When I was playing with synth players, I was still within a conceptual framework of playing music. When I started playing solo, I became much more aware of the acoustic phenomena that the instruments were producing.

It's really hard to find materials. Also, prices of metal have gone completely through the roof, insanely expensive. And if you go to a dictionary and look up starving artist, you'll see my picture.

A lot of the people that I play with are electronic-based, so there isn't a direct physical analogue between what they're doing and the sound you're hearing.

You have to be loose enough so that when you listen to what's coming, you can follow it. In that sense I am improvising, but I don't think I'm experimenting. I have a problem with the whole term "experimental music."

I started working with synthesizer players, and I had to find new instruments. I needed a more complex sound, so I went to a surplus place and got a bunch of hard plastic stuff and stainless steel stuff, and that stuff worked. So from that point on, from the 70s on, I've made instruments.

I don't really need new stuff anyway. I like to make big stuff, and it's too expensive to travel with. So I have my refined set that works well, and I'm pretty much set with that.

Every once in a while I'll find a new way of playing something, it will suggest itself. But generally speaking, there's a set sonic potential, and that's in concert with a set instrumental technique.