A Conversation With Brian Eno About Ambient Music

Ask anyone who knows of him and his work and they'll all tell you the same thing, he's an inspiration. He talks a lot of sense about things that matter but without coming across as your stereotypical arrogant artist, which is one reason why I look up to him. 

Pitchfork recently posted an article titled 'A Conversation With Brian Eno About Ambient Music' and after having a read I feel like a took a lot from it in terms of being an artist and how we should all approach our work. To me, he's someone that stands out because of how different he is to your typical producer because as Phillip, editor of the article, puts it "the 68-year-old has made an entire career out of turning convention on its head". In an industry saturated with people try and wanting to do the same thing, unconventional ways are exactly what makes you better than the others; taking risks, being different, being original. This is something that I think stands true within my field of design specifically, but design on the whole also because as Herman Melville puts it 'its better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation'. (which has also just become my new favourite quote).

Having been a producer of music for many years now, he's grown to work in a particular way when it comes to producing the music itself, like most people do within their field of work. But this one stood out to me as being particularly effective in theory, I mean if it works for him it's definitely something I should consider. In reference to his studio habits when producing his music he said:

"As a maker, you tend to do too much, because you’re there with all the tools and you keep putting things in. As a listener, you’re happy with quite a lot less."

This is something that really resonated with me because this stands true with all art forms. We have it in our head that we need to keep bashing something and putting everything we can into a piece, but yet the moment we step back and put ourselves into an observer's shoes, we soon realise that at times we're just overcomplicating it. I'm sure we can all relate to this in some way, me especially because often there has been times when I've been told to revert to an old idea in a critique session for example because of having gone too far with the idea and overcomplicating matters for no necessary reason.

To link in with this idea of stepping back from a piece, Eno talked about sitting back and listening to a work in progress piece and observing it to listen to what works and what doesn't work within it. Although not given as direct advice, I definitely took it as that. One bad habit I have is trying to go from start to finish, from sketches to final product with a brief far too quickly. This means I can miss out on ideas or other perspectives to take with it all because I didn't allow time to sit back and observe or give it time and come back at a later date to see what about it works and what doesn't.

All in all, a very interesting article with the man himself giving out advice I'm sure we could all do with from time to time.
Link to article: http://pitchfork.com/features/interview/10023-a-conversation-with-brian-eno-about-ambient-music/?mbid=social_facebook