Songwriting is…hard.

I have always loved Beethoven. There’s just something about him, you know? His improvisations, the orchestration of the symphonies, the way he can just take a fantastically major phrase and turn it into a fantastically minor one with the rearranging of a few notes…I can’t always put my finger on it but he awakens something within my musical self, something that none of the other composers can quite reach. That second movement of the seventh symphony–it is heartbreak, longing and the utter depths of despair, and yet…right smack in the middle of it is this sweetly naive little girl of a section, a little girl who is picking flowers in a sunlit field some breezy June day. And then, just as you’re going to approach the little girl, give her a smile, and present her with a boquet of her favorite lilies-of-the-valley, she turns to face you and, to your horror, morphs into a desperate, crying, wreck of a man; you feel you must turn away but find that you’re glued, riveted, and reaching out with every fiber of your being.

So, of course, I thought it was easy. Look at all the great stuff Beethoven composed! All those symphonies, and don’t even get me started on the piano concerti, especially as played by Alfred Brendel–GAH. Every once in a great while, a melody will float around my head and I just can’t let go of it. I play with it, work with it a bit and I think I have something, when…bam! It’s either gone or I hate it. Well, this one that I’ve been working on for a few days, I have a little something and I just…I can’t finish it. I have what I think is this really great beginning and I simply cannot get past the ending E-flat tonic and so, the song just kind of…stops. Of course, all songs are meant to stop, at some point (though some of them should really get to those endings a lot faster–Haydn, anyone?), but usually not abruptly, or after only 33 seconds. So, for any of you aspiring songwriters out there, can you offer any ideas or inspirations? I keep playing around with it and nothing sits. Heeeeelp!

If nothing else, it makes me appreciate Beethoven that much more.