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As a soppy teenager with my hormones running I generally drew upon my emotions to write, often about love, how nobody understood me, or how I was 'trapped in a glass case of emotion'. I'm still a teenager (just) though I don't seem to effected by wild emotions anymore. Its hard to say what inspires me now. Reading books about music or listening to my lectures inspires me. If they talk about a particular style and it appeals to me then i'll give it a pop, I might not be successful but you can still learn a lot from failing. Its a good question, many works are inspired by different things and its stupid to deny inspiration as a factor of composition. Having said this though I remember a saying my secondary school english teacher use to say: 'Success is 10% inspiration and 90% perspiration.' I think a good composer needs to be able to create with or without inspiration. I've digressed a bit I think, but the question allowed me to so I thought I would.

True composers play the piano, and kick donkey doing it. I hate to practice for hours, playing the piano is the hardest thing there is, but brings GREAT reward. I used to hate the piano when I was a kid, even though I won a lot of competitions. My father would make me sit in front of the piano forever. "One day you'll thank me" he said. Guess what? He was right. With piano practice comes an amazing set of skills that will allow you to kick other composers' asses. Pianists have an exceptional ear and know harmony better than anyone else. Not to mention, if you play piano reductions of orchestral works (or others) you'll eventually absorb any composition style you want. You can absorb composition styles much faster if you play them, instead of just listening, and the piano is the only instrument that can play a large number of parts.

Since most of the answers are, sadly, silly jokes, let me try: First listen to all finest concertos for bassoon. Pay close attention to form, motivic gradations, harmonic background, orchestration, the usage of the instrument. But you should inform us, how much experience do you have as a composer and which composers you favour as your influences. I remember when I started to compose at the age of 18, I wrote an oboe concerto with strings. It is terrible, since I had no knowledge of form and motivic workout. I made some melodies in oboe and use strings as a background harmonies with occasional solo exhibitions, in moderato-slow-quasi fast movements. But it's a try-out piece after all...

Kind of a dumb answer, don't you think? And moreover, silly; if I thought it was dumb, would I start it? If you need some clarification, think about the role of inspiration in composition. Think about what inspiration is. Do you think it is a crystallized concept? wouldn't it benefit from some discussion? So I am interested in everyone else's experiences with and concepts of inspiration. If you aren't inspired with an answer, please at least refrain from mocking the thread and thereby biasing other potential responders.

You used common practice harmony, and than the most easy version of it. Mainly tonic, subdominant and dominant chords. You transpose to the parallel key, again the most obvious choice. My advise is to learn from musical history. Start analyzing more music from say the romantic era. See how composers move to farther tonal regions. (Brahms or Tschaikofsky, Mahler or whatever you fancy) Then study harmonies that add or alter then tonal framwork. See for example how Debussy uses added notes. Or listen to some Russians. Mousorgsky, RimskyKorsakov, or Scriabin. they add all kinds of octatonic scale, or other composer ones, like Shostakovich, Prokofiev. You could continue to discover quartal harmony (that is not based on triads as in the common practice era, but on 4ths) Look for bitonality (Honneger amongst others). See what nice sonorities you can create with serial music. Start for example with early Schoenberg, or take the violin concerto by Alban Berg, which I really love. It is a great and accessable introduction in serial music. I hope this helps