I’m fascinated by musicians who don’t completely understand their territory; that’s when you do your best work.
BRIAN ENOIn fact, quite a lot of what I do has to do with sound texture, and, you can’t notate that. You can’t notate the sound of “St. Elmo’s Fire.” There’s no way of writing that down. That’s because musical notation arose at a time when sound textures were limited.
More Brian Eno Quotes
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Lyrics are always misleading because they make people think that that’s what the music is about.
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Something I’ve realized lately, to my shock, is that I am an optimist, in that I think humans are almost infinitely capable of self-change and self-modification, and that we really can build the future that we want if we’re smart about it.
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Well, there are some things that I just can’t get out of my head, and they start to annoy me after a while.
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But now you see the results of that in people who are completely crippled unless they know that they have the possibility of “cut and paste” and “undo.” And “undo” and “undo” and “undo” and “undo” and “undo” again.
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Of course, like anybody I repeat myself endlessly, but I don’t know that I’m doing it, usually.
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There’s a kind of edge to what you’re doing, the kind of leading edge of what you’re doing. Inside that edge [are elements you] are familiar with, and are probably becoming slightly bored with, as well, over a period of time. “I’ve pulled that one out before. Oh, no, I can’t I’m just fed up with that.
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Every collaboration helps you grow.
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When you look back on a historical period of music, it seems so obvious to you what the characteristics of it are, but they’re not obvious at the time. So, when I look back at my own work.
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One of the great breakthroughs of evolution theory is that you start with simple things and they will grow into complexity.
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As soon as you externalize an idea you see facets of it that weren’t clear when it was just floating around in your head.
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I think we’re about ready for a new feeling to enter music. I think that will come from the Arabic world.
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The seven white notes on the piano – each section of the piece (there are 12 sections) is five of those seven white notes.
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Perhaps when music has been shouting for so long, a quieter voice seems attractive.
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Rationality is what we do to organize the world, to make it possible to predict. Art is the rehearsal for the inapplicability and failure of that process.
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I wanted to use the studio like a microscope for sound, which is what good engineers do.
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I always use the same guitar; I got this guitar years and years ago for nine pounds. It’s still got the same strings on it.
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Once you’ve grown to accept something and it becomes part of the system you’ve inherited, you don’t even notice it any longer.
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It infuriates me that stuff from the Internet routinely doesn’t include all the credits. Because as soon as I listen to something, if I like it, I want to know, “Who’s the bass player?” “Who did that?” “Who’s the engineer on this?
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Be the first to not do what nobody has ever thought of not doing before.
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The problem with computers is that there is not enough Africa in them.
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Being completely free to choose what to do is actually quite difficult
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I don’t like celebrity programmes – but I do like programmes about how ideas are formed and evolve.
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The biology of purpose keeps my nose above the surface.
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I’m not interested in possible complexities. I regard song structure as a graph paper.
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We’re going through this super-uptight era, which I think comes entirely from literacy, actually. It’s the result of machines that were designed as word processors being used for making music.
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I think the idea that people walk around to music is very interesting. They are actually creating the soundtrack to their lives as they walk around to it.
BRIAN ENO