Desperate Measures :-)After trying all the methods above, you may still find yourself hopelessly stuck. Situations like these call for desperate measures (pun intended). If you still face a blank page, try to list all of the things that you should not do. What instruments, styles, or techniques should definitely not be used? Often you start to label something as "bad", and in the process of verifying this in your mind you discover it is not such a bad idea after all. Otherwise, finish your list and see what is left over. If you are well into a tune or a project, try to make a list of elements of any kind that are not absolutely essential. Then consider the effect of removing any of them. Removing an element can often open space for another element to move more freely. A single element can create a structure that imposes rules on all of the other elements. Removing it may allow more freedom for the other elements. For example, you may decide early on that you want to thicken the melody with a four-part harmony. This often crowds out any counterpoint, so you might need to change the melody to make the harmony more viable, which may weaken it in the process. Besides making room for a counterpoint, removing that thick harmony structure may also create room for an additional rhythmic element or a periodic punctuation from yet another instrument. Sometimes the melody or counterpoint has a very strong and repetitive rhythmic structure that takes all the available space and leaves very little room for a counterpoint. A percussion section or a rhythmic instrument such as a guitar or a brass section may handle some of those beats better, allowing the melody to flow more freely and even leave some room for a rhythmically interesting counterpoint. Even if it doesn’t allow any further changes, merely passing the rhythms between instruments should make the composition more interesting. This also lets you change the feel of the whole tune just by altering the rhythm of one instrument while leaving the other alone.
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