Whenever you listen to a piece of music, what you are actually doing is hearing the latest sentence in a very long story you’ve been listening to - all the pieces of music you’ve ever heard.

The point about melody and beat and lyric is that they exist to engage you in a very particular way. They want to occupy your attention.

I've had quite a lot of luck with dreams. I've often awoken in the night with a phrase or even a whole song in my head.

I'm always interested in something when it isn't familiar to me.

Avant-garde music is sort of research music. You're glad someone's done it but you don't necessarily want to listen to it.

Look closely at the most embarrassing details, and amplify them.

I don't want to do free jazz! Because free jazz - which is the musical equivalent of free marketeering - isn't actually free at all. It's just constrained by what your muscles can do.