NEW YORK—Sprawling on the floor of his cramped studio apartment surrounded by crumpled-up sheet music, composer Lee Watley reportedly perked up Thursday at the sound of the rhythm of the city. “I was at the point of just about giving up hope that I’d ever write anything halfway decent when I suddenly realized my toe was tapping along with a beat coming from the construction crew jackhammering on the street below,” said Watley, confirming that everything from the honking of the traffic to the arguing of a couple in a nearby apartment to the hum of a garbage truck had its own unique and indelible melody that combined into a glorious citywide cacophony. “The rat-a-tat of a stalled out engine is like the percussion section, while the pigeons cooing make up the woodwinds! And when you take the brass of the subway car’s chugging ‘oompa-pa-oompa-pa,’ and the ‘plink, plink, plonk’ of the rain on the rooftops, it’s like the whole city’s an orchestra performing a live concert just for me!” At press time, a discouraged Watley had tossed everything after realizing he was just composing Gershwin’s “Rhapsody In Blue’’ again.