What surprised me was how he makes melody lines: Playing with chords until he likes the progression, and then pulling notes out of the chords to form a melody. And of course it makes sense on one level.

But I think melodically and tend to do a lot of counterpoint. Getting the chords out of my head and onto the screen is often the last thing I do. I don't know how well his approach would work with counterpoint, since counterpoint often creates and resolves dissonance using passing tones in double time.