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 ENOI think the idea that people walk around to music is very interesting. They are actually creating the soundtrack to their lives as they walk around to it.
More Brian Eno Quotes
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The muscles are there simply to serve the head. But that isn’t how traditional players work at all; musicians know that their muscles have a lot of stuff going on as well. They’re using their whole body to make music, in fact.
BRIAN ENO -
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.
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For me it’s always contingent on getting a sound-the sound always suggests what kind of melody it should be. So it’s always sound first and then the line afterwards.
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I don’t want to do free jazz! Because free jazz – which is the musical equivalent of free marketeering – isn’t actually free at all. It’s just constrained by what your muscles can do.
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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.
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Perhaps when music has been shouting for so long, a quieter voice seems attractive.
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I see TV as a picture medium rather than a narrative medium.
BRIAN ENO -
Set up a situation that presents you with something slightly beyond your reach.
BRIAN ENO -
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.
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I despise computers in many ways. I think they’re hopelessly underevolved and overrated.
BRIAN ENO -
I do sometimes look back at things I’ve written in the past, and think, ‘I just don’t remember being the person who wrote that.’
BRIAN ENO -
Everybody is entertained to death.
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I wanted quite the opposite of that. I wanted them to accent their styles, so that they pulled away.
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I’ve always thought that art is a lie, an interesting lie. And I’ll sort of listen to the “lie” and try to imagine the world which makes that lie true…what that world must be like, and what would have to happen for us to get from this world to that one.
BRIAN ENO -
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