My work on hyper instruments started with simple instruments, like the piano.

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

I think the seed was planted when I was a teenager, and it took me until I got out of Juilliard. At Juilliard I was just learning to be a composer, but I was also learning how to manipulate computers.

Strangely, the thing I listen to 75% of the time, when I'm exercising with my headphones on is English Tudor/Elizabethan music, so music from about 1450 to the early 1600's.

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.

I did take composition lessons when I was in high school, so I wrote piano pieces. I wrote some chamber music. I don't think any of that was particularly interesting.

One of the big mysteries of music is, if you take music without words, it means something to us because we know it's about something. It's about something important humanly, but since there are no words, nobody knows what it's about.