Q: Serious question: your music has a masterful way of building tension and then resolving it; using both clever chord progressions and cadences as well as melodic fills-- then it swings effortlessly back into a catchy hook or chorus. This honestly feels similar to how baroque music works. What is your thought process when you compose these things? Is it instinct, or is all of this meticulously planned using advanced music theory? Anyway, sorry for the long question, big fan and fellow musician here trying to analyze your style.
A: what works best for me is a door touch, kind of a superstition, re-setting my mind from a new listener's point of view, then play the existing song as far as it goes, with metranome, from beginning. then, at the moment when i reach the 'end' (or as far as it goes so far), that's the moment i listen very very carefully. only in that moment, after a clean run through, will i hear the solution. after a window of about 3 to 5 seconds, it gets much much less likely to get a reliable answer. at that point, i can do one of 2 things. i can go ahead and do another door touch and start again, or, if i've done too many run-throughs in a row and burned out the effectiveness of the run-through, i will try to play process of elimination. play detective with it a little. try to at least categorize all imaginable solutions. kind of like on 20 questions where they start by asking 'is it bigger than a breadbox'