I had invented my own system, my own way of making electronic music at the San Francisco Tape Music Centre, and I was using what is now referred to as a classical electronic music studio, consisting of tube oscillators and patch bays. There were no mixers or synthesizers. So I managed to figure out how to make the oscillators sing. I used a tape delay system using two tape recorders and stringing the tape between the two tape machines and being able to configure the tracks coming back in different ways.

We think about sitting in a space and hearing some music by having our ears pointed forward towards the musicians sitting opposite us. I'm really not following that paradigm at all.

I have a variety of ways that I make music, but I'm working with the Thingamajigs in a particular way, which is: They are bringing to me their performance skills and their unusual instruments, which I'm relishing. They're really beautiful. The other thing is improvisation - these players improvise and they do it very beautifully, as a matter of fact.

The sound that I play is delayed, it's modified, and it's modulated. It's an intelligent system; it's happening now.

Working in theoretical systems can take away the juice. It can also be very beautiful, but when you're trying to satisfy a theoretical principle rather than a sonic reality, then it can become dry.

I thought that it would be interesting to have a mirror and grab a light and shine it around in different ways. It's an analog to the acoustic reflections that we're going to be trying to activate as well.

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.