Tod Machover

Tod Machover
Tod Machover, is a composer and an innovator in the application of technology in music. He is the son of Wilma Machover, a pianist and Carl Machover, a computer scientist...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionMusician
Date of Birth24 November 1953
CountryUnited States of America
mean way doe
One of my interests in music has always been what it means, why it affects us the way it does.
mean important mystery
One of the big mysteries of music is, if you take music without words, it means something to us because we know it's about something. It's about something important humanly, but since there are no words, nobody knows what it's about.
mean ivory piano
A piano is a machine, but you've got ivory and there's weight behind the keys and you have this really - you feel the resonance in the instrument, you feel the vibration in the pedal. I mean, these a still very crude.
consider forget message usual
My message is to forget about dichotomies. The 'Brain Opera' is an opera, even if it does not tell a story in the usual way. It is a psychological journey with voice - so I do consider it an opera.
teenager rocks piano
I'd studied piano first and switched over to cello when I was about seven. I played mostly chamber and solo classical music. I got really involved with rock music when I was a teenager. I wired up my cello.
morning ipods attention
I row for about 40-45 minutes every morning and put in my iPod and it's a huge range. That's when I listen to either things that I just love and know very well and just want to pay attention, it's also where I listen to things that are new that I want to get to know.
morning artist interesting
I listen to new music by composers who are interesting to me. I listen to some; I don't know if I want to call it pop, but it's some interesting artist that gets my attention, I listen to in the mornings.
exercise tudors headphones
Strangely, the thing I listen to 75% of the time, when I'm exercising with my headphones on is English Tudor/Elizabethan music, so music from about 1450 to the early 1600's.
love-you love-is littles
I love Bach, I love Beethoven, I love Mozart, I love the Beatles, I love you know, Stockhausen, I love many things. But for some reason I come back to Elizabethan music because it's a little bit like the Beatles.
balance england incredibles
England has had a lot of really bad periods of music, but it's had several amazing periods where they've found an incredible balance, not just between music that's a rather complex and also pretty direct. Like the Beatles.
song perfect
Any Beatles song is perfect. It gets to you right away.
views use harmony
The English learned, in my view, how to use harmony much earlier than the French or the Italians, or the Germans.
exercise cds laptops
I almost never these days sit down with a CD or my laptop and just listen to a piece with a score. I probably would do that while I'm exercising.
thinking ideas long
I love silence. And one of the paradoxes about the way I live and also about my work is that definitely one of the reasons I went into music, and especially into composing is that I love setting up an environment where I can be by myself for long periods of time and have everything as quiet as possible, either to think about sound, or to think about ideas, or just to focus on things that are important to me.