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
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.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Brian Eno discusses his exploration of generative music, emphasizing its continuous nature unlike traditional music formats.
In this quote, Brian Eno reflects on his experimentation with generative music in the 1970s, a form of music that evolves and flows continuously rather than relying on fixed compositions or records. This approach allows for a unique listening experience where music can be endless and ever-changing, challenging the conventional notion of how music is created and consumed.
Themes
Generative MusicEndless MusicInnovationCreativity1970S
In practice
Example use cases
During a lecture on contemporary music, you could use this quote to illustrate the evolution of music technology.
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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