A while back, I began compiling and notating my old songs, and realized, to my horror, that I had used the famous and notorious "Mr. Bojangles" descending bass line(Really derived from Pachelbel's Canon), underneath a the same iambic tetrameter way too many times---

Funniest thing was that when I asked others, including people who had actually played the songs with me,no one had noticed any similarites-The difference in subject matter in the songs, coupled with the differing moods, an differences in the underlying feel, seemed to have separated the songs from one another for them.

Since I'd created the stuff, I continued to recognize the pieces I'd used, where others saw only the complete song--

In spite of that consolation, I've made a point of finding new musical ideas(or at least new for me) for each song that I work on, at the outset, and, no matter how good it seems, if I feel like I am writing new words to the same old song, I through everything out and start fresh.

I finally realized that the reason that people break musical "rules" is simply that there are only so many unique musical ideas that you can pull out of a any particular musical style before you start to repeat--