How can you come up with new ideas for pieces? Well, that depends on a lot of things. Taking for granted that you want your piece to connect with people, communicate, and be interesting to a publisher, my best advice would be to Get to know your audience.
Since I am writing a lot of piano pedagogy music these days, I find that my pieces need to be about something as children do not often connect with the abstract. When writing a pedagogy piece, I decide on the target age of my audiece and ask, “What are they interested in? What do they love? What do they hate? What are they talking about? What are they into?” My favorite interview question that I use with kids when I am brainstorming about new pieces is, “What is your favorite _____?” The blank could be anything from “game” to “color” to “subject in school.”
By doing this kind of research you are getting to know the passions of humans (namely children in this case) which is what will connect with an audience. I recently discovered a most incredible site called Twistori for seeing what people love, hate, think about, feel, wish, and believe. It’s a live ticker, created by Amy Hoy & Thomas Fuchs, that pulls 1 sentence posts from Twitter and weblogs. It’s an incredible look into the human mind. After watching it scroll for only a few minutes, I had several new ideas for pieces.
It will intrigue you no matter what your purpose.
