The Question of Staccato; Multi-Vocal Melodies

I started a few compositions this week.

Two things I've been playing with in them:
1. I've been playing a lot with staccato. It began as I tried to find a good Music Box sound/instrument, since those seem suitable for a lullaby. As I explored the various sounds I could find, I came across a sound effect of a wind-up toy. It led me to ideas about using any kind of childhood-related sounds in a piece. They are all interconnected. There is a comfort, I think, in being reminded of childhood toys.

But the quality of the music box and similar instruments is that they're staccato, which seems to have two attributes that have to be discerned in a piece: playful and abrasive. I'm thinking specifically of the soundtrack from Amelie. When Amelie discovers a little box from the child of a past tenant, the soundtrack begins playing the Amelie theme on a music box. It then progresses to strings by the end in a much more grandiose sound. Still, it's difficult to skirt the line between playful and abrasive.

2. I was writing a melody for one of my compositions, and I liked the melody but I felt it demanded some quirkiness. So I broke the melody up over four instruments. The first instrument took care of the four quarter notes on beat. The second instrument took care of all the 8th note off-beats, and so on. So I ended up with a melody that was playful, that sounded complicated, that your brain could more easily separate but also could hear the piece as a whole. I'm not sure it's quite hummable, which may just be do to the melody itself. But it was an interesting experiment, since I had to select four distinct instrument sounds, and those sounds made a kind of unique instrument. I was mostly overwhelmed and didn't know quite how to approach choosing the instruments. But I was also excited, since the possibilities were exponentially larger than choosing a single instrument for the melody.