The Fredösphere

I arrived shockingly late to the melody party.  I've always been naturally attentive to harmony and form, but I was in my twenties before I started paying serious attention to melody.  (I'm not sure I get rhythm even now.)  Lately I've been thinking more about note selection and note tendency, using a crude kind of Schenkerian analysis (since I lack formal training in it).  To my shock I find myself being pushed ever more in the direction of tonality.  (For the record:  my parody of Pilgrim's Progress has plenty of self-parody in it.  Just in case you were wondering.) 

A couple of related points about compositional technique:

This is all by way of a reminder that most experiments in novelty result in gratuitous weirdness, and that we should never underestimate the effort on the part of composers who succeed in finding some original gesture that doesn't completely suck.

Composing is a lot harder when you don't just go with the first notes that pop into your head.  Ignorance has its compensations.

And now, a couple of follow-up points regarding Schenkerian analysis:

My few attempts to learn more about Schenker have suffered from a poor choice of introductory texts.  Prof. Tom Pankhurst looks like the guy to help me get started.

I harbor a vague, yet deep, suspicion that Schenker's work is nothing more or less than one part of the world-wide conspiracy to get me to like Haydn.