I've had a lot of fun writing percussion music. It feels quite similar to writing computer music. But I found myself in the role of choreographer in a way, worrying about physical movement and such.

I never thought that I would write orchestra music, but in fact I did write a group of orchestra pieces.

I think of myself as experimenting with different ways of structuring pieces. A lot of it has to do with the computer, of course.

I can't say that there's a common practice that has to do with pitch language or with the way pieces are put together because today, anything is fair game. As far as I'm concerned, my own common practice is a piece that engages the attention of listeners from beginning to end, and doesn't rely on or expect the listener to zone out.

I've had a lot of fun writing percussion music. It feels quite similar to writing computer music. But I found myself in the role of choreographer in a way, worrying about physical movement and such.

There are, however, composers whose music can only be heard in a chromatic sense. George Perle, for example, wrote pieces that you might think of as leaning in a tonal direction but it's very hard to register a pitch as, say, the sixth degree of a scale, whereas in much of my music I think that's often relatively easy to do.

The experimentation that I do has a lot to do with tunes and pitches and ways that melodies are put together.