“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
“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
“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
“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.” KnowsWellsPlayTurnsGamesSoundPiecesBrotherListeningMusicianSittingInstrumentsTrainMy FavoriteMy BrotherHobbiesSectionsListening To MusicFilesKeyboardsHeadphonesMidiFavorite Hobby Author:Brian Eno
“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.” KindDifferentTogetherSituationStyleMusicianGun Author:Brian Eno
“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.” ThinkingGivingWritingLossMusicianComposerTransmission Author:Brian Eno
“I describe things in terms of body movements. I dance a bit to describe what sort of movement it ought to make, and that's a good way of talking to musicians. Particularly bass players.” WayBodyBitsTermTalkingPlayerMovementOughtMusicianDanceBassGood WayBass PlayersWay Of TalkingBody Movement Author:Brian Eno
“Don't be ashamed of your own ideas. Most musicians get applauded for sounding like someone else.” IdeasMusicianAshamed Author:Brian Eno
“I'm fascinated by musicians who don't completely understand their territory; that's when you do your best work.” MusicianTerritoryFascinatedBest Work Author:Brian Eno
“Even though I'm known as a pop musician, I have a seriousness about what I do.” KnownMusicianPopsSeriousness Author:Brian Eno
“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.” ImportantAttentionCasesRecordsFrontsEmotionalListeningMusicianAspectTensionRelaxedSpectatorsLive Music Author:Brian Eno
