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piano
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part-writing and transposition
The piano is such a ubiquitous instrument that it's hard to pick out particular instance, but for good examples of piano/keyboard writing you might listen to the following pieces/genres:
Although the piano is so popular and is the usual choice of many people as their first compositional aid, it is also one of the most abused items of equipment. Probably due to the way many people are taught, they tend to see the piano as an instrument that can only manage melody/accompaniment textures and which only has a useful range of three or four octaves.
One of the key things to realise about writing for the piano is that if you're not a pianist you will probably at a disadvantage. On the flip side, it's also possible that in some respects you may be at an advantage as you probably won't have the same preconceptions as accomplished pianists.
The eighteenth and nineteenth century repertoires of the piano are so significant in European music that it is all to easy for people to forget that the piano is just another instrument, albeit a very important one. Whether pianists or not, younger composers have a tendency to think of the piano in certain very predictable ways.
The first problem is an overwhelming urge to write for the piano almost solely in terms of melody and accompaniment, where the accompaniment is almost always in the left hand, and almost always consists of some arpeggio-like repeating figure and the melody is in the right. There is nothing intrinsically wrong in this, but there is a problem if it's the only way that you find yourself able to write for the instrument. If you find yourself thinking or writing in this way, don't despair: you should accept that writing well for the piano is very difficult and may take some time to sort out.
When you have a piano part to write, don't just sit down at the instrument and painfully plod through a piece, trying to notate everything as you go along. Spend some time just improvising (see the Improvisation Project), note down enough about any particular ideas that grab you so that you can remember them in future. Don't finalise the result. If necessary just doodle some very vague and graphic ideas.
Don't spend all your time either at the piano or at some hideous computer notation program. Go for a walk, just sit and look into space, thinking. Use some manuscript paper to sketch very vaguely and graphically some of the ideas that spring into your head. If no ideas spring (or even crawl) into your head, go and do something else, but try to be open to sounds and ideas that come to you. If you can never get any sort of ideas, then maybe music composition is not for you.