Quotes from Tod Machover

I have a big barn that I converted to my music studio, so I go there early in the morning and the first thing I do is rowing. And that's when I listen to a lot of music.

I like the idea of imagining a sound and feeling a sound and then having it come out through your body, through an instrument. That's an important way to make music.

There's just an incredibly rich and interesting relationship between our listening to music and the way our minds engage.

I think in many ways, the texture of technology actually diminishes human beings. It doesn't augment them.

I love working with technology because it allows me to follow my imagination and to invent new things.

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.

I love the cello, I love the physical sense of an instrument that's about the size of your body that vibrates enough that even if you play an open string, you feel it.

Why does every society seem to want to make music when it often seems like kind of a frill.

My work on hyper instruments started with simple instruments, like the piano.

Works of art should be stimulating. They should wake people up rather than acting like a sedative.

You have to train your mind and your ears, but they're more like athletic skills. So, part of music you just have to learn those things or you can't practice the art.

The barn where I work, it's only 15 minutes or so from Harvard square, so It's very close to the center of Boston, but it happens to be a total oasis. It's completely quiet in there.