Jonny Greenwood on NPR

NPR's profile of Jonny Greenwood turns to his score for Paul Thomas Anderson's The Master, which had to suggest a group of believers who become a cult; for one cue the string players use guitar picks while muting the strings. At Oxford he played viola and was “headed for the back of the viola section in some orchestra”, and signing to EMI was “kind of the beginning and end of my musical education”. He likes that an orchestra is 48 people with opinions, not a preset on a keyboard. The guitar sometimes embarrasses him, because it feels old-fashioned when kids today have grandparents who were in punk bands. Then again, so does an orchestra, and he cannot resolve it.