“For Klara”

I have basically three ways I like to compose. My most productive way is to sit at the piano and just start messing around until I notice something worth expanding upon. I also try to compose while sitting in a coffee shop or on the train straight onto my little iPad. This is sometimes wonderfully fruitful but also the way that produces the most crap. I occasionally also take some piece of music I like, or gets stuck in my head as a starting off point and see if that will inspire something I can call my own. That is how this piece came to be. Bizet’s Habanero from his opera Carmen got stuck in my head one day so I thought I would see what would happen if I used that as a starting point. This melody is some 8-9 years old but I still think it is very pretty so I finally made the effort to lock it down on paper.

It makes me wonder, why can’t music at least this nice pop out every time I sit down to compose.