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I was the youngest in my family. When the other kids went to school, my mother would make them breakfast and then she would go back to bed for an hour, so I was sort of babysat by television.

My mother knew how to read music and everything. But I just kinda learned off of records. And so, I was listening to records and I'd play 'em over and over.

After years of begging, I got my parents to get me a little Craig tape recorder, a reel to reel. Then I started recording voices, or recording Jonathan Winters off television and stuff like that.

I bugged my mom and dad to 'get me inside the television set' when I was about four years old.

I think it was, my parents got me a karaoke machine when I was about 9 years old. Even before that, they got me a tape recorder that I used to walk around my life with. And there was something about recording and then hearing myself back.

I begged and begged, and my uncle gave me his old turntables. It was one hi-fi and one old Stereo Lab turntable and a rusty mixer. I was really chuffed. I kept that for five years - that's where I learned to mix.

My brother is the lifelong musician; he made the choice to do that when we were very, very young kids. I remember him playing in bands and listening to the music he was writing in the house - he's nine years older than me.

My family was musical on both sides. My father's family had a famous flautist and a classical pianist. My mother won a contest to be Shirley Temple's double - she was the diva of the family. At 8, I learned how to play guitar. I used to play songs from the '20s, '30s and '40s in the kitchen for my grandmother.

I started studying music at the age of five and a half. My older sister was taking piano lessons. When her teacher left our apartment, I would get up on the piano bench and start picking out the notes that were part of my sister's lessons.