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Music Quotes by Brian Eno

91 Music quotes by Brian Eno

All Music quotes Brian Eno’s page

Eno explains that modern music often relies on technology more than traditional ideas. He believes a song’s power can come from the performance itself, not just the composition. He also notes that he tried to remove the voice from pop to explore new textures.

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I'd love it if American kids were listening to Muslim music.

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I don't like headphones very much, and I rarely listen to music on headphones.

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I'm not interested in possible complexities. I regard song structure as a graph paper.

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You can't really imagine music without technology.

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I hate talking about music, to tell you the truth.

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It's nice, I think, when people use your music for things you didn't think of.

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Perhaps when music has been shouting for so long, a quieter voice seems attractive.

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All music has political dimensions because it suggests a way of being.

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In the 1960s, people were trying to get away from the pop song format. Tracks were getting longer, or much, much shorter.

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Music in itself carries a whole set of messages which are very, very rich and complex, and the words either serve to…

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When I finish something, I want it out that day. Pop music is like the daily paper. Its got to be there…

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For me it's always contingent on getting a sound-the sound always suggests what kind of melody it should be. So it's always…

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Gospel music is never pessimistic, it's never 'oh my god, its all going down the tubes', like the blues often is.

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Don't be ashamed of your own ideas. Most musicians get applauded for sounding like someone else.

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I wanted to get rid of the element that had been considered essential in pop music: the voice.

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The point about melody and beat and lyric is that they exist to engage you in a very particular way. They want…

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I always have wanted to know how the whole thing was done, what the process involved. And I don't particularly enjoy that…

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I'd been making music that was intended to be like painting, in the sense that it's environmental, without the customary narrative and…

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I think very often producers are really trying to repeat things. When they hear something in the new songs that they recognize…

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Since I have always preferred making plans to executing them, I have gravitated towards situations and systems that, once set into operation,…

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Once I started working with generative music in the 1970s, I was flirting with ideas of making a kind of endless music…

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Editing is now the easiest thing on earth to do, and all the things that evolved out of word processing - 'Oh,…

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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…

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By the mid-'60s, recorded music was much more like painting than it was like traditional music. When you went into the studio,…

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I still do mostly listen to CDs. I think that every format really is a different way of listening. If you take…

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When you look back on a historical period of music, it seems so obvious to you what the characteristics of it are,…

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You know that in order to copyright material somebody has to write it down for you. Any piece of recorded material has…

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If you think of the way a composer or say a pop arranger works - he has an idea and he writes…

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The time I like listening to music most on headphones is, I have a game I play with my brother, he's a…

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Basically, you're still sitting there using just the muscles of your hand, really. Of one hand, actually. It's another example of the…

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I had an interesting day. I was in the studio with a group of musicians, who shall remain nameless, and I said…

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People always focus on people like me who use synthesizers, right, which are explicitly electronic and therefore obvious. "Ah, yes, that's electronic…

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Ambient music is intended to induce calm and a space to think.

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Ambient music must be as ignorable as it is interesting.

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I make a lot of pieces of music that I never release as CDs.

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The trouble with New Age music is that there's no evil in it.

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Agressive music can only shock you once. Afterwards its impact declines. It's inevitable.

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One often makes music to supplement one's world.

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Even though I'm known as a pop musician, I have a seriousness about what I do.

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Most game music is based on loops effectively.

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More by Brian Eno

I have lived in countries that were coming out of conflict: Ireland, South Africa, the Czech republic. People there are overflowing with energy.

The lyrics are constructed as empirically as the music. I don't set out to say anything very important.

Admirers can be a tremendous force for conservatism.

The whole history of pop music had rested on the first person singular, with occasional intrusions of the second person singular.

You can't really imagine music without technology.

Robert Fripp and I will be recording another LP very soon. It should be even more monotonous than the first one!

I despise computers in many ways. I think they’re hopelessly underevolved and overrated.

I think very often producers are really trying to repeat things. When they hear something in the new songs that they recognize as being…

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…

If you watch any good player, they're using different parts of their body and working with instruments that respond to those movements. They're moving…

Songs that don't depend on composition depend instead on performance - so the fire has to be there in the playing.

I can see the use and value of religion, just as I can see the use of mud wrestling, yoga, astronomy and sadomasochism. but…

I wanted to get rid of the element that had been considered essential in pop music: the voice.

At the beginning of the 20th century, the ambition of the great painters was to make paintings that were like music, which was then…

I had an interesting day. I was in the studio with a group of musicians, who shall remain nameless, and I said to them…