Andrew Sega
Also known by the moniker Necros, is an American musician best known for tracking modules in the 90s demoscene as well as for composing music for several well-known video games.
Music is nothing but ratios and harmonic math, anyways.
I've been fascinated with arcane chord progressions since I was young. The trick is to keep them interesting, while still in the realm of 'normality' (otherwise the listener has no context to appreciate the progressions in).
I try to avoid categorizing music as much as I can, though. Everyone steals so much from everyone else these days, the lines between genres are very washed-out.
Every musician, I guess, wants to alter the world to his or her taste in some fashion... That's part of why I write music.
I'm starting to realize that touring really involves a lot of waiting around doing nothing.
So, if you played a C major chord to pretty much any person on the planet, they'd say that it sounds "harmonious" (or pleasing, or happy, etc, etc). But now when you want to put chords and melodies in an ordering and make a larger piece called a "song", then that is a much more difficult process, and gets very subjective. At that point, it's not just the chords, it's the lyrics, rhythms, instrumentation, tempo, intensity, any number of other things that goes into a song... so many variables that it's almost impossible to predict how a song will affect a given person.
A lot of [my] songs have various strange oddities in them - usually this is the result of late-night dementia.
There may not be a high-level purpose for humanity, but that doesn't mean we can't find inspiration in the world. I think there is a combination of psychological and environmental factors that combine to create various urges in humanity -- most importantly the urge to create, to contribute something to the world, to express your personal worldview and see how the world responds. Art doesn't happen in a vacuum, and if it were only for personal gain then nobody would ever release music to the public. The process changes you, and also changes the world itself, creating ripples of inspiration which flow between the artist and the listener.
I think that the public judges a song on the overall feel, not individual samples. If a sample contributes too heavily to the song, and the sample is recognized, the opinion of the piece goes down.
I feel that music is the art which can best express the emotions which flow within us. It conveys something bigger than it is.
The usual problem with progressive rock is that the band can get so wrapped up in their own fantasy land that their music becomes completely inaccessible. "Wanky", if you will.
I think we'll soon see a new breed of musicians who have both a modern chordal sense (jazz) and a high comfort level with synthesizers and new breeds of sounds (from the electronica/techno/dj scene).
Unfortunately, as technology has improved, that which was 'underground' now heads towards obsolescence.
I'd like to see people try to sample the sound less and try to sample the style a bit more. Some people see this sort of 'copying' as offensive... I'm inclined to think the opposite - all music is built on imitation and expansion.
Sometimes if you polish too much, you rub off the shine.
As with any collaboration, you have to find someone that's in your 'mode' of making music.
To impact someone emotionally, [a musical piece] has to contain "interesting" melodic, harmonic, or rhythmic content, and what defines "interesting" is up to the listener.
You could argue that there's maybe some mathematical interest in a Bach fugue, say, but the only thing that music does really well is "move" people -- make them feel something.
I think as a musician you really have to have a wide variety of tastes, or else you will unconsciously get into a rut.
Once you have a basic grasp of the theories underlying music, you can pretty much pick up any instrument you want.