Expanding my skill

I've been writing music (on and off) for like 4 years now. People can listen to my music and notice NO progression, nothing different from any of my older material. I want to change that!

I want advise on how I could expand my technique in composing music.

I also want to take a step up in making my music sound real, or close to.

Where is a good place to start cause i'm kind of lost writing the same old sounding stuff... :(

Thanks in advance!

maybe try other styles of writing? At first I wanted to write more minimalistic, and I wasn't very good at that at all, but I found that whatever style i'm writing now I am a lot better at, and my pieces improve with each new piece I write. Maybe you should try other genres, maybe you've been writing classically, but if you tried avent-garde stuff you would be amazingly better at it. Or maybe you've been writing for piano, and if you tried a saxophone quartet you would be really good at writing for saxophone quartets.

1. Get a teacher.

2. Read a book on theory/counterpoint/orchestration/form. Learn, learn, learn.

3. Analyze music that you like. Find out what makes it that way.

4. Go get a secondary musical instrument and start learning it.

5. Get a teacher. Oh, I've already written that.