What instruments do you or have you composed for? What instruments would you like to compose for that you haven't composed for yet?

Well there's composing for a given set of instruments and then there's getting it performed by those intrsuments. This will be much easier for students, but the quality of the performances will vary. I had a string quartet movement played recently at a festival by the Iowa Composers Forum (www.iowacomposers.org), a wonderful organization that is unique to my knowledge, I don't know of any other state that has such a group (please correct me if I'm wrong). I've written a symphony, but it hasn't been performed, my sampled instruments do pretty good with it though.

i did compose a short exercise piece for piano and oboe a few years ago. it's probably a bad piece from any experienced composer's point of view, but at the time, i felt somewhat awesome because it's the first time i did it for 2 instruments.

I've pushed the limits (not that any of it is good). I've written for as many instruments as I can fit into Finale software. The biggest one I want to work with is the percussion section. The percussion playback in Finale is absolutely horrible, and since I compose by ear, this severely hinders me. I mean, I hear a lot of what I want the percussion to be doing at a given time, but can't get it to work out in the program, so I usually just scratch it because it sounds horrible when played back....

Piano, guitars, drum, bass, synths, violin, vocals. That's about it.

I guess I'll answer my own question. Let's see. Well on my own, piano and voice. Then for some assignments once for piano and percussion. Then once for flute and piano. Then once an assignment that was suppose to be for mixed small ensemble - it was violin, cello, bass clarinet, and clarinet. I think I mainly like to write for voice or piano, but might like to attempt writing for some other instruments sometime. Writing for the small ensemble and having to round up the performers, have them rehearse, and have them perform was a lot of fun and made me aware of management/organizational skills I didn't even know existed. It really boosted my confidence not in composing but in being capable of organizing and running something. It was a good experience from that standpoint. The performers sounded terrible though because I felt sorry taking time away from college students knowing how busy they can get so I didn't have them rehearse much. But nonetheless, I really enjoyed it.

piano, flute, oboe, clarinet, bass clarinet, bassoon, timpani, violin, viola, cello, contrabass, sop./alt./ten./bass.

I think thanks about it. I usually only write piano music, woodwind quintets, string quartets, or works for the full orchestra.

I wrote a one-movement piano concerto scored for piano, flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, timpani, trumpet, horns, trombone, tuba, and full strings.

I've written plenty of stuff for piano solo.

For small ensemble and other solo stuff, I've written:
- a divertimento for wind quartet
- a trio for three clarinets
- a wierd piece for 7 trumpets (that was a weird combination to write for...)
- a fugue for organ
- an elegy for soprano and piano
- A string trio
- A solo flute piece

Plus about a zillion fragments that haven't quite gotten off the ground.

I've covered a lot of instruments, but I need to hit more percussion...