I'm also very impressed with the best people in experimental electronic world, like Peta and Eckart Aillers and Finez and Jim O'Rourke and Oren Umbarci and Francesco Lopez. Most of them use the computer as their main instrument.
I don't have an extensive background in theory, but the amount of it that I've learned, I've applied, so I have a vocabulary of melodic and rhythmic relationships. And that's all theory is - it's symbols to help you identify those relationships.
I try to put the same spirit into that that I put into any other music endeavor I'm involved in.
I think a solo moves forward the way a song does, because it's reflective of the chords that I'm considering as I'm soloing, and at the same time I'm going as much out on a limb as Frank Zappa used to, in terms of just going crazy on the instrument.
Any guitar solo should reflect the music that it's soloing over and not just be existing in its own sort of little world.
People fall into patterns at fast speeds, when really, to have a clear musical thought - the kind of musical thought that makes a melody work - our brains just can't think that fast. At a certain point, you're going on automatic.
For me, living and making music, they're one thing. It's not like a job that I go to a studio to do, or a chore that I have to get myself in the mood to do, or something. It's the thing that I need to do every day.
I feel like I'd like to continue putting out records and start putting them out more rapidly than I have until now and for me if I can keep selling the records to the fans that already like me that's fine.
I combine aspects of many styles of music and create my own musical forms by way of electronic instruments.
But I have been avoiding talking about what I'm doing now because it's frustrating for people to hear about things that aren't available yet.
In music you have people exposing this very vulnerable part of themselves, and you also have the lifestyle is so fast that oftentimes people search for whatever the easiest way to feel relaxed in the midst of all of it, or the easiest way to have energy.
I consider my music to be Progressive Synth Pop, which says nothing about what it sounds like, but does describe my basic approach.
Rock guitarists usually do not wish to think trains of thought about anything but their own guitar playing during a long solo, and I could not play this way if I were not able to divide my attention between my ever changing musical environment and my instrument itself.
Something like trying to protect yourself all the time, things like trying to outwit fate. Those things can be the worst thing you can do for yourself.
And for me the only way to live life is to grab the bull by the horns and call up recording studios and set dates to go in recording studios. To try and accomplish something.
For me my friendship with Omar Rodriguez from Mars Volta that friendship really means a lot to me because he's another creative person who works as hard as I do.
The drive to create music that is pure is my highest priority. Sometimes I'll get extremely technical, and other times I'll just kind of go with the gods of music.
My music, my whole approach to the synthesizer has completely changed now.
Mainly, I don't like it when music is made solely to impress people or in order to please business people; it doesn't sound good to me. If you're making music in order to become famous or loved by the masses... that's not what I'm about. When somebody's making music for the wrong reasons, I hear it right away.
So I use a tape recorder a lot to record ideas.
