Using form

"You recently mentioned how knowing more about form has influenced your work; discuss this, and any changes in thinking or process that knowing and thinking more about formal outlay have engendered in your own work."

I recently passed form and analysis for the first time after my third attempt. The biggest revelation was that repetition is necessary for a piece to be coherent.

All my previous pieces were completely disoriented because they would contain multitudes of thematic material, only it was not organized and different every time. I learned that I need to repeat "phrases" or ideas in my music. The only way to really make something important is to repeat it, this lets the listener know it's important and sets it out from the rest of the piece. To be quite honest this has made composition much easier because when I write something for a piece, I already have at least double the length because I know it will have to be in the piece again. One thing to make sure of is unless you're going for a minimalistic sound, remember to vary during repetition.