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.
Brian EnoRead
In the 1960s when the recording studio suddenly really took off as a tool, it was the kids from art school who knew how to use it, not the kids from music school. Music students were all stuck in the notion of music as performance, ephemeral. Whereas for art students, music as painting? They knew how to do that.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote highlights the difference in perspective between art students and music students regarding the creation and expression of music.
Brian Eno suggests that during the 1960s, the burgeoning recording studio technology was better utilized by art school students, who viewed music more creatively and as a form of painting rather than merely as a transient performance. This viewpoint allowed them to innovate with sound in ways that traditional music students did not, emphasizing the importance of creativity and open-mindedness in artistic expression.
Themes
ArtMusicCreativityInnovationExpression
In practice
Example use cases
In a seminar on artistic innovation, this quote can illustrate the unique perspectives that arise from different educational backgrounds.
More from Brian Eno
All quotes →I think that technology is always invented for historical reasons, to solve a historical problem. But they very soon reveal themselves to be capable of doing things that aren't historical that nobody had ever thought of doing before.
Brian EnoRead
When I first started making ambient music, I was setting up systems using synthesizers that generated pulses more or less randomly. The end result is a kind of music that continuously changes. Of course, until computers came along, all I could actually present of that work was a piece of its output.
Brian EnoRead
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.
Brian EnoRead
In the future, you won't buy artists' works; you'll buy software that makes original pieces of 'their' works, or that recreates their way of looking at things. You could buy a Shostakovich box, or you could buy a Brahms box. You might want some Shostakovich slow-movement-like music to be generated. So then you use that box.
Brian EnoRead
Ambient music must be as ignorable as it is interesting.
Brian EnoRead
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