What kind of music theory background do you have? When you write a song do you think "This will be Mixolydian and modulate to the third of the scale for the bridge" or do you plunk around and find some chords that sound nice?

It’s my first impulse when I hear something in a song that makes my head turn, to figure out what happened and then to try to incorporate that “trick” into my own writing. And for me that’s about figuring out the theory behind it. It’s often helpful to have a technical hook on which to hang a song – minor key, 3/4 time, Lydian mode – because it puts me into interesting predicaments, like dropping a survivalist into the jungle with a machete and a power bar.

I was a music major in college, and I love to think about music theory. When I write, sometimes I noodle around until I find something and then say “what is that?” Big Bad World One was like that, I’m still not entirely sure I understand what is the tonal center of that song and how it modulates. But other times I actually decide “this one is going to modulate smoothly down a whole step, like Penny Lane” and then figure out how to make it do that. (Or fail to figure out how to do that, I’ve been working on that one for a long time.) Lately I’ve been kind of obsessed with the minor third modulation, like the kind that happens in Still Alive. I actually had to force myself to stop using it in the songs on this new record, because it was becoming a habit.