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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.

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 love the sort of ambivalence of this, the ambiguity of something – being, for instance, in a quite busy Mexican restaurant with one of these very gentle tracks playing I remember as being particularly nice.
BRIAN ENO

Mexican Nice Track
Emotion creates reality, reality demands action.
BRIAN ENO

Action Demand Reality
I don’t like headphones very much, and I rarely listen to music on headphones.
BRIAN ENO

Headphones Listening To Music
Lyrics are always misleading because they make people think that that’s what the music is about.
BRIAN ENO

Music People Thinking
I’m fascinated by musicians who don’t completely understand their territory; that’s when you do your best work.
BRIAN ENO

Best Musician Territory Work
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
Ambient Music must be able to accommodate many levels of listening attention without enforcing one in particular; it must be as ignorable as it is interesting.
BRIAN ENO

Attention Interesting Listening
Make an exhaustive list of everything you might do & do the last thing on the list.
BRIAN ENO

Last might Statistics
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.
BRIAN ENO

Behind Roles Scenes Spotlight
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
It’s easy to forget that your best work is done when your attention is fully engaged.
BRIAN ENO

Attention Done Forget
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
Put out as much as you can. It doesn’t do anything sitting on a shelf.
BRIAN ENO

Much Shelves Sitting
My lyrics are generated by various peculiar processes. Very random and similar to automatic writing.
BRIAN ENO

Peculiar Process Writing
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
There are certain sounds that I’ve found work well in nearly any context. Their function is not so much musical as spatial: they define the edges of the territory of the music.
BRIAN ENO

Musical Sound Territory
I hate the thought that someone had picked up one of my song records and was really excited about it, and walks [out of] a record shop with On Land and is disappointed because it isn’t what they wanted.
BRIAN ENO

Hate Land Song
You don’t have to act as if you know what you’re doing
BRIAN ENO

Act Doing Knows
Every increase in your knowledge is a simultaneous decrease. You learn and you unlearn at the same time. A new certainty is a new doubt as well.
BRIAN ENO

Doubt Increase Simultaneous
When I went back to England after a year away, the country seemed stuck, dozing in a fairy tale, stifled by the weight of tradition.
BRIAN ENO

Country Weight Years
What I would really like to do, if I could have a sort of kingship for a short time and organize the group of my dreams.
BRIAN ENO

Dream Feelings Together
For the world to be interesting, you have to be manipulating it all the time.
BRIAN ENO

Interesting Manipulate World
The basis of computer work is predicated on the idea that only the brain makes decisions and only the index finger does the work.
BRIAN ENO

Decision Hands Ideas
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
When I was working with Talking Heads what would happen typically is that they would go out and start playing a track, and I would always run the tape.
BRIAN ENO

Interesting Running Track
Music in itself carries a whole set of messages which are very, very rich and complex, and the words either serve to exclude certain ones or point up certain others.
BRIAN ENO

Certain Messages Rich

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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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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Popular Authors

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