Grab a guitar, put some kind of strings on it, a banjo string, then a violin string, then a guitar string, tune it any way you want, and make some noise, and see what you get. And work on it until you get something that you think is interesting. That's all there is to art for me.

The time I save setting up and cleaning up probably balances out by the time I spend on output.

Some of my songs are like dreams, and when you go to sleep at night you don't know if you're gonna have a dream or what you're gonna dream about.

Another time factor is output: proofing and printing. That is, getting your work out of the computer and onto paper and having it satisfy you. It can be time consuming and expensive.

By looking at the questions the kids are asking, we learn the scope of what needs to be done.

But in the old days, visual artists used to fall into two distinct categories: those of us who created images with cameras and those of us who applied stuff onto other stuff, with brushes or other tools.

I was playing with sound like I would have played with pots and pans as a kid.