I think very abstractly when I'm writing. Then, as the project moves on, it becomes more like sculpting.
My tastes went all over the place, from Strauss to Mahler. I was never a big Wagner or Tchaikovsky fan. Benjamin Britten, Tallis, all the early English Medieval music, Prokofiev, some Russian composers, mostly the people that were the colorists, the French.
To me, writing and composing are much more like painting, about colors and brushes; I don't use a computer when I write, and I don't use a piano. I'm at a desk writing, and it's very broad strokes and notes as colors on a palette.
The sound world that I created for 'Avatar' had to be very different, really, than anything I ever created before. There is also three hours of music.
