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 ENOQuite often, and in fact more often, I would say, I’m struggling all the way through to think, “What is it I like about this? What is the personality of this thing I’m hearing that I like so much?”
More Brian Eno Quotes
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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 -
The problem with computers is that there is not enough Africa in them.
BRIAN ENO -
I despise computers in many ways. I think they’re hopelessly underevolved and overrated.
BRIAN ENO -
I belong to a gospel choir. They know I am an atheist but they are very tolerant.
BRIAN ENO -
In my normal life I’m a very unadventurous person.
BRIAN ENO -
I don’t like celebrity programmes – but I do like programmes about how ideas are formed and evolve.
BRIAN ENO -
I don’t live in the past at all; I’m always wanting to do something new. I make a point of constantly trying to forget and get things out of my mind.
BRIAN ENO -
Anything popular is populist, and populist is rarely a good adjective.
BRIAN ENO -
The whole history of pop music had rested on the first person singular, with occasional intrusions of the second person singular.
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.
BRIAN ENO -
I wanted to get rid of the element that had been considered essential in pop music: the voice.
BRIAN ENO -
People always focus on people like me who use synthesizers, right, which are explicitly electronic and therefore obvious.
BRIAN ENO -
One of the things you’re doing when you make art, apart from entertaining yourself and other people, is trying to see what ways of working feel good, what feels right.
BRIAN ENO -
As soon as you externalize an idea you see facets of it that weren’t clear when it was just floating around in your head.
BRIAN ENO -
I thought it was magic to be able to catch something identically on tape and then be able to play around with it, run it backwards; I thought that was great for years.
BRIAN ENO