#disclavier

He remembers seeing the machine — something of an updated pianola, the old ones often seen in old Western movies plunking out notes dictated by holes in a roll of paper — and laughing at its function. "I just looked at it and thought, 'OK, that's very silly. That's a very bad idea, but I wonder if there's something there we can work with.'"

However silly, it planted the idea of incorporating technology into his own composing. So, he got together with his code-savvy friend, and together they created a new way to play piano using software.