I can talk about feelings, but I can't talk about why this chord on top of this chord sounds cool to me. It just makes me feel a certain way, and I like it.

I think I know what my bandmates like or are interested in or would be interested in doing. I take ideas and I develop them, get rid of some ideas, keep writing, and then new things come up.

When I dream about music, or think about music, by myself, I try to be as free as possible and allow my creative mind full reign.

Any material can be treated in any number of ways. Sometimes I might hear something, or someone else might hear something, and say, "Wow, that sounds like classical music." Somebody else might think it sounds like a slow jam.

I'm pretty resigned to the fact that I never hear music the way anyone else does, and I no longer find it surprising.

That's just the way people's brains work. If you want to talk about something, you have to reduce it to a form that can be understood. That's one of the reasons I'm not good about boiling down music.

I make sure to hold onto everything, even the stuff I've gotten rid of, because if there's one thing I've learned about the band is that I'll bring stuff in, and it's oftentimes the stuff that I've gotten rid of that's the stuff that everyone else is like, "yeah!!!!"