Any Beatles song is perfect. It gets to you right away.

One of my interests in music has always been what it means, why it affects us the way it does.

Music seems to stimulate more parts of our mind than almost every other activity. It combines more parts of our minds. It synchronizes our minds. It allows people in groups to do a non-verbal immediate activity together.

When I was done with high school, I knew that music was really important to me and I knew I didn't want to be a cellist, but I wasn't really sure if I wanted to be a composer, or think about - I was just interested in the ideas behind music, I was interested in mathematics.

After a year, I thought gee I don't really need college anymore, which wasn't correct, but that's what I thought.

I think a double bass for me would be too much effort. But the cello, you're really engaged and the sound is kind of right here. So, it feels like being merged, married to an instrument.

I went to the University of California, Santa Cruz for a year, which turned out to be a really vibrant, very intensive intellectual atmosphere where you could do a lot of aspect of music without it being a conservatory. And that's why I went there.