The sound world that I created for 'Avatar' had to be very different, really, than anything I ever created before. There is also three hours of music.
To me, writing and composing are much more like painting, about colors and brushes; I don't use a computer when I write, and I don't use a piano. I'm at a desk writing, and it's very broad strokes and notes as colors on a palette.
My tastes went all over the place, from Strauss to Mahler. I was never a big Wagner or Tchaikovsky fan. Benjamin Britten, Tallis, all the early English Medieval music, Prokofiev, some Russian composers, mostly the people that were the colorists, the French.
I think very abstractly when I'm writing. Then, as the project moves on, it becomes more like sculpting.
