[islandguitar]

Hi Barry....yeah, studying others and just listening and or watching what others do can help spring something forward. I've found in several instances that a single unique chord, usually something both seen and heard can propel me with my own stuff.

I like Larry's suggestion of waking the mind up of the listener, and that's something I've intentionally done with my tunes.

Honestly, there are times when I just keep repeating that A section (or whatever) over and over, knowing that something will pop when the mood is right on a different night or a different guitar is used. So there's a level of needed patience, a kind of intentional "wait and see" in order to splice things together into something that seems to fit. This combined with some basic theory seem to help with moving forward.

Finally, I sometimes will take the treble string melody I've worked out and move it to the mid or bass strings and repeat it there. When Mau Lau (Joe Charter) was posting here I saw that he did that a lot with his music and so I look for when the moment is right to try that out.