I was thinking of like how you folks find inspiration for your music and where you find it.

just an interesting thing to me so you might like to say somthing if you want.

thanks

Ben again.

For me, composition seems to be 99% perspiration. The process nearly always starts with the instrumental group; next comes the approximate length and form of the piece; then the form of the first movement (not always sonata form, but always with some set of motifs, variation or transformation of them, and repetition). Only then do I have to think up what material to use. The critical decision is usually the first motif - the others are guided by the need for contrast and variety- and its nature is usually suggested by the instrument that first presents it. I rarely have any difficulty getting started, which is probably why I don't really know how I do it.

Difficulties most often arise towards the end of a movement, when the regular problem is the combination of previous material to provide a summing up of what has gone before (movement or whole piece); I am very fond of codas, though I know there is an enormous gap between mine and those of the great masters of the past. Right now, I am struggling with the ending of a last movement that is a trifle too short to balance the previous ones properly, in which the main themes have been well exploited already, where the previous movements have no motifs that can be quoted convincingly, and where the need to end in the right key constrains the harmonic sequence. These individual difficulties combine to give something rather like a cross-number puzzle.

It depends - why would one start writing a piece in the first place?
Some of my music has been inspired by witnessing events, musical or otherwise, some by a musical idea I had, and some, usually the worst, because I had to, like an assessment.
I find it almost impossible to force composition, I'm writing for an assessment at the moment and it's not rewarding at all! but I've recently finished a piano quintet that flowed quite naturally and was a reaction to personal events combined with the hearing of the Schnittke quintet.
Before that I had been doing some experiments with the electronic modulation of sounds and I had a request for an avante-garde song - that one came easily as I already had musical ideas on the go which I could translate into a discrete piece.

Another way entirely, though for me usually less successful is to try and find inspiration in the expression of a form or process, I've recently been dabbling in rhythmic serialism and the formal organisation of spatial elements (not at all cos i went to the stockhausen prom ) which gives the piece on a fundamental level a continuity that you can then build on.

It just comes.....I know that sounds tacky, but I can't think of any other way to describe it. I don't think it's something which can be engineered in that sense. You can be set briefs or set out to write a specific work, but there still need to be inspiration.