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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

Not many people bought Velvet Underground LPs, but those who did, started a band.
BRIAN ENO

People Underground Velvet
When I was young, an eccentric uncle decided to teach me how to lie. Not, he explained, because he wanted me to lie, but because he thought I should know how it’s done so I would recognise when I was being lied to.
BRIAN ENO

Decide Done Lying Teach Uncles
The most important thing is the thing most easily forgotten.
BRIAN ENO

Easily Forgotten Important
The artists of the past who impressed me were the ones who really focused their work.
BRIAN ENO

Artist Impressed Past
The great benefit of computer sequencers is that they remove the issue of skill, and replace it with the issue of judgement
BRIAN ENO

Issues Judgement Skills
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.
BRIAN ENO

Celebrity Electric Guitar Music Overcome Responsible
Be the first to not do what nobody has ever thought of not doing before.
BRIAN ENO

Doing Firsts Nobody
All the best lyrics are written in ten minutes.
BRIAN ENO

Best Minutes Written
The most important thing in a piece of music is to seduce people to the point where they start searching.
BRIAN ENO

Important People Pieces Searching
The seven white notes on the piano – each section of the piece (there are 12 sections) is five of those seven white notes.
BRIAN ENO

Piano Simple White
Of course, like anybody I repeat myself endlessly, but I don’t know that I’m doing it, usually.
BRIAN ENO

Courses Knows Repeats
In 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.
BRIAN ENO

Mean Musical Sound Writing
Culture is everything you don’t have to do.
BRIAN ENO

Culture Everything Happen
I belong to a gospel choir. They know I am an atheist but they are very tolerant.
BRIAN ENO

Atheist Choir Knows
I had a lot of trouble with engineers, because their whole background is learning from a functional point of view, and then learning how to perform that function.
BRIAN ENO

Function Trouble Views
I think the other thing that’s important is getting to a place, which very, very rarely happens with improvising groups, where somebody can decide not to play for a while. You watch any group of musicians improvising together and they nearly all play nearly all the time.
BRIAN ENO

Differences Musician Playing Thinking Watching
Try to make things that can become better in other people’s minds than they were in yours.
BRIAN ENO

Mind People Trying
Avant-garde music is sort of research music. You’re glad someone’s done it but you don’t necessarily want to listen to it.
BRIAN ENO

Avant Done Garde Research
I’m not interested in possible complexities. I regard song structure as a graph paper.
BRIAN ENO

Paper Song Structure
Stop thinking about art works as objects, and start thinking about them as triggers for experiences.
BRIAN ENO

Art Philosophical Photography
I don’t like celebrity programmes – but I do like programmes about how ideas are formed and evolve.
BRIAN ENO

Evolve Ideas Programme
For instance, I’m always fascinated to see whether, given the kind of fairly known and established form called popular music, whether there is some magic combination that nobody has hit upon before.
BRIAN ENO

Combination Form Kind Magic
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?
BRIAN ENO

Bass Credit Engineer Player
Ambient music is intended to induce calm and a space to think.
BRIAN ENO

Calm Space Thinking
Think inside the work – outside the work
BRIAN ENO

Inside Thinking Work
The problem with computers is that there is not enough Africa in them.
BRIAN ENO

Computer Enough Problem
Being completely free to choose what to do is actually quite difficult
BRIAN ENO

Being Choose Completely Difficult

If I tried to make a commercial album, it would be a complete flop. I have no idea what the world at large likes.

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If I tried to make a commercial album, it would be a complete flop. I have no idea what the world at large likes.

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