Background Image

...

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. What More Often Happens Is That We Settle On Some Sort Of - A Few Sort Of Structural Ideas, Like, "okay, When I Put My Finger Up, We're All Going To Move To The Extremes Of Our Instruments. 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

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

We Have Two Different

Brian Eno

...

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. What More Often Happens Is That We Settle On Some Sort Of - A Few Sort Of Structural Ideas, Like, "okay, When I Put My Finger Up, We're All Going To Move To The Extremes Of Our Instruments. 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.

Views: 6

Topic

More From Brian Eno

Admirers Can Be A Tremendous Force For Conservatism.

In Terms Of What Has Been Happening Recently, There Have Been, I Think, Some Really Interesting New Instruments That Have Come Out That Sort Of Show Me The Direction Of The Future. Korg Has Introduced The - They've Had A Whole Series Now Of These Things Called Kaoss Pads. They're Wonderful Because They Do Get Your Muscles Working Again. And What Djs Do, Of Course, With Their Dj Turntables Now, The Cd Turntables, Which Have Pitch Change And Speed Change And Everything Else. They're Doing Something That I Think Is Interestingly Physical.

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.'

I Do Love Being In My Studio. Especially At Night.

Cooking Is A Way Of Listening To The Radio.

I've Discovered This New Electronic Technique That Creates New Speech Out Of Stuff That's Already There.

Listening To Something Is An Act Of Surrender.

I Love Good, Loud Speakers.

I Had A Lot Of Trouble With Engineers, Because Their Whole Background Is Learning From A Functional Point Of View, And Then Learning How To Perform That Function.

Musicians Are There In Front Of You, And The Spectators Sense Their Tension, Which Is Not The Case When You're Listening To A Record. Your Attention Is More Relaxed. The Emotional Aspect Is More Important In Live Music.

I Think, If You Spend A Day Or - As Many People Do - A Life Working Only With That Aspect Of Your Being, The Cerebrum Connected To A Finger, I Feel That The Rest Of You Atrophies, Essentially.

I Think Audiences Are Quite Comfortable Watching Something Coming Into Being.

Things That Are Very Popular Are Not Taken Seriously, Because The Snobbish Side Of One Says, "well, If Everyone Likes It It Can't Be That Good." Whereas If Only I And A Couple Of Other People Like It, Then It Must Be Really Something Special.

Put Out As Much As You Can. It Doesn't Do Anything Sitting On A Shelf.

I Think We're About Ready For A New Feeling To Enter Music. I Think That Will Come From The Arabic World.

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.

Behind The Scenes

I'm Very Good With Technology, I Always Have Been, And With Machines In General. They Seem Not Threatening Like Other People Find Them, But A Source Of Fun And Amusement.

It's Amazing How Quickly People Get Used To Bad Quality.

You Can't Really Imagine Music Without Technology.

At The Party, Rob Partridge Said To Me, "you Gave Hope To Other Balding Men." My New Epitaph: "co-wrote A Couple Of Decent Songs And Went Bald Shamelessly."

Possessions Are A Way Of Turning Money Into Problems.

The Dominant Theory Coming Out Of Hollywood Is That Peoples' Attention Spans Are Getting Shorter And Shorter And They Need More Stimulation.

When Our Governments Want To Sell Us A Course Of Action, They Do It By Making Sure It's The Only Thing On The Agenda, The Only Thing Everyone's Talking About. And They Pre-load The Ensuing Discussion With Highly Selected Images, Devious And Prejudicial Language, Dubious Linkages, Weak Or False 'intelligence' And Selected 'leaks'.

Stop Thinking About Art Works As Objects, And Start Thinking About Them As Triggers For Experiences.

The Smart Thing In The Art World Is To Have One Good Idea And Never Have Another.

I Often Say To People That Producing Is The Best Paid Form Of Cowardice. When You Produce Things You Almost Always Get Credit, If It's A Good Record, But You Hardly Ever Get The Blame If It's Not! You Don't Really Take Responsibility For Your Work.

I Had An Interesting Day. I Was In The Studio With A Group Of Musicians, Who Shall Remain Nameless, And I Said To Them "our Exercise Today Is Not To Use 'undo' At All. So, There's No Second Takes. Or, If You Do A Second Take, You Have To Do The Whole Take. There's No Sort Of Drop In, Change That Little Bit". The Session Broke Down In, I'd Say, 40 Minutes. It Was Impossible For People To Work In That Restriction Any Longer.

The Prospect Of Music Being Detachable From Time And Place Meant That One Could Start To Think Of Music As A Part Of One's Furniture.

I Think It's A Myth That American Public Or Any Other Public Is So Stupid That They Need To Be Constantly Pricked.

One Way Of Working Is Just Bring A Group Of Totally Different Musicians Together And Encourage Them To Stick To Their Guns, Not To Do The Thing That Normally Happens In A Working Situation Where Everyone Homogenizes And Concedes Certain Points - So Eventually They're All Playing In Roughly The Same Style. I Wanted Quite The Opposite Of That. I Wanted Them To Accent Their Styles, So That They Pulled Away. So There Would Be A Kind Of Space In The Middle Where I Could Operate, And Attempt To Make These Things Coalesce In Some Way. In Fact Quite A Lot Of My Stuff Has Arisen From That.

I Think Most Artists Would Be Happy To Have Bigger Audiences Rather Than Smaller Ones. It Doesn't Mean That They Are Going To Change Their Work In Order Necessarily To Get It, But They're Happy If They Do Get It.

Often, I Think You Find That You're Enjoying Certain Things, You've Got This New Way Of Listening, And You Find That You Really Enjoy The Way That Sounds On It And The Way This Other Thing Sounds On It And The Way That Other Thing Sounds On It. So, You're Finding A New Pleasure That You Didn't Know About Before.

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. I've Seen The Scores Of My Things And They Don't Resemble The Music In Any Way. If You Give Them To Somebody Who Has Never Heard The Music And Say, "what Does This Sound Like To You?" They'll Play You Something That Has No Relationship With The Music It Derives From. Notation Simply Isn't Adequate.

I Wish There Was A Serious Investigation Into Flying Saucers That Wasn't Conducted By Crackpots. Unfortunately Nearly All Of The People Who Are Interested In Them Kind Of Manufacture The Evidence To Fit The Theories Rather Than The Other Way Around. So It's Very Hard To Find Any Dispassionate Treatment Of Them. Maybe There Isn't Any Scientific Basis In Which Case That's Why You Never See Any Scientific Evidence.

Attention Is What Creates Value. Artworks Are Made As Well By How People Interact With Them - And Therefore By What Quality Of Interaction They Can Inspire.

We Are Increasingly Likely To Find Ourselves In Places With Background Music. No Composers Have Thought To Write For These Modern Spaces, Which Represent 30% Of Our Musical Experience.

I Hate The Rock Music Tradition. I Can't Bear It!

I Belong To A Gospel Choir. They Know I Am An Atheist But They Are Very Tolerant.

Honor Thy Error As A Hidden Intention.

Of Course, Like Anybody I Repeat Myself Endlessly, But I Don't Know That I'm Doing It, Usually.

Reggie Watts Is A Most Unusual Talent: A Huge Vocal Range, A Natural Musicality, And A Sidesplitting Wit. Is He A Comedian? A Singer? A Performance Artist? I've Seen Him A Few Times Since Then And I Still Can't Decide. Whatever, He Ain't Like Nobody Else.

In England And Europe, We Have This Huge Music Called Ambient - Ambient Techno, Ambient House, Ambient Hip-hop, Ambient This, Ambient That.

The Artists Of The Past Who Impressed Me Were The Ones Who Really Focused Their Work.

I Believe In Singing.

Composition Is A Way Of Living Out Your Philosophy And Calling It Art.

Painting, I Think It's Like Jazz.

I Think One Of My Pursuits Over The Years Is Trying To Answer The Question Of 'what Else Can You Do With A Voice Other Than Stand In Front Of A Microphone And Sing?'

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.

The Trouble Begins With A Design Philosophy That Equates 'more Options' With 'greater Freedom.'

You Can't Do Anything Interesting With Cutting-edge Technology Except Not Make It Cutting-edge.

My Guitar Only Has Five Strings 'cause The Top One Broke And I Decided Not To Put It Back On: When I Play Chords I Only Play Bar Chords, And The Top One Always Used To Cut Me There.

When I Was Young, An Eccentric Uncle Decided To Teach Me How To Lie. Not, He Explained, Because He Wanted Me To Lie, But Because He Thought I Should Know How It's Done So I Would Recognise When I Was Being Lied To.

I Don't Like Celebrity Programmes - But I Do Like Programmes About How Ideas Are Formed And Evolve.

In The 1960s, People Were Trying To Get Away From The Pop Song Format. Tracks Were Getting Longer, Or Much, Much Shorter.

I Hate The Way Cds Just Drone On For Bloody Hours And You Stop Caring.

I Suppose I Am Reluctant About Being Any Sort Of 'star' And I Didn't Particularly Want To Be Portrayed As One.

Pop Is Totally Results-oriented And There Is A Very Strong Feedback Loop.

Repetition Doesn't Really Exist

A Big Ego Isn't Necessarily A Bad Thing. A Big Ego Means That You Have Some Confidence In Your Abilities, Really, And That You're Prepared To Take The Risk Of Trying Them Out.

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.

Agressive Music Can Only Shock You Once. Afterwards Its Impact Declines. It's Inevitable.

The Biology Of Purpose Keeps My Nose Above The Surface.

There Are Hundreds Of Manufacturers Always Producing Dvices That In General Do The Same Things. Since They Have Slight Structural Differences If You Take One And Fool Around With It And Give It A Good Kick It Will Actually Do Something That It Wasn't Designed To Do. I Have This Relationship With My Synthesizers. I've Had Them For So Long, And I've Never Had Them Serviced, So That Now Practically All Of Their Functions Operate Differently From What They Were Designed To Do. They Do Very Interesting Things Now, But That Means Nobody Else Can Use Them Either.

I've Got Nothing Against Records - I've Spent My Life Making Them - But They Are A Kind Of Historical Blip.

It's Nice, I Think, When People Use Your Music For Things You Didn't Think Of.

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.

Human Development Thus Far Has Been Fueled And Guided By The Feeling That Things Could Be, And Are Probably Going To Be, Better.

Everything Is An Experiment Until It Has A Deadline. That Gives It A Destination, Context, And A Reason.

As Soon As I Hear A Sound, It Always Suggests A Mood To Me.

I'm Fascinated By Musicians Who Don't Completely Understand Their Territory; That's When You Do Your Best Work.

Nothing So Dates An Era As Its Conception Of The Future.

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.

The Micro-compositions Are The Pieces Themselves, But The Macro-composition Is The Whole Set Of Them And How It Moves From Track To Track And How The Titles Relate To One Another, For Example. Always When I Do Records Like This Of A Selection Of Instrumental Pieces - The Titles, To Me, Are Very Important.

If You're In A Forest, The Quality Of The Echo Is Very Strange Because Echoes Back Off So Many Surfaces Of All Those Trees That You Get This Strange, Itchy Ricochet Effect.

If You Are Part Of A Religion That Very Strongly Insists That You Believe Then To Decide Not To Do That Is Quite A Big Hurdle To Jump Over. You Never Forget The Thought Process You Went Through. It Becomes Part Of Your Whole Intellectual Picture.

You Feel As If You're Not Living A Full Life. Which, Of Course, Is Why - It's My Theory About Why So Many People Who Are Heavily Into Computers Are Also Into Extreme Sports And S&m. It's Because Their Bodies Are Crying Out For Some Kind Of Action.

More And More I Find I Want To Be Living In A Big Here And A Long Now.

My Shows Are Not Narratives.

The Great Benefit Of Computer Sequencers Is That They Remove The Issue Of Skill, And Replace It With The Issue Of Judgement

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.

Another Way Of Working Is Setting Deliberate Constraints That Aren't Musical Ones - Like Saying, "well, This Piece Is Going To Be Three Minutes And Nineteen Seconds Long And It's Going To Have Changes Here, Here And Here, And There's Going To Be A Convolution Of Events Here, And There's Going To Be A Very Fast Rhythm Here With A Very Slow Moving Part Over The Top Of It." Those Are The Sort Of Visual Ideas That I Can Draw Out On Graph Paper. I've Done A Lot Of Film Music This Way.

A Studio Is An Absolute Labyrinth Of Possibilities - This Is Why Records Take So Long To Make Because There Are Millions Of Permutations Of Things You Can Do. The Most Useful Thing You Can Do Is To Get Rid Of Some Of Those Options Before You Start

Law Is Always Better Than War.

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.

Every Collaboration Helps You Grow. With Bowie, It's Different Every Time. I Know How To Create Settings, Unusual Aural Environments. That Inspires Him. He's Very Quick.

All Music Has Political Dimensions Because It Suggests A Way Of Being.

One Night, I Pissed Into An Empty Wine Bottle So I Could Continue Watching Monty Python, And Suddenly Thought 'i've Never Tasted My Own Piss,' So I Drank A Little. It Looked Just Like Orvieto Classico And Tasted Of Nearly Nothing

I Have Lived In Countries That Were Coming Out Of Conflict: Ireland, South Africa, The Czech Republic. People There Are Overflowing With Energy.

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. I Always Record Everything, Even A Run Through Where You're Trying To Get In Tune. That's A Principle Because Sometimes When The Situation Isn't Clear Interesting Things Happen, And They Are Worth Listening To Again.

In Art, You Can Crash Your Plane And Walk Away From It

Well, I Am A Dilettante. It's Only In England That Dilettantism Is Considered A Bad Thing. In Other Countries It's Called Interdisciplinary Research.

Also Something That You Don't Have To Listen To From Beginning To End - You Can Enter At Any Point And Leave At Any Point.

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. Let's Do Something Else."and You Always Think "oh My God I've Never Done Anything At All Like That Before." But, Of Course, In Retrospect, And To An Outsider, They'll Say, "oh, Yeah That's Typical Eno.

When I've Finally Got The Title, I Think, "okay, Yes, Now I Know Where We Are. Now I Know What It Is. Fine, That Must Be Finished Or Nearly Finished.

With All Fashion, What We Do Is Play At Being Somebody Else. We Play At Inhabiting Another Kind Of World.

I Think That's Very Significant That We're So Attached To The Idea Now Of - It Was Something I Advocated For Years, That You Can Make Music In Studios, Music Doesn't Have To Be Made As A Real-time Experience. But Now You See The Results Of That In People Who Are Completely Crippled Unless They Know That They Have The Possibility Of "cut And Paste" And "undo." And "undo" And "undo" And "undo" And "undo" And "undo" Again.

When You Look Back On A Historical Period Of Music, It Seems So Obvious To You What The Characteristics Of It Are, But They're Not Obvious At The Time. So, When I Look Back At My Own Work, I Could Easily Write A Very Convincing Sort Of Account Of It That Made It Look Like I Had Planned It All Out From Day One And That This Led Logically To That And Then I Did This And Then That Followed Quite Naturally From That. But That's Not How It Felt.

We're Going Through This Super-uptight Era, Which I Think Comes Entirely From Literacy, Actually. It's The Result Of Machines That Were Designed As Word Processors Being Used For Making Music.

I Think The Other Thing That's Important Is Getting To A Place, Which Very, Very Rarely Happens With Improvising Groups, Where Somebody Can Decide Not To Play For A While. You Watch Any Group Of Musicians Improvising Together And They Nearly All Play Nearly All The Time. In Fact I Often Say That The Biggest Difference Between Classical Music And Everything Else Is That Classical Musicians Sometimes Shut Up Because They're Told To, Because The Score Tells Them To. Whereas Any Music That's Sort Of Based On Folk Or Jazz, Everybody Plays All The Time.

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. What More Often Happens Is That We Settle On Some Sort Of - A Few Sort Of Structural Ideas, Like, "okay, When I Put My Finger Up, We're All Going To Move To The Extremes Of Our Instruments. 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.

Anything Popular Is Populist, And Populist Is Rarely A Good Adjective.

If You Think Of The Way A Composer Or Say A Pop Arranger Works - He Has An Idea And He Writes It Down, So There's One Transmission Loss. Then He Gives The Score To A Group Of Musicians Who Interpret That, So There's Another Transmission Loss. So He's Involved With Three Information Losses. Whereas What I Nearly Always Do Is Work Directly To The Sound If It Doesn't Sound Right. So There's A Continuous Loop Going On.

The Problem With Improvisation Is, Of Course, That Everyone Just Slips Into Their Comfort Zone And Does Sort Of The Easy Thing To Do, The Most Obvious Thing To Do With Your Instrument.

Being An Artist Is A Job For Life.

Being An Artist

I Make A Lot Of Pieces Of Music That I Never Release As Cds.

One Of The Interesting Things About Having Little Musical Knowledge Is That You Generate Surprising Results Sometimes; You Move To Places You Wouldn't If You Knew Better.

As Struggles Go, Being An Artist Isn't That Much Of One.

Being An Artist

If You Want To Make Someone Feel Emotion, You Have To Make Them Let Go. Listening To Something Is An Act Of Surrender.

I'd Rather Hold One Note For An Hour And Modulate It So That It Means Something Than Play 3,000 Notes In 15 Seconds.

Whenever There's A New Music, There's A New Way Of Listening. And Whenever There's A New Way Of Listening, There Are New Musics That Follow From That. And People Start Listening Differently - That Can Either Mean In Different Places Or At Different Volumes Or In Different Social Groups Or Through Different Technologies.

I've Never Used A Pc In My Life; I Don't Like Them.

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. If You Said Violins And Woodwind That Defined The Sound Texture; If I Say Synthesizer And Guitar It Means Nothing - You're Talking About 28,000 Variables.

I'm Always Interested In Something When It Isn't Familiar To Me.

Being Completely Free To Choose What To Do Is Actually Quite Difficult

I Want To Rethink Surrender As An Active Verb.

I Think That There's Something That I Still Like About The Fact Of A Package, Like The Latest Report From Somebody. "okay, This Is What They're Up To Now; This Is What They're Doing; Who's Working With Them?

One Of The Great Breakthroughs Of Evolution Theory Is That You Start With Simple Things And They Will Grow Into Complexity.

Every Collaboration Helps You Grow.

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.

Of All The Things You Can Now Do, Which Do You Choose To Do?

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.

Black And White

Don't Be Ashamed Of Your Own Ideas. Most Musicians Get Applauded For Sounding Like Someone Else.

American Television Really Is Pathetic.

American Television

I Love San Francisco And Brighton Has Something Of San Francisco About It. It's By The Sea, There's A Big Gay Community, A Feeling Of People Being There Because They Enjoy Their Life There.

I Mostly Used The Studio Devices, Because I Knew What They Had. Generally I Find I'm Happy To Use Whatever's Around. If There's Nothing There I'll Make Something. For Example, One Of The Things I Tried Doing Was Getting A Tiny Loudspeaker And Feeding The Instruments Off The Tape Through This Tiny Speaker And Then Through This Huge Long Plastic Tube - About 50 Feet Long - That They Used To Clean Out The Swimming Pool In The Place Where I Was Staying. You Get This Really Hollow, Cavernous, Weird Sound, A Very Nice Sound. We Didn't Use It Finally, But Nonetheless We Well Could Have.

Ambient Music Must Be As Ignorable As It Is Interesting.

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 - I Would Make One Group Which Would Be A Combination Of, Say, Parliament And Kraftwerk - Put Those Two Together And Say, "make A Record." Something That Would Be An Extraordinary Combination: The Weird Physical Feeling Of Parliament With This Strange, Rigid Stuff Over The Top Of It.

The Time I Like Listening To Music Most On Headphones Is, I Have A Game I Play With My Brother, He's A Musician As Well.and He Sends Me Midi Files Of Keyboard Pieces. So, These Are Pieces Where I Just Get A Midi File; I Don't Know What Instrument He Was Playing Them On; I Know Nothing About His Section Of The Sound Of The Piece, And Then When I'm Sitting On Trains I Do A Lot Of Train Travel I Turn Them Into Pieces Of Music. And I Love To Do That; It's My Favorite Hobby.

Sometimes You Recognize That There Is A Category Of Human Experience That Has Not Been Identified But Everyone Knows About It. That Is When I Find A Term To Describe It.

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.

The Point About Melody And Beat And Lyric Is That They Exist To Engage You In A Very Particular Way. They Want To Occupy Your Attention.

I Always Have Wanted To Know How The Whole Thing Was Done, What The Process Involved. And I Don't Particularly Enjoy That My Music Is Stripped Of Ancillary Details, And It Just Sort Of Comes Out Of This Big Tap Called The Internet Like Water. I Like Some Of My Water To Be Neatly Presented In A Bottle. With A Label On It.

If I Had A Stock Of Fabulous Sounds I Would Just Always Use Them. I Wouldn't Bother To Find New Ones.

If You Grow Up In A Very Strong Religion Like Catholicism You Certainly Cultivate In Yourself A Certain Taste For The Intensity Of Ideas.

People Always Focus On People Like Me Who Use Synthesizers, Right, Which Are Explicitly Electronic And Therefore Obvious. "ah, Yes, That's Electronic Music." But They Don't Realize That So Is The Concept Of Actually Taking A Piece Of Extant Music And Literally Re-collaging It, Taking Chunks Out And Changing The Dynamics Radically And Creating New Rhythmic Structures With Echo And All That. That's Real Electronic Music, As Far As I'm Concerned.

With Devices My Technique Is Always To Hide The Handbook In The Drawer Until I've Played With It For A While. The Handbook Always Tells You What It Does, And You Can Be Quite Sure That If It's A Complex Device It Can Do At Least Fifteen Other Things That Weren't Predicted In The Handbook, Or That They Didn't Consider Desirable. It's Normally Those Other Things That Interest Me.

I Think That Sex, Drugs, Art And Religion Very Much Overlap With One Another And Sometimes One Becomes Another.

John Cage Made You Realise That There Wasn't A Thing Called Noise, It Was Just Music You Hadn't Appreciated.

The Seven White Notes On The Piano - Each Section Of The Piece (there Are 12 Sections) Is Five Of Those Seven White Notes. If You Calculate It, There Are 21 Groups Of Five Notes In Any Group Of Seven Notes. And Although There Are 12 Sections, This Piece Actually Uses Nine Of Those Groups Because Some Of The Sections Repeat Earlier Ones. So That's The Formula. It's Very Simple As A Way Of Generating Something. It's My Inner Minimalist.

Most Of Those Melodies Are Me Trying To Find Out What Notes Fit, And Then Hitting Ones That Don't Fit In A Very Interesting Way.

Complexity And Intelligence Grow From Simplicity, Not From Greater Complexity.

People Who Are Very Confident In Themselves Aren't Hurt By Criticism. They Make Use Of It.

Most Big Concerts Sound Disgusting And Awful And Insultingly Bad. It's Like Going To The Cinema And Been Shown A Scratchy Film Which Is Upsidedown And The Bulb Had Gone On The Projector. The Quality Of Large-scale Live Music Is So Shocking.

Some People Say Bowie Is All Surface Style And Second-hand Ideas, But That Sounds Like A Definition Of Pop To Me.

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?

It's Actually Very Easy For Democracy To Disappear.

You Either Believe That People Respond To Authority, Or That They Respond To Kindness And Inclusion. I'm Obviously In The Latter Camp. I Think That People Respond Better To Reward Than Punishment.

Well, There Are Some Things That I Just Can't Get Out Of My Head, And They Start To Annoy Me After A While. Sometimes They're Of My Own Creation, As Well - And They're Just As Annoying. It's Not Only Other People's Ear Worms That Bug Me, It's My Own, As Well.

I Have A Definite Talent For Convincing People To Try Something New. I Am A Good Salesman. When I'm On Form, I Can Sell Anything.

One Often Makes Music To Supplement One's World.

I Wanted To Get Rid Of The Element That Had Been Considered Essential In Pop Music: The Voice.

Lyrics Are Always Misleading Because They Make People Think That That's What The Music Is About.

The Whole History Of Pop Music Had Rested On The First Person Singular, With Occasional Intrusions Of The Second Person Singular.

It's Easy To Forget That Your Best Work Is Done When Your Attention Is Fully Engaged.

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.

I Believe That Singing Is The Key To Long Life, A Good Figure, A Stable Temperament, Increased Intelligence, New Friends, Super Self-confidence , Heightened Sexual Attractiveness, And A Better Sense Of Humor.

Self Confidence

Once I Started Working With Generative Music In The 1970s, I Was Flirting With Ideas Of Making A Kind Of Endless Music - Not Like A Record That You'd Put On, Which Would Play For A While And Finish.

So I Believe In Singing To Such An Extent That If I Were Asked To Redesign The British Educational System, I Would Start By Insisting That Group Singing Become A Central Part Of The Daily Routine. I Believe It Builds Character And, More Than Anything Else, Encourages A Taste For Co-operation With Others. This Seems To Be About The Most Important Thing A School Could Do For You.

Set Up A Situation That Presents You With Something Slightly Beyond Your Reach.

I'm Kind Of An Evangelical Atheist.

My Kind Of Composing Is More Like The Work Of A Gardener. The Gardener Takes His Seeds And Scatters Them, Knowing What He Is Planting But Not Quite What Will Grow Where And When - And He Won't Necessarily Be Able To Reproduce It Again Afterwards Either.

I Think Very Often Producers Are Really Trying To Repeat Things. When They Hear Something In The New Songs That They Recognize As Being A Bit Like Something That Was A Success On A Previous Record, They're Inclined To Encourage That.

When People Censor Themselves They're Just As Likely To Get Rid Of The Good Bits As The Bad Bits.

When I Started Making My Own Records, I Had This Idea Of Drowning Out The Singer And Putting The Rest In The Foreground. It Was The Background That Interested Me.

Think Inside The Work - Outside The Work

I Take Sounds And Change Them Into Words.

I Never Wanted To Write The Sort Of Song That Said, 'look At How Abnormal And Crazy And Out There I Am, Man!'

A Lot Of The So-called Systems Composers Have This Thing That The System Is Always Right. You Don't Fiddle With It At All. Well, I Don't Think That. I Think The System Is As Right As You Judge It To Be. If For Some Reason You Don't Like A Bit Of It You Must Trust Your Intuition On That. I Don't Take A Doctrinaire Approach To Systems.

I Think Generally Playing Live Is A Crap Idea. So Much Of Stage Work Is The Presentation Of Personality, And I've Never Been Interested In That.

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.

Once You've Grown To Accept Something And It Becomes Part Of The System You've Inherited, You Don't Even Notice It Any Longer.

It's Not The Destination That Matters. It's The Change Of Scene.

Given The Chance, I'll Die Like A Baby, On Some Faraway Beach, When The Season's Over.

I Know That If I Had A Television In My Flat I Would Convince Myself That Everything On It Was Really Interesting. I Would Say, 'i'm A Celebrity - Get Me Out Of Here!' Is So Sociologically Fascinating That I Think I'd Better Watch.

Nearly All The Things I Do That Are Of Any Merit At All Start Off Just Being Good Fun.

The Point About Working Is Not To Produce Great Stuff All The Time, But To Remain Ready For When You Can.

The Idea That Something Is Uncool Because It’s Old Or Foreign Has Left The Collective Consciousness.

I Had Wanted A Tape Recorder Since I Was Tiny. I Thought It Was A Magic Thing. I Never Got One Until Just Before I Went To Art School.

Culture Is Everything You Don't Have To Do.

Everybody Thinks That When New Technologies Come Along That They're Transparent And You Can Just Do Your Job Well On It. But Technologies Always Import A Whole New Set Of Values With Them.

I Don't Like Headphones Very Much, And I Rarely Listen To Music On Headphones.

Listening To Music

I'm Bloody Awful At Multi-tasking.

What People Call Unemotional Just Doesnt Have A Single Overriding Emotion To It. The Things That I Like Best Are The Ones That Ambiguous On The Emotional Level.

The Most Important Thing In A Piece Of Music Is To Seduce People To The Point Where They Start Searching.

Lyrics Are The Only Thing To Do With Music That Haven't Been Made Easier Technically.

In The 19th Century, A Lot Of People Were Against Outlawing Child Labour, Because To Do So Would Be Against The Very Foundations Of A Free Market Economy: 'these Children Want To Work, These People Want To Employ Them... What Is Your Problem? It's Not As If Anyone Has Kidnapped Them...'

The Thing That Obsesses Me More Than Anything Is Waste - The Waste Of Human Intelligence And Creativity.

The Whole Point Of Art, As Far As I’m Concerned, Is That Art Doesn’t Make Any Difference. And That’s Why It’s Important. Take Film: You Can Have Quite Extreme Emotional Experiences Watching A Movie, But They Stop As Soon As You Walk Out Of The Cinema. You Can See People Being Hurt, But Even Though You Feel Those Things Strongly, You Know They’re Not Real.

I'm Actually An Evangelical Atheist, But There Is Something I Recognise About Religion: That It Gives People A Chance To Surrender.

Something I’ve Realized Lately, To My Shock, Is That I Am An Optimist, In That I Think Humans Are Almost Infinitely Capable Of Self-change And Self-modification, And That We Really Can Build The Future That We Want If We’re Smart About It.

I Got An Amazing 10-cd Set, It's The Music That Alan Lomax Recorded In Haiti In 1936. And What's Incredible Is How Fantastic The Drummers Are And How Off-the-grid They Are. The Liveliness Is Astonishing; They're Just Totally Alive, These Recordings. It's Very Interesting, To Me, To Be Reminded Of That, That There Was A Time When Things Were Not That Tight.

All The Best Lyrics Are Written In Ten Minutes.

All Cultures Have These Feelings About Non-functional Areas Of Activity. And The More Time People Have On Their Hands, The More They Commit It To Those Areas.

I've Noticed A Terrible Thing, Which Is I Will Agree To Anything If It's Far Enough In The Future.

I Hate Talking About Music, To Tell You The Truth.

Songs That Don't Depend On Composition Depend Instead On Performance - So The Fire Has To Be There In The Playing.

I've Had Quite A Lot Of Luck With Dreams. I've Often Awoken In The Night With A Phrase Or Even A Whole Song In My Head.

When You Build A Building, You Finish A Building. You Don't Finish A Garden; You Start It, And Then It Carries On With Its Life. So My Analogy Was Really To Say That We Composers Or Some Of Us Should Think Of Ourselves As People Who Start Processes Rather Than Finish Them. And There Might Be Surprises.

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.

The Reason Conservatives Cohere And Radicals Fight: Everyone Agrees About Fears, No One About Visions.

Trending Author

Francis Quarles

Chelsea Clinton

Category