u/ImmediateSecond979

I’m writing an orchestral piece and I always start from the melody, because melody is the most characteristic part of my music.

The current piece starts on the subdominant (iv), and the progression is:

Dm - E - Am - Am - Dm - G - C - A7 - Dm - G - C - C7 - Dm - E - Am
(one chord per bar)

The problem is that the melody already feels completely finished with this progression, so I’m struggling to develop it further.

Whenever I introduce a new melody, it starts to feel more like a mashup than a natural continuation, which sounds awkward to me.

How do you usually develop a melody in this kind of situation?

I overthink literally everything. I’m always scared of messing things up, and it kinda holds me back a lot. Even when I wanna try something new, I just end up thinking about all the ways it could go wrong.

Same with dating. I keep thinking about how the other person might take what I say or do, like “what if this makes them like me less?” even though it’s probably not a big deal at all.

Because of that, it can take me forever just to send a message to my crush.

How do you deal with this?

I fell in love with a girl I met while traveling. In the end she also liked me, and we spent a little time together.

I went back to my country soon after, and we kept texting every day. It eventually ended after about two months.

Recently she came back to her home country and added me to her close friends on Instagram, so I reached out again. We were actually having more fun conversations than before.

This went on for about two weeks. Then I made a joke, and she just liked my message and sent a laughing emoji.

I felt like it would be weird to keep dragging the conversation, so I just liked her message and ended it there.

Is that okay? I feel like I might be overthinking it.

I still want to talk to her a lot, so I plan to restart the conversation again sometime. It’s long distance, so it’s not easy.

I just felt a bit of a mismatch in energy, like I was the one carrying the conversation, so I decided to stop this time.

Did I do the right thing?

I fell in love with a girl I met while traveling. In the end she also liked me, and we spent a little time together.

I went back to my country soon after, and we kept texting every day. It eventually ended after about two months.

Recently she came back to her home country and added me to her close friends on Instagram, so I reached out again. We were actually having more fun conversations than before.

This went on for about two weeks. Then I made a joke, and she just liked my message and sent a laughing emoji.

I felt like it would be weird to keep dragging the conversation, so I just liked her message and ended it there.

Is that okay? I feel like I might be overthinking it.

I still want to talk to her a lot, so I plan to restart the conversation again sometime. It’s long distance, so it’s not easy.

I just felt a bit of a mismatch in energy, like I was the one carrying the conversation, so I decided to stop this time.

Did I do the right thing?

I feel like Japanese people kinda struggle with saying no.

Like when someone invites us to something, we just can’t really turn it down.

I’m also kinda different depending on the language—when I’m speaking English, I can say no pretty easily, but in Japanese I always end up saying yes.

This time, a friend invited me to something, but honestly it feels like a hassle and I don’t really wanna do it.

But I’m worried they might not like me if I say no, so I’m kinda stuck.

What would you guys do in this situation?