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.
Listen to everything all the time and remind yourself when you are not listening.
Walk so silently that the bottoms of your feet become ears.
I am also interested in music expanding consciousness. By expanding consciousness, I mean that old patterns can be replaced with new ones.
Listening is selecting and interpreting and acting and making decisions.
Listening is not the same as hearing and hearing is not the same as listening.
My mother brought home the accordion in 1942. I was fascinated and wanted to learn to play it. Some of my music has a relationship to dance styles – The Well and the Gentle or The Wanderer for example.
When I am composing, the sounds are leading me to the way I want them to organize.
I feel that students always learn more from each other than they do from their professor. They learn by doing and not by trying to soak up information from one person.
I try to schedule the Intensives wherever I go.
My writing has always been a rather non-linear process. I’ve found if I get something down, I can listen to it and other things start to come.