In general I only write music I like. I haven't developed a characteristic style so far and I don't have any plans in doing so. It's more interesting to be versatile.
Equipment
I generally work with pen and paper and the notation-software Sibelius, so there is sheet music of all my compositions and all recordings have been done live. I've got a Yamaha G5 grand piano and a Yamaha Clavinova.
Influences
Ludwig van Beethoven, Fryderyk Chopin, Edvard Grieg, Antonín Dvořák, Claude Debussy, Maurice Ravel, Camille Saint-Saëns, Pjotr Tschaikowski, Sergej Prokoview, Hans Zimmer, John Powell, David Plüss, Johannes Nitsch, Johan Sibelius
Just to mention the most important ones.
Of course I couldn't ignore popular music, so some of my works have a little percussive or dance flair.
Procedure
I differ between finding themes and treating them.
Themes sometimes come during improvising just by "chance", or by improvising on purpose in a certain direction e.g. to intonate stories or by translating words into music notes through the following key which was used by Debussy and Ravel for example.
![](Buchstabe-Ton_Zuordnung.png)
Three letters have two notes, so I sometimes can decide which one I like to use. That's specifically german. The B is named H, E flat is ES and B flat is B.
I the last case I have to start with choosing a style, because the sole notes don't say much about that.
When treating themes it happens that I analyse how great composers like mostly Beethoven, Grieg or Debussy treated their themes. After some works there comes a little routine so I mostly just study them when I want to use a form I didn't use before.
Opus numbers
I know it's unusual to use opus numbers but somehow that gives a certain order which I find very useful. Therefore I decided to number my works, too. I don't number pure arrangements where no creative processing has been involved.