Once I got the open tunings for some reason, I began to get the harmonic sophistication that I heard that my musical fountain inside was excited by. [...] Once I got some interesting chords to play with, my writing began to come.”

When Wiktor asked how Miss Trilling had acquired so much knowledge of music, she resumed an earlier explanation which had been interrupted: “I attended a distinguished college in America, Oberlin, where music was important.

I spent a lot of time teaching myself theory and harmony so I could be free to express myself on the instrument. I learned what relatives and substitutes could be played against a root of a chord, like E minor related to G, and so forth. I've also gathered all this knowledge because for ten years all I've done is play jazz, every day.

Learning to read music in Braille & play by ear helped me develop a [very] good memory.

The practice of reading aloud did do something towards attuning my ear .The subtle cadences of Elizabethan blank verse taught me more than the substantial study of English prosody could do at that time.

So, l've been learning chords and arpeggios. In music, just like in Electrical Engineering (my major), theory is one thing, but practical application is another. Applying my new knowledge made me realize I've been playing the keyboard the hard way . I applied what I've learned to a small segment of the chorus of this song, and it's much easier to play now. (Can you tell the line I'm talking about?) Keeping all of my fingers on the keyboard without accidentally pressing the wrong key is still a challenge. I'm looking forward to working with a live tutor soon. And mehn - recording can be exhausting. By the time I got the perfect camera spot, I was already dropping the idea. How do people do that thing?

l'd been getting bored with the stereotyped changes that were being used all the time at the time, and I kept thinking there's bound to be something else. I could hear it sometimes but I couldn't play it. ... I found that by using the higher intervals of a chord as a melody line and backing them with appropriately related changes I could play the thing I'd been hearing. I came alive.

When you tuned a guitar a new way you were a beginner all over again and you could discover all sorts of new things...It allowed us to throw out a whole broad body of knowledge about how to play the guitar.

I got exposed to a couple of studios, and I met a few producers and started seeing the process of music being made. It made me question, “What is this?” I’d been only exploring piano and guitar at the time, and now you’re telling me I can do more than I’m already doing?

I literally left school and went straight into music via art college for a year, and I've been so involved in my job of writing songs that the more actively involved part became channelled into standing on the stage and saying things that way. It's only now that it's come full circle and I'm using my voice again in a way that's tying everything together.

I don’t have a ton of theory knowledge. I’m inspired by it, but I mostly use my ears to pick up on interesting things, which is what I did back then. So if people come up to me and say, ‘Why don’t you play this note or this scale?’ I honestly don’t know what they're specifically talking about. I play what sounds good. I skipped the whole music theory thing and focused on what was important to me.

I listened to music from Tatum and Erroll Garner to Mozart. I've composed since I was 10 years old – I used to do 20% my own pieces and 80% other people's; now it's turned the other way. After a certain time you discover the Mozart in you, the Duke Ellington or Billy Strayhorn in you. It takes time to discover yourself. You also have to find and keep players who are in tune with what you're doing; you have that empathy, the quality of breathing together.

[Learning music theory] can spur your creativity. I’ve found that the guys who don’t know as much theory tend to write things in 4/4 most of the time. The guys who know theory are the ones who end up experimenting more and having music that sounds a little more out there, which I like. The more you know, the more you can mess around.

I'm a writer who plays the piano. As I write, I find new things I like. I make them into what I call principles, and they become part of my playing vocabulary. That's the secret of what you get from composing. You get to discover things that you wouldn't ordinarily do. Much like a speech pattern, your improvisation patterns can get stale if you don't keep building your vocabulary. Each time you re voice something, you change the sound. When you do this enough, you get used to those sounds, and they start to come out as you play. You end up using voicings that aren't common, which gives you an auditory identity.