If this is the first subject of a piece in sonata form, is it established enough in the tonic (G) before it moves to the dominant, or do I need to extend / change it. What's slightly bothering me is that I wanted bars 7 and 8 to be a perfect cadence really, and they haven't turned out that way. Sorry to be stupid, I've never done this before!

Hi Rosie

Bit confused here. Why are you trying to modulate to the dominant so soon? Your first subject should be in the tonic and should be followed by a bridge passage. (It is this bridge passage which takes - or 'bridges' - the music to the new key, usually the dominant; you then state your second subject in this new key.) What you seem to have done is used your first subject to do the modulating.

Yes, I think you definitely need to extend your first subject. What I think you should do is repeat the first eight bars but when you get to bar 16, instead of ending with a minim D which, when preceded by the A, suggests an imperfect cadence, change the D to a G and that will give you a perfect cadence with which to end the first subject. Then the next eight bars you've written, which modulate to the dominant quite effectively, could become your bridge passage (although I'd change the rhythm of bar 11 to include quavers - it feels more rhythmically balanced). You then need to compose a second subject in your new key of D major.

No, you're not being stupid at all if you've never done this before, but a) why isn't your teacher helping you with this? and b) is this the first compositional task you've been given? It's really rather a complicated exercise for a beginner - but that's not your fault.

Good luck!

Thanks for your help...see I really though you were meant to be IN the dominant by the time you'd finished the 1st subject...obviously I've got confused somewhere along the way. Your ideas make lots of sense, I'll sort it out in the morning.

I'm doing AS and haven't done GCSE, so the others have composed before but this time we are meant to be 'following the rules' - which they didn't even learn for GCSE, so we're all in at the deep end. We had a homework involving 8 bars of melody with a bassline, but this does feel pretty complex compared to that!

The other thing I can't seem to do at all is compose a LH part - nothing I do sounds good at all or like any 'real' piano piece I've ever seen.

arrrgh!

You could use an alberti bass for the left hand. I haven't tried this out on the piano, so it may sound weird but something like GDBD/GDBD/F#DAD/... could work.