I'm wondering how other people on here get their ideas and develop them. To kick off with my own experiences, sometimes an idea comes at exactly the right time so clearly that I can work on it immediately and get it substantially complete in one day. More usually it develops slowly and may take weeks or even months before I am happy with it. Do any of you run several projects at the same time? Dropping them for a while if you go stale on them. Do you look back on them and fiddle with them sometimes when they are already 'complete'? Sometimes it's a chord pattern that sets me off, other times it's a melody line. There seems to be no clear priority. Does anyone else find that an idea gets so bogged down you end up scrapping it completely? Although my website is quite a recent innovation for me I've been recording my work in one form or another for about 15-20 years now, and seem to find that I only *really* like about 10% of what I've produced. What about the rest of you? I'm sometimes surprised by the opinions of friends, both positively and negatively. Some really go a bundle on pieces I produced early on that almost makes me cringe. Sometimes I get a negative comment on something I think is really good. I've found it impossible to actually predict the response of friends and family. The unkindest cut came from my brother a long time ago, when he described my work as "OK I suppose, but it's not as if it's real music." -- Will J G
