So I’ve been working on this one particular tune for a long time. My usual tune writing process is long enough but this one is perplexing. It’s been something like 6 months.

I tend to work on 2 or 3 things at the same time. It allows me to move from one place to another depending on how I feel, and I often work on many different things throughout a given day, at least on the days I’m writing. And I usually (within a week or two) either finish a piece or, if I’m struggling with an idea too much, I leave it. If I leave the idea, I’ll keep it in a sketchbook for the possibility of revisiting it later but this rarely happens. Actually it happens a lot, I revisit the idea but I come to the same conclusion: leave it alone…

But I have this damn tune that I’ve been working on way longer than I normally do. Usually I would have left the piece by now, leaving it to wallow in the many pieces of paper in my little studio. But for some reason I keep looking at it, listening to it, changing it, moving phrases around, changing rhythms, all with the hope that it will turn into something meaningful, valid or ???

In many ways its unique, I see it as a mirror of my craft. I see the holes in my skills as a composer. My struggles with developing a melodic idea, the clunky movement from one harmonic space to another…

I also see the strengths, the flashes of possibility, I know there’s something unique in it, I just can’t seem to find it…

Keep knockin on the door and it will open……………… right?