When people censor themselves they’re just as likely to get rid of the good bits as the bad bits.
BRIAN ENOOf course with everybody else aiming there as well that makes it very hard and expensive to hit. I prefer to shoot the arrow, then paint the target around it. You make the niches in which you finally reside.
More Brian Eno Quotes
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Admirers can be a tremendous force for conservatism.
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When I’ve finally got the title, I think, “Okay, yes, now I know where we are. Now I know what it is. Fine, that must be finished or nearly finished.
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I felt extremely uncomfortable as the focal point, in the spotlight. I really like the behind the scenes role, because all my freedom is there.
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With all fashion, what we do is play at being somebody else. We play at inhabiting another kind of world.
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A responsible designer might try to overcome this limitation – probably the engineers at Marshall tried, too. But that sound became the sound of, among others, Jimi Hendrix. That sound is called electric guitar.
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Most game music is based on loops effectively.
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In England and Europe, we have this huge music called ambient – ambient techno, ambient house, ambient hip-hop, ambient this, ambient that.
BRIAN ENO -
People always focus on people like me who use synthesizers, right, which are explicitly electronic and therefore obvious.
BRIAN ENO -
You either believe that people respond to authority, or that they respond to kindness and inclusion. I’m obviously in the latter camp. I think that people respond better to reward than punishment.
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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.
BRIAN ENO -
I think that there’s something that I still like about the fact of a package, like the latest report from somebody. “Okay, this is what they’re up to now; this is what they’re doing; who’s working with them?
BRIAN ENO -
Lyrics are the only thing to do with music that haven’t been made easier technically.
BRIAN ENO -
Saying that cultural objects have value is like saying that telephones have conversations.
BRIAN ENO -
Well, there are some things that I just can’t get out of my head, and they start to annoy me after a while.
BRIAN ENO -
If I tried to make a commercial album, it would be a complete flop. I have no idea what the world at large likes.
BRIAN ENO -
My guitar only has five strings ’cause the top one broke and I decided not to put it back on: when I play chords I only play bar chords, and the top one always used to cut me there.
BRIAN ENO -
I hate the way CDs just drone on for bloody hours and you stop caring.
BRIAN ENO -
In terms of what has been happening recently, there have been, I think, some really interesting new instruments that have come out that sort of show me the direction of the future. Korg has introduced the – they’ve had a whole series now of these things called Kaoss Pads.
BRIAN ENO -
The whole history of pop music had rested on the first person singular, with occasional intrusions of the second person singular.
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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.
BRIAN ENO -
Look closely at the most embarrassing details, and amplify them.
BRIAN ENO -
Of course, like anybody I repeat myself endlessly, but I don’t know that I’m doing it, usually.
BRIAN ENO -
The time I like listening to music most on headphones is, I have a game I play with my brother, he’s a musician as well.And he sends me MIDI files of keyboard pieces. So, these are pieces where I just get a MIDI file.
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It’s nice, I think, when people use your music for things you didn’t think of.
BRIAN ENO -
I wanted quite the opposite of that. I wanted them to accent their styles, so that they pulled away.
BRIAN ENO -
People who are very confident in themselves aren’t hurt by criticism. They make use of it.
BRIAN ENO