I won’t tell you what I think of your music because I didn't listen to more than a few seconds but I do have some general advice;6. Don’t try to imitate another composer’s style. Don’t think “I want to write music that sounds like this”. Write your own music and experiment with different sounds and ideas.7. Finally, read Arnold Schoenberg’s Fundamentals of Musical Composition.
esoteric,If you like you can send me the midi files of some of your compositions I can produce a much more realistic piano sound for them. I actually quite liked some of them but I think you are loosing a lot of the effect with that midi piano sound.
Firstly, when I said not to try to imitate other composers, the emphasis was on the trying. Obviously you can't avoid influence and I wasn't suggesting that aspiring composers should only write unique music. I can't remember who said it but it has been suggested the there is difference between originality and uniqueness. Unique means there is nothing else like it. Original means it comes from you. If your natural style happens to be similar to Rachmaninoff then there should be no shame in that. If, on the other hand, you are trying deliberately to imitate Rachmaninoff, I'd say the odds of doing so convincingly are small and the music would suffer as a result.
If you have read Schoenberg's book you will know that there is virtually nothing in it about the artistic or stylistic side of composition. It's all about the craft. There are chapters on what constitutes a motif, types of accompaniment, the structure of various common music forms like Rondo and Sonata form, with lots of examples mainly from the classical and romantic period. There are lots of examples of different ways in which a theme or motif can be varied and developed too. It really is an excellent book and not at all opinionated.
Your second point about learning from books seems to have ignored the 5th point in my original post: Practice composition in the same way you would a musical instrument. This really is the only way to improve. I suggested that esoteric read Schoenberg's book because it gives a great insight into the craft of composition. If you were learning to model clay and thought you could only use your hands, reading a book describing the various tools used by professionals, and what they are good for, would be time well spent I'm sure you would agree.
There's nothing wrong with intentionally trying to get the sounds from Rachmaninoff that you like.
The step that you've missed, which is still why your 5th point is wrong…
linear thinking is not the same thing as good voice leading, which I'm pretty sure is what you're talking about (which we completely agree on).