The working process is one of the hardest things to master for a composer, but it is crucial to assuring a strong creative flow. Here I discuss the judging of an idea.

I can't tell you how many notebooks I have filled writing about my process, and I fear all those trees died for nothing since the solutions were pretty simple. But ask any mathematician, simple and elegant solutions are not easy to reach.

Finding an idea is, of course, the first part of the process, but I'll talk about that later. I was composing this morning, going through a bunch of motives and phrases, having to decide which one I wanted to use.

Scenario
How many times as this happened to you. You find this idea and you think "Great! This rocks!" and start composing it out right away, only to find that your enthusiasm soon dims. A few days later you play through the piece and realize that, in fact, it didn't rock at all.

This has happened to me a lot and I have come up with a simple and elegant solution.

I come up with a bunch of ideas and put them aside. The next day I come back to my ideas and select the ones that strike me as being good. This way I remove my initial sometimes misguided enthusiasm for my ideas.

A little trade secret: I often record promising ideas so I can just listen to them instead of reading them. This allows me to more adequately judge the impact of the ideas free of analysis, which I inevitably do while reading music.

Here are some of the criteria I have for selecting my ideas.

1. Do I like listening to it? Does it have impact?
Why did I get into music in the first place? I can tell you that it wasn't because I fell in love with that clever tone row by so-and-so, or that great I-Ching tossing idea by the other guy or that silly music cross-word by Sir Queen.

There are those moments as listeners that have drawn us so powerfully that we said "I want to do that!". The music had a forceful impact! I want my music to have that kind of impact on me first and foremost. Thus, the idea needs to have impact to begin with.

2. Is it different in some way or am I just playing it safe?
If something was easy to write and sounds pretty good, I am immediately wary of it since it might mean I am rehashing old ideas, mine or someone elses.

That doesn't mean I ignore ideas that sound like others I have had, just those that sound like other people's ideas!

3. Is it smart?
What does it mean, smart? Man, that's a whole other entry right there. It means different, clever, well constructed... let's just say that if an idea is overly simple I might keep it if the impact level is very high, but that might not be enough to save it from the discarded pile!

4. Does it have development potential?
You know what I mean. An idea might be good but you can't for the life of you think of what to do with it! Where does it go next?! Not a clue. Then it goes into the "good ideas" folder. Maybe later I'll know.

These main selection criteria help me feel confident that I have a good idea and then I can completely commit myself to developing that idea into a fully realized piece of music.