Quotessence
Home / Authors / Brian Eno
Brian Eno

Brian Eno Quotes

Musician

Filter quotes by topic

AllPeopleThinkingIfsIdeasWayKnowsArtWantInterestingSound

Famous Brian Eno Quotes

“If we are ever going to achieve a rational approach to organizing our affairs, we have to dignify the process of admitting to being wrong. It doesn't help matters at all if the media, or your friends, accuse you of "flip-flopping" when you change your mind. Changing our minds is our hope for the future.”

ChangeRationality
Book:What Have You Changed Your Mind About?: Today's Leading Minds Rethink Everything – 150 Influential Thinkers on God, Love, and Evolution
Create image

“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.”

IfsWayUseSimpleWhiteFivePiecesGroupsNotesSevenNinePianoRepeatsFormulasSectionsMinimalist
Author:Brian Eno
Create image

“I still do mostly listen to CDs. I think that every format really is a different way of listening. If you take a different sort of psychological stance to it - like, I think the transition from vinyl to CD definitely marked a difference in the way people treated music. 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.”

PeopleIfsThinkingWayKindStillsDifferentBigsCertainDifferencesPayAttentionObjectsListeningHandleTreatedCommandPsychologicalPay AttentionDifferent WaysExpensiveTransitionFragileReverenceCdsFormatStanceVinyl
Author:Brian Eno
Create image

“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. So, I try to make signs, graphically and visually, to say to people "Okay, this is this department of my work and this is this other department of my work." And of course I'm very pleased if people like all of them, but I don't want them to feel deceived at any point.”

PeopleIfsWantFeelsTryingWantedHateSongCoursesWalksRecordsLandOkayI HateExcitedDepartmentShopsDisappointedDeceived
Author:Brian Eno
Create image

“Quite 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?" And it's nearly always a sort of mixed emotion, which is why I like it. It's something that I have mixed feelings about in the sense that it's both, say, placid and dangerous, or bitter and sweet, or dark and bright.”

ThinkingWayFactsFeelingsDarkEmotionStruggleDangerousSweetPersonalityHearingBitterPlacidMixed FeelingsMixed Emotions
Author:Brian Eno
Create 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.”

WayMeanPersonsTwoIdeasDifferentPlayHappensMovingLowsOkayInstrumentsFingersExtremesSettlingDifferent Ways
Author:Brian Eno
Create image

“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.”

ThinkingImportantSometimesPlayFactsHappensTogetherDifferencesWatchesGroupsMusicianJazzFolksScoreShut UpClassical MusicImprovisingClassical Musicians
Author:Brian Eno
Create image

“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.”

InterestingAliveIncrediblesFantasticVery InterestingAstonishingDrummerCdsHaitiGrids
Author:Brian Eno
Create image

“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.”

PeopleIfsLittlesSaidWholeUseTodayBitsInterestingImpossibleGroupsMinutesExerciseLittle BitMusicianStudiosBrokeSessionRestrictionNameless
Author:Brian Eno
Create image

“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.”

PeopleThinkingKnowsYearsMadeIdeasRealResultsCuttingPossibilityStudiosSignificantCrippled
Author:Brian Eno
Create image

“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.”

ThinkingHas BeensWholeShowsCoursesTermInterestingWonderfulHappeningsInstrumentsSeriesSpeedMusclesShow MeReally InterestingCdsDjsPadsTurntables
Author:Brian Eno
Create image

“Basically, you're still sitting there using just the muscles of your hand, really. Of one hand, actually. It's another example of the transfer of literacy to making music because the assumption is that everything important is happening in your head; 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.”

KnowsWellsStillsImportantWholeFactsBodyHandsStuffPlayerExampleMusicianMusic IsHappeningsSittingTraditionalAssumptionMusclesLiteracyTransfers
Author:Brian Eno
Create image

“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.”

ThinkingWellsKindI CanDoneCoursesBecomingPeriodsElementsYeahEdgesFamiliarBoredFedsOutsidersTypicalRetrospectFed Up
Author:Brian Eno
Create image