Latest Tod Machover Quotes from Interviews

Quotes about:

• All the music we know that's popular is actually commonly shared music that takes things that are similar about all of us.

  Tod Machover

  Knows

  Source: bigthink.com

• 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

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

  Tod Machover

  Reason

  Source: bigthink.com

• That's the definition of popularity. Something that literally resonates with many, many people.

  Tod Machover

  People, Definitions, Popularity

  Source: bigthink.com

• 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

• 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.

  Tod Machover

  Mean, Keys, Ivory

  Source: bigthink.com

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

  Tod Machover

  Doe, Want, Kind

  Source: bigthink.com

• Over my career, I'd say the last 25 years; we've gone from music and computer being for 10 people in the world to having personal computers, to now being able to do amazing things on your iPhone, or with Rock Band. So, right now there's enormous capability with technology in our devices that everybody has access to.

  Tod Machover

  Technology, Iphone, Rocks

  Source: bigthink.com

• The one obvious thing is that the devices are so good now that you can also see their limitations extremely well.

  Tod Machover

  Obvious Things, Wells, Devices

  Source: bigthink.com

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

  Tod Machover

  Technology, Imagination, My Imagination

  Source: bigthink.com

• I've done a lot of operas. I've probably done more different kind of operas than anybody.

  Tod Machover

  Different, Done, Opera

  Source: bigthink.com

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

  Tod Machover

  Technology, Thinking, Texture

  Source: bigthink.com

• I started realizing that one of the great things about opera is that if you make the right kind of story, you can still have this kind of abstract subliminal quality to take you on a journey, but you can root it just enough in a particular situation, a particular kind of real situation that a person might have, or a particular context in the real world.

  Tod Machover

  Real, Journey, Roots

  Source: bigthink.com

• I never liked opera growing up. I always liked chamber music or solo music even more than orchestral music.

  Tod Machover

  Growing Up, Opera, Chamber Music

  Source: bigthink.com

• 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

• 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

• 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

• 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

• 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

• 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

• 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

• 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.

  Tod Machover

  Play, Body, Size

  Source: bigthink.com

• I think a double bass for me would be too much effort. But the cello, you're really engaged and the sound is kind of right here. So, it feels like being merged, married to an instrument.

  Tod Machover

  Thinking, Double Bass, Effort

  Source: bigthink.com

• I think it's maybe because Sergeant Pepper's came out when I was about 13 or 14 and that was a pretty impressionable age, and it was such a kind of radical period. But that period of the Beatles really had a big influence on me and I think are directly related to hyperinstruments.

  Tod Machover

  Thinking, Age, Peppers

  Source: bigthink.com

• The Beatles realized that what they were making in the studio could never be performed. And they had already given up on performing because there were too many screaming fans and they were playing in larger and larger venues so they couldn't even hear what they were playing, it just wasn't any fun any more.

  Tod Machover

  Fun, Fans, Given

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