Melodies usually come first to me. I spend time with the guitar doing runs just for practice ("faffing around" I call it), trying unusual chord sequences, and now an then a riff pops up. If it is interesting, I follow it to see where it takes me. Eventually, a tune develops, and I pass it through a number of filters (wife, daughter) before I decide that it's original enough. Occasionally the tune may have recognisable elements of other tunes (mine or others'), and I go out of my way to amend it and avoid the crossover.

Where I am lucky, I guess, is that with my varied musical background (Greek folk, Byzantine chant, mediaeval music, plus trad folk and rock and Italian/French pop of the 60's, and etc etc etc), the influences/ingredients are themselves varied enough to help with originality in the final outcome.

I know a composer who has written some wonderful music and has taught me much about composition, especially on the subject of matching words to music. An excellent rule I picked up from him is: Have the tune go up in pitch where the inflection of the word, or the stress of the sentence is. Examples (think of the tunes): "YESterday..." - "How MUCH is that doggie in the window". It helps the music fit/express the words better.

However, we part company with my composer friend on one subject: He refuses to listen to other music but his own, because he wants to "retain a purity in his creation". I am the opposite - I listen to as much and as varied music as I can, because that's where the elements come from, for me to "mix" my tunes.

It's like all possible notes, riffs etc are grains of sand in the desert. Sometimes the wind blows them into little dunes - tunes. And sometimes I happen to be looking in that direction and recognise a good dune-tune and make it my own. I can't control the process any more than I can control the wind.

Which is why I admire deeply, and I mean DEEPLY, those craftsmen like Gershwin, Rogers/Hammerstein, Nat King Cole etc, who could sit down, 9-to-5-like, and produce masterpieces almost on demand.