Trans-Siberian Orchestra’s Paul O’Neill – HuffPost 4.25.12

Mike Ragogna: Because you are able to present the music in new forms to older and younger demographics alike, do you have any advice that you’d like to share with new artists?

Paul O’Neill: First, I would say that, in my opinion, you don’t go to college to become a professional musician or a recording artist. I don’t know any professionals who got here because of their Master’s degree. Rather than spending thousands of dollars to study at a school, use that money to buy Pro Tools and start writing music. I learned to write by studying some of my favorite writers of all time and listening to all of the music that I admired and finding a way to make them all better. In my opinion, there are three types of art–bad, good, and great. Bad art is everywhere, good art is something that you find and elicits some sort of emotional response from you, and great art makes you feel emotions that you’ve never felt before and transform you for the better. That was our intention as a band, and I hope that every new artist moves forward with that intention.