It's rather like attending a university seminar where you are talking to a few gifted specialists who deliver a paper to an audience of their peers. That's one way of making music.

I have friends who have a CD mastering plant in Hollywood and they are very sceptical about European record labels' understanding of digital technology.

Craft is part of the creative process.

Somehow in the 20th Century an idea has developed that music is an activity or skill which is not comprehensible to the man in the street. This is an arrogant assertion and not necessarily a true one.

Similarly you can make a transition from one set of instruments to another imperceptibly.

Writing tonal music now, you are not writing into the 19th Century.

Still, American composers working in France have had a pretty hard time.