Composition Blues

As a saxophonist I've always thought it was strange that whenever I start to write a tune I head straight for the piano.  I have tried in the past to stick to the horn and create a melody but it is normally the chords and groove that give me an idea where the song is heading.  This is all well and good you might think but then when I do come to play the tune on the sax it can sometimes feel clunky to play or just doesn't sound right as a saxophone melody.  Easy solution - transpose the key - but then this too can sound odd and believe it or not, not every song sounds good in every key.

I guess in my head I always imagined that all the great sax player/composers sat down with their horn, blasted out some amazingly melodic line and then filled the rest in around that, selecting the most suitable chords that go with whatever exotic scales/modes they have been practising for weeks on end.  So when I stumbled across this interview with Joshua Redman (whilst trapped in an endless loop of youtube videos) it cheered me up to find out that some of the great front line players also have the same problem as me.