Tycho: Slowly, over time, I learned enough that I started considering...

I was always a visual artist my whole life, and I came to music really late - when I was 21 or 22 was the first time I ever touched a musical instrument. For me, it was always this fun side hobby.

Tycho

me music time life

I studied computer science and graphic design, yeah, so music was self-taught and a backburner thing, an obsessive hobby.

Tycho

computer-science design music science

I appreciate the intimacy of a 300-to-500-person venue; it's the sweet spot for me.

Tycho

me intimacy appreciate sweet

I've always appreciated more guitar-driven and, in general, just rock music; that's what I listen to. I don't really listen to electronic music.

Tycho

listen rock always music

I feel like, with drum programming, the way I used to do it, I'd think of how somebody would play these drum patterns and then try to replicate that through programming. It's not that it's better or worse, it's just a different style.

Tycho

feel better think style

The big thing on the horizon for me is video. I feel like it's the closest thing to a perfect mix between music and design, because it has the motion and it has the dynamics of music, while at the same time having the aesthetic components of design. It's a nice mix.

Tycho

me aesthetic music time

A couple of my friends had guitars, and I remember messing with them, but I was often intimidated by it. I think I sat down at a piano once when I was really young, but that was it.

Tycho

down think friends remember

I've always had an overwhelming desire to express a particular set of ideas. As a musician, I'm always working with different people who can teach me new things and, through that, reach closer to an idea of this perfect expression. I'm never setting out to change the face of electronic music; I'm just trying to define this vision.

Tycho

me music change people

EDM has trained a new generation of listeners' ears to accept a much broader range of what equals a song. EDM has become top 40 stuff: those sounds, those styles, those ways of thinking about song structure - even thinking that vocals aren't necessarily the central element - those ideas have made their way into popular culture.

Tycho

song culture ideas thinking

I've always been good about interfacing with machines. But that never seemed like a gateway to being able to make music. I never made the connection that music could be made with machines - that was what drum and bass was for me.

Tycho

never good me music

I just felt something was missing from my vision of what Tycho should eventually be. It took several years of learning new recording and production techniques to get to a point where I felt I could make a record like 'Awake.'

Tycho

new vision learning missing

I think of the Tycho sound as something separate from the band. I think the methodology and approach to production I use on the Tycho records can be applied to a lot of things. But from a performance and songwriting perspective, yes, Tycho is a live band.

Tycho

live performance think perspective

I just tend toward more lush, full sounds in my productions. I don't have any preference when it comes to analogue versus digital; I use what's best for the application. Analogue synthesis is nice, but it's just one tool among many, and it has its place.

Tycho

place best digital nice

I've been a visual artist my entire life, so translating music to imagery has always come naturally to me. Tycho is an audio-visual project in a lot of ways, so I don't see a real separation between the visual and musical aspects; they are both just components of a larger vision.

Tycho

me vision music life

I like tweaking the studio and wiring things up almost as much as making music, so that's kind of a hobby of mine, in and of itself. I don't like to collect gear that I know I'm not going to use, though.

Tycho

hobby things know music

I feel like music and design complete the idea of each other for me. So, it's like whatever I'm trying to express in one really can't be fully expressed without the other. I've always seen them as the flipside of a coin and bounced back and forth.

Tycho

feel me design music

Moving to San Francisco affected me in a pretty profound way, in a lot of respects. I think it helped me evolve my sound and think outside of the space I'd been in in Sacramento. The scene there is so insular and kind of feeds on itself: you just end up playing the same shows with the same people for the same people.

Tycho

me you space people

My process is really about little bits of inspiration. I just record them really quick on the guitar or something. I have a huge folder full of them. But if I start a song, I finish it.

Tycho

start guitar process song

Conceptually, I've always gravitated towards arrangements that weren't just presenting one idea. I like to look at my songs as having a main part, an interlude, and almost like another song at the end.

Tycho

end look always song

In the beginning, I was truly trying to take what I felt when I was in a field or in an outdoor space and directly translate it into the music.

Tycho

beginning music space trying

Slowly, over time, I learned enough that I started considering myself a musician, where I actually knew how to play instruments. But still, when I talk to my real musician friends, they're calling chords out, and I have no idea what they're talking about.