Tod Machover Quotes

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Nobody talks about music as having intrinsic meaning, how it engages the mind.

Tod Machover

Mind

Scientific American Interview, www.scientificamerican.com.

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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 voices - so I do consider it an opera.

Tod Machover

Journey, Voice, Brain

Scientific American Interview, www.scientificamerican.com.

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

Tod Machover

Art, People, Acting

Scientific American Interview, www.scientificamerican.com.

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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.

Tod Machover

Ideas, Feelings, Important

Source: bigthink.com

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The basic idea of a hyper instrument is where the technology is built right into the instrument so that the instrument knows how its being played - literally what the expression is, what the meaning is, what the direction of the music is.

Tod Machover

Technology, Expression, Ideas

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

Tod Machover

Simple, Piano, Instruments

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Perhaps 25 to 50 years from now, I can design a piece of music, no so that it appeals to something common in millions of people, but I can design the music so that it's exactly right for you and only you at this particular moment for your particular experience, things that have happened to you over 20 years, to you're particular mental state right now.

Tod Machover

Years, People, Design

Source: bigthink.com

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There's many reason music exists and we are beginning to no only understand that, but measure that.

Tod Machover

Reason

Source: bigthink.com

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it's important as a composer to sit in silence and imagine these complex musical worlds in your head, but it's also a wonderful experience to touch your music and to hear it and hear it in the room with you and to say, you can't have an entire orchestra there, but you'd kind of like to have the orchestra there.

Tod Machover

Silence, Musical, Important

Source: bigthink.com

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Music seems to stimulate more parts of our mind than almost every other activity. It combines more parts of our minds. It synchronizes our minds. It allows people in groups to do a non-verbal immediate activity together.

Tod Machover

People, Mind, Together

Source: bigthink.com

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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.

Tod Machover

Love You, Love Is, Littles

Source: bigthink.com

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

Tod Machover

Interesting, Listening, Mind

Source: bigthink.com

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When I was done with high school, I knew that music was really important to me and I knew I didn't want to be a cellist, but I wasn't really sure if I wanted to be a composer, or think about - I was just interested in the ideas behind music, I was interested in mathematics.

Tod Machover

School, Thinking, Ideas

"A Conversation with MIT Lab Inventor & Composer Tod Machover". Big Think Interview, bigthink.com.

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The way I listen to music goes in waves depending on a lot of things. How busy I am, if I'm in between composition projects, if I'm starting a new project. So, the only time I listen to the radio for music is with my daughter's when I'm driving them to school, or driving them somewhere.

Tod Machover

Daughter, School, Radio

Source: bigthink.com

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I did take composition lessons when I was in high school, so I wrote piano pieces. I wrote some chamber music. I don't think any of that was particularly interesting.

Tod Machover

School, Thinking, Piano

Source: bigthink.com

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I think from age 13, 14, 15, I thought, yes, this rich studio produced music is the future, but it can't be the future to go run away into the recording studio. How can we take that kind of complexity and richness and make it possible for people to touch it and play it live. That's what hyperinstruments are.

Tod Machover

Running, Thinking, Play

Source: bigthink.com

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There were a lot of things happen in the mid-'80's that all of a sudden made it possible to do a lot of very quick interactive music.

Tod Machover

Made, Happens, Interactive

Source: bigthink.com

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I started thinking, my gosh, all this sophisticated software for measuring how Yo-Yo plays, and how he moves and this technique of the bow, I should be able to use similar techniques for measuring the way anybody moves, and so somebody who is not a professional or a trained musician, I should be able to make a musical environment for them.

Tod Machover

Moving, Thinking, Play

Source: bigthink.com

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I think that one of the things about music is it's supposed to be spontaneous, it's supposed to be real human beings bouncing off of each other whether its from the stage or to the audience, or jamming with friends.

Tod Machover

Real, Thinking, Spontaneous

Source: bigthink.com

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I think the seed was planted when I was a teenager, and it took me until I got out of Juilliard. At Juilliard I was just learning to be a composer, but I was also learning how to manipulate computers.

Tod Machover

Teenager, Thinking, Juilliard

Source: bigthink.com

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Any Beatles song is perfect. It gets to you right away.

Tod Machover

Song, Perfect

Source: bigthink.com

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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.

Tod Machover

Squares, Oasis, Boston

Source: bigthink.com

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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.

Tod Machover

Morning, Ipods, Want

Source: bigthink.com

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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.

Tod Machover

Mean, Important, Mystery

Source: bigthink.com

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I think part of the bad thing is that skill is emphasized so much that a lot of people, by the time they get to Juilliard, well I think they kind of forget why they got into music in the first place and if they're performers - this is a simplification, but a lot of them are trying to win a competition and play more accurately, or better, or more beautifully, whatever can be measured, than somebody else.

Tod Machover

Thinking, Winning, Play

Source: bigthink.com

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Latest quotes from interviews

"Perhaps 25 to 50 years from now, I can design a piece of music, no so that it appeals to something common in millions of people, but I can design the music so that it's exactly right for you and only you at this particular moment for your particular experience, things that have happened to you over 20 years, to you're particular mental state right now."

- Tod Machover,

bigthink.com, added Mar 20, 2016

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