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
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.
Interpretation
Quality of expression is more important than quantity.
This quote emphasizes the value of deep expression in art over mere technical skill or volume. Brian Eno suggests that taking the time to create something meaningful, even if it involves a single note, is far more impactful than rushing through a multitude of notes without substance.
In practice
An artist explaining their philosophy during a gallery opening.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
Ambient music must be as ignorable as it is interesting.
In serving his vision of the truth, the artist best serves his nation.
Meet some people who care about poetry the way you do. You'll have that readership. Keep going until you know you're doing work that's worthy. And then see what happens. That's my advice.
The non-artists among us are always terribly busy, but finally disappear without a trace.
A typewriter is a means of transcribing thought, not expressing it.
When they say 'jazz,' I'm thinking of a word called 'the creative process.' It intersects every vein and tributary, avenue, path, that everyone's living. It crosses through there, but it's been contained.
My original interests and intentions in guitar playing were primarily created on quality of tone, for instance, the way the instrument could be made to echo or simulate the human voice.
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