General
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.


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.