In the '60s my friends were interested and we were hearing electronic music coming in on community radio from Europe, so that's where it started. And I had a tape recorder and started making things with it.

Something that I did, and I developed out of that sonic meditations, which were pieces that I composed in the '70s that now are very well-known and used in many classrooms all over the world, but at the time were outrageous.

The base skill is listening: how I'm listening to the material, how I'm listening to the space. With electronic sound, it's a similar situation of how to produce it and place it so that it works in a space. The first consideration is adopting the space and having work that resonates in the space.

Deep Listening is listening to everything all the time, and reminding yourself when you're not. But going below the surface too, it's an active process. It's not passive. I mean hearing is passive in that soundwaves hinge upon the eardrum. You can do both. You can focus and be receptive to your surroundings. If you're tuned out, then you're not in contact with your surroundings. You have to process what you hear. Hearing and listening are not the same thing.

The sound and just the fact that it was different from the piano, yet it still had some familiarity [made my fascinated with accordion].

You invent things like algorithms to take care of some of the changes you want to make. The changes aren't detectable. There's all kinds of things happening as I play.

I got very interested in attention and awareness and how to achieve certain states through understanding this.