Musical Cliches

For our latest project in composition we're supposed to write based a on musical cliche. For my cliche I chose the 12 bar blues form, only I'm having it played straight instead of swung. I've also wrote it in 3/4 time to give it a bit of a different feel then what is expected. I began writing this piece for clarinet, trumpet, and tenor sax, but the piece lacked a bass line that I felt was very much needed, so I got permission to add 4th instrument, being the double bass. After performing it in class it was brought to my attention that there are some balance issues that I need to address, as well the piece gets really busy, really fast. Some people also were not clear on the cliche based on the 4 bar introduction I had wrote. I agree with all of the above criticism and have come up with a couple plans to improve my piece. To begin the introduction is going to expand up to 12 bars (or maybe 8, I'm still not 100% sure) and will be the double bass walking in 4/4 time to outline the chord progression and help people get the style of the music I am writing. To keep it interesting I will be including some different elements rubato. When the busy section of my piece begins I am going rewrite the parts so that they are all distinctive, and have the clarinet and tenor sax play in a different range, as right now all three winds are playing in the middle of the treble clef staff, and this is where the trumpet has the melody. I don't want to move the trumpet part up to much, or at all, as it will end up getting to high for bith what I want, and what is within a good range for the trumpet. I'm going to expand on my piece to include the traditional element of shared soloing as typically found in 12 bar blues, but I have a couple different ideas in mind to mix it up and make it unexpected.

Great Things to Come
NB