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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.

Brian Eno

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
I want to rethink surrender as an active verb.
BRIAN ENO

Surrender Verbs Want
Editing is now the easiest thing on earth to do, and all the things that evolved out of word processing – ‘Oh, let’s put that sentence there, let’s get rid of this’ – have become commonplace in films and music too.
BRIAN ENO

Earth Editing Film Sentence
The vinyl commands a certain kind of reverence because it’s a big object and quite fragile so you handle it rather carefully, and it’s expensive so you pay attention to how it’s looked after.
BRIAN ENO

Carefully Look Reverences Vinyl
Admirers can be a tremendous force for conservatism.
BRIAN ENO

Admirer Conservatism Force
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
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
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
American television really is pathetic.
BRIAN ENO

Country Pathetic People Television
The whole history of pop music had rested on the first person singular, with occasional intrusions of the second person singular.
BRIAN ENO

Firsts Intrusion Occasional
You don’t have to act as if you know what you’re doing
BRIAN ENO

Act Doing Knows
What matters in modern music is not the part you can write down, the words and the tune, but the rest – the texture, the atmosphere, the references and associations.
BRIAN ENO

Atmosphere Matters References What Writing
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
The philosophical idea that there are no more distances, that we are all just one world, that we are all brothers, is such a drag! I like differences.
BRIAN ENO

Brother Distance Philosophical
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.
BRIAN ENO

Bored Retrospect Thinking
I hate the rock music tradition. I can’t bear it!
BRIAN ENO

Bears Hate Rocks

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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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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