Tycho

“I studied computer science and graphic design, yeah, so music was self-taught and a backburner thing, an obsessive hobby.”

“I've always had an overwhelming desire to express a particular set of ideas. As a musician, I'm always working with different people who can teach me new things and, through that, reach closer to an idea of this perfect expression. I'm never setting out to change the face of electronic music; I'm just trying to define this vision.”

“I feel like music and design complete the idea of each other for me. So, it's like whatever I'm trying to express in one really can't be fully expressed without the other. I've always seen them as the flipside of a coin and bounced back and forth.”

“I've always been good about interfacing with machines. But that never seemed like a gateway to being able to make music. I never made the connection that music could be made with machines - that was what drum and bass was for me.”

“I just tend toward more lush, full sounds in my productions. I don't have any preference when it comes to analogue versus digital; I use what's best for the application. Analogue synthesis is nice, but it's just one tool among many, and it has its place.”

“I think of the Tycho sound as something separate from the band. I think the methodology and approach to production I use on the Tycho records can be applied to a lot of things. But from a performance and songwriting perspective, yes, Tycho is a live band.”

“A couple of my friends had guitars, and I remember messing with them, but I was often intimidated by it. I think I sat down at a piano once when I was really young, but that was it.”

“I just felt something was missing from my vision of what Tycho should eventually be. It took several years of learning new recording and production techniques to get to a point where I felt I could make a record like 'Awake.'”

“Sometimes I wonder if I'm just memorializing my youth when I spent all this time outdoors. I always envisioned my adult life like I'm going to run every day and live in the woods in a cabin if I can - and here I am living in San Francisco and working in a studio.”

“My process is really about little bits of inspiration. I just record them really quick on the guitar or something. I have a huge folder full of them. But if I start a song, I finish it.”

“I feel like, with drum programming, the way I used to do it, I'd think of how somebody would play these drum patterns and then try to replicate that through programming. It's not that it's better or worse, it's just a different style.”

“The big thing on the horizon for me is video. I feel like it's the closest thing to a perfect mix between music and design, because it has the motion and it has the dynamics of music, while at the same time having the aesthetic components of design. It's a nice mix.”

“EDM has trained a new generation of listeners' ears to accept a much broader range of what equals a song. EDM has become top 40 stuff: those sounds, those styles, those ways of thinking about song structure - even thinking that vocals aren't necessarily the central element - those ideas have made their way into popular culture.”

“In the beginning, I was truly trying to take what I felt when I was in a field or in an outdoor space and directly translate it into the music.”

“I appreciate the intimacy of a 300-to-500-person venue; it's the sweet spot for me.”

“Moving to San Francisco affected me in a pretty profound way, in a lot of respects. I think it helped me evolve my sound and think outside of the space I'd been in in Sacramento. The scene there is so insular and kind of feeds on itself: you just end up playing the same shows with the same people for the same people.”

“People are always bemoaning the fact that electronic music is finding its way into the mainstream. To me, that's the best possible thing. It's going to give us a much bigger platform. It's going to train people's ears to these sounds so they can listen to a track even if it doesn't have vocals.”

“I think there are some things I am unable to fully express with my visual work, and the music is what fills that void. At the same time, I don't think you can fully appreciate the music without the anchor of the visual work.”

“Slowly, over time, I learned enough that I started considering myself a musician, where I actually knew how to play instruments. But still, when I talk to my real musician friends, they're calling chords out, and I have no idea what they're talking about.”

“Conceptually, I've always gravitated towards arrangements that weren't just presenting one idea. I like to look at my songs as having a main part, an interlude, and almost like another song at the end.”