Persistence and Time

There’s this melody I’ve been working on for maybe 3 months now, but I can’t finish it! It’s so frustrating! I’ve hit a point where I’ve gotten a great opening and a great climactic uprise, but the resolution of the melody and the song just eludes me.

I’ve just let it sit there in my projects folder collecting virtual dust. It’s a piece that needs a soft closing rather than a hard and abrupt ending. I keep coming back to it when I think I have something, and then I abandon the end altogether because it’s not fitting!! AHHHHHH!!!

What I’ve tried to do is listen to similar stylized pieces and similar “storylines” within a composer’s work. The best one I’ve found was actually in the 2005 version of King Kong with Jack Black. It’s in James Newton Howard’s piece entitled “Beautiful”. The melody sweeps and swoons, rises and falls, and then comes to a conclusion that fades.

My piece has an awe-inspiring mood to it, but I don’t really want to use a fade out. It’s kind of maddening! Anyway, as with writing books, I’ve learned that stepping away can be invaluable help to finishing a story. After a year of not thinking about my book, I came back to the book and nearly forget EVERYTHING. That gave me an outside view of the book that was of huge help!

I’m going to do the same thing here. Forget about it, then one day come back and finish it. There’s not a huge demand for the piece unless I somehow stumble upon a project that fits perfectly. So I’ll just be persistent in my search for a resolution and give it enough time to develop organically in my brain.