ten seconds? - Experiment with following historical forms to the letter (serialism, sonata forms, rondo) then write something that deliberately subverts the rules of these forms. - Orchestrate music by others. This will not only help your learn about instruments but give you an intimate knowledge of the work being done. The purpose of these exercises is not to make your music into some kind of eclectic post-modernist grab-all that doesn't have any individualisty, quite the opposite. If you experiment with as many ideas as possible you can decide what you want to use and what to reject. And don't worry if anything you write sounds terrible, because it's just an exercise. No-one cares about student pieces or exercises, they care about the good work that eventually results from doing all of that.