black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

We have two different ways of working. One is completely unstructured where somebody just starts playing and somebody joins in and then the other person joins in, and something starts to happen. That’s occasionally what happens.

Brian Eno

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
Of 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.
BRIAN ENO

Everybody Expensive Plant Riches
Some people are very good at being ‘stars’ and it suits them. I’m grudging about it and I find it annoying.
BRIAN ENO

People Stars Suits
Whatever you now find weird, ugly, uncomfortable and nasty about a new medium will surely become its signature… The excitement of grainy film, of bleached-out black and white, is the excitement of witnessing events too momentous for the medium assigned to record them.
BRIAN ENO

Black Events Signature White
So, that means you can only play either very high or very low or both. And we’re going to stay there until I take my finger down.
BRIAN ENO

Down Finger High Low Play
At the beginning of the 20th century, the ambition of the great painters was to make paintings that were like music, which was then considered as the noblest art.
BRIAN ENO

Ambition Art Painting
What happens with notation is that it reduces things to a language which isn’t necessarily appropriate to them. In the same way that words do, you get a much cruder version of what was actually intended.
BRIAN ENO

Appropriate Language Notation
You know that in order to copyright material somebody has to write it down for you. Any piece of recorded material has to be scored in order for it to be copyrighted.
BRIAN ENO

Copyright Giving Writing
For the world to be interesting, you have to be manipulating it all the time.
BRIAN ENO

Interesting Manipulate World
The Marshall guitar amplifier doesn’t just get louder when you turn it up. It distorts the sound to produce a whole range of new harmonics, effectively turning a plucked string instrument into a bowed one.
BRIAN ENO

Guitar Overcoming Trying
Composition is a way of living out your philosophy and calling it art.
BRIAN ENO

Art Calling Philosophy
I’m not interested in possible complexities. I regard song structure as a graph paper.
BRIAN ENO

Paper Song Structure
Make an exhaustive list of everything you might do & do the last thing on the list.
BRIAN ENO

Last might Statistics
People do dismiss ambient music, don’t they? They call it ‘easy listening,’ as if to suggest that it should be hard to listen to.
BRIAN ENO

Easy Listening People
The reason I don’t tour is that I don’t know how to front a band. What would I do? I can’t really play anything well enough to deal with that situation.
BRIAN ENO

Band Enough Play
If something is good, you must torture it mercilessly until it is either dead or great.
BRIAN ENO

Great Mercilessly Torture

We have two different ways of working. One is completely unstructured where somebody just starts playing and somebody joins in and then the other person joins in, and something starts to happen. That’s occasionally what happens.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

We have two different ways of working. One is completely unstructured where somebody just starts playing and somebody joins in and then the other person joins in, and something starts to happen. That’s occasionally what happens.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Brian Eno Quotes