View source

From GenerativeArt

== Biography == Brian Eno. Born May 15th, 1948 as Brian Peter George St. John le Baptiste de la Salle Eno in Woodbridge Suffolk, England. He was raised a strict Catholic and later graduated from the Winchester Art School with a degree in Fine Art in 1969. He was interested in minimalist painting and influenced by minimalist composer Erik Satie. A quote from his Discreet Music album liner notes reads "I was trying to make a piece that could be listened to and yet could be ignored...perhaps in the spirit of Satie who wanted to make music that could 'mingle with the sound of the knives and forks at dinner.'" In 1971 he had a chance encounter with saxophonist Andy Mackay which leads to Eno joining the glam/art rock band Roxy Music as their keyboard and synthesizer player. In 1992, Brian Eno said of the event "As a result of going into a subway station and meeting Andy, I joined Roxy Music, and, as a result of that, I have a career in music. If I'd walked ten yards farther, on the platform, or missed that train, or been in the next carriage, I probably would have been an art teacher now." He left Roxy Music in 1973 after their first two albums due to differences with the lead singer Brian Ferry and boredom with the rock band touring routine. Afterwards, Eno started a solo career and recorded multiple electronic pop albums with some hints of minimalist ambient music. At the same time he was experimenting with unique recording techniques on a collaboration with Robert Fripp (of King Crimsom fame) where they utilized a "Time Lag Accumulator" tape-delay feedback system developed in the early 1960's by minimalist composer Terry Riley and also used in a 17 minute composition entitled "It's Gonna Rain" by Steve Reich. Fripp and Eno recorded an album entitled "(No Pussyfooting)" which incorporated the tape-delay mechanism; this technique is referred to by some as 'Frippertronics'. In January 1975, Eno was involved in a taxicab accident and was confined to bed for a time. His friend brought him a record of 18th century harp music to listen while he was recuperating. Brian Eno states in the Discreet Music liner notes that "After she had gone, and with some considerable difficulty, I put on the record. Having laid down, I realized that the amplifier was set at an extremely low level, and that one channel of the stereo had failed completely. Since I hadn't the energy to get up and improve matters, the record played on almost inaudibly. This presented what was for me a new way of hearing music - as part of the ambience of the environment just as the colour of the light and the sound of the rain were parts of that ambience." This is where he got is inspiration for Discreet Music in which he explores two different methods of creating an ambient music experience where he plays mostly a passive role in the creation of the music. Eno goes on to create many more ambient albums though the late 1970's and into the 80's and is widely considered to have coined the term "ambient music". He also collaborates with many other artists such as David Bowie, David Byrne, Phil Collins, members of The Velvet Underground, Sonic Youth, Philip Glass, and Bill Bruford. During this time, Eno is also sought after as a record producer and he goes on to produce albums for Devo, the Talking Heads, Ultravox, U2, and others. In 1994, Brian Eno is approached by Microsoft to produce the Windows 95 start-up sound which is 6 seconds in length. Eno said of the experience "I got completely into this world of tiny, tiny little pieces of music. I was so sensitive to microseconds at the end of this that it really broke a logjam in my own work. Then when I'd finished that and I went back to working with pieces that were like three minutes long, it seemed like oceans of time." In 1996, Eno collaborated with Pete and Tim Cole to create the SSEYO Koan generative music system. He used this system to fully create his album entitled "Generative Music 1". Speaking on the Koan software Eno says that it allows "a composer to control, not one, but one hundred and fifty, musical and sonic parameters, within which the computer then improvises (as wind improvises the wind chimes)." Pete and Time Cole have since gone on to form the company Intermorphic which makes a new generative software package entitled Noatikl which is largely based on the original Koan software. Brian Eno has since gone on to produce records for Paul Simon, James, Grace Jones, and Coldplay's fourth album in 2007, and U2's most recent album "No Line on the Horizon". Brian Eno also made the procedurally-generated music for the video game Spore in 2008. That same year he also collaborated with Peter Chilvers on a generative music iPhone and iTouch app called Bloom and later others alled Trope and Air. == Generative Art Connections == Brian Eno has used multiple methods to create generative music. His first method involves using a tape-delay system in which two Revox A77 reel-to-reel tape recorders were employed. From wikipedia: "The two machines are configured so that the tape travels from the supply reel of the first machine to the take-up reel of the second, thereby allowing sound recorded by the first machine to be played back some time later on the second. The audio of the second machine is routed back to the first, causing the delayed signal to repeat while new audio is mixed in with it. The amount of delay (usually 3 to 5 seconds) is controlled by increasing or reducing the distance between the machines." On "Discreet Music" Eno used this apparatus and his "degree of participation in what is subsequently did was limited to (a) providing an input (in this case, two simple and mutually compatible melodic lines of different duration stored on a digital recall system) and (b) occasionally altering the timbre of the synthesizer's output by means of a graphic equalizer." On the back side of the Discreet Music LP, Eno achieved similar results to those above but by employing different methods. Instead of using a tape-delay system to overlay various layers and phases of music, he used a rule-based method. Eno describes it best in his liner notes from Discreet Music: "Another way of satisfying the interest in self-regulating and self generating systems is exemplified in the 3 variations on the Pachelbel Canon. . . In this case the 'system' is a group of performers with a set of instructions - and the 'input' is the fragment of Pachelbel. Each variation takes a small section of the score (two or four bars) as its starting point, and permutates the players' parts such that they overlay each other in ways not suggest by the original score." He further explains it "In 'Fullness of Wind' each player's tempo is decreased, the rate of decrease governed by the pitch of his instrument (bass - slow). 'French Catalogues' groups together sets of notes and melodies with time directions gathered from other parts of the score. In 'Brutal Ardour' each player has a sequence of notes related to those of the other players, but the sequences are of different lengths so that the original relationships quickly break down." Eno used these techniques on most of his ambient music. He referred to it in a talk he gave in 1996 on generative music comparing it to the visual moirÇ pattern that is created with two overlapping grid patterns. He futher explains how he employed it on his album "Ambient 1": "Music for Airports, at least one of the pieces on there, is structurally very, very simple. There are sung notes, sung by three women and my self. One of the notes repeats every 23 1/2 seconds. It is in fact a long loop running around a series of tubular aluminum chairs in Conny Plank's studio. The next lowest loop repeats every 25 7/8 seconds or something like that. The third one every 29 15/16 seconds or something. What I mean is they all repeat in cycles that are called incommensurable -- they are not likely to come back into sync again." The generative Koan software that he used in the 90's used the same principles as his simple rules-based music but expanded on it by altering countless more parameters than simply pitch, duration and phase. Eno says it best in his 1996 talk: "There are rules concerning harmony, that is to say, and a second harmony, play a flat fifth harmony. There are rules concerning how it would move from note to note. Will it move in big steps, or small steps. . .There are a hundred and fifty of these kinds of rules. They govern major considerations like the basic quality of the piece to quite minor ones like exactly how the note wobbles." == Generative Works == This is by no means a complete list. Most of Brian Eno's albums could be considered "generative". For a complete list of works see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Eno_discography 1973 - (No Pussyfooting) -with Robert Fripp 1975 - Discreet Music 1975 - Evening Star -with Robert Fripp 1977 - Before and After Science 1978 - Ambient 1: Music for Airports 1978 - Music for Films 1980 - Ambient 2: The Plateaux of Mirror 1982 - Ambient 4: On Land 1983 - Apollo: Atmospheres and Soundtracks 1992 - Nerve Net 2005 - Another Day on Earth == Quotes and Bibliography == "Since I have always preferred making plans to executing them, I have gravitated towards situations and systems that, once set into operation, could create music with little or no intervention on my part. That is to say, I tend towards the roles of planner and programmer, and then become an audience to the results." - Brian Eno, liner notes for Descreet Music, September 1975 "Ambient Music must be able to accommodate many levels of listening attention without enforcing one in particular; it must be as ignorable as it is interesting." - Brian Eno, liner notes for Ambient 1: Music for Airports, September 1978 "Some very basic forms of generative music have existed for a long time, but as marginal curiosities. Wind chimes are an example, but the only compositional control you have over the music they produce is in the original choice of notes that the chimes will sound. Recently, however, out of the union of synthesizers and computers, some much finer tools have evolved. Koan Software is probably the best of these systems, allowing a composer to control, not one, but one hundred and fifty, musical and sonic parameters, within which the computer then improvises (as wind improvises the wind chimes). The works I have made with this system symbolize, to me, the beginning of a new era of music. Until a hundred years ago, every musical event was unique: music was ephemeral and unrepeatable, and even classical scoring couldn't guarantee precise duplication. Then came the gramophone record, which captured particular performances, and made it possible to hear them identically, over and over again. But now, there are three alternatives: live music, recorded music, and generative music. Generative music enjoys some of the benefits of both its ancestors. Like live music, it is always different. Like recorded music, it is free of time-and-place limitations - you can hear it when and where you want. I really think it is possible that our grandchildren will look at us in wonder and say: 'You mean you used to listen to exactly the same thing over and over again?'" - Brian Eno, 1996 on generative music == External Links == http://www.sonicstate.com/articles/article.cfm?id=110 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Eno http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=10:knfixqq5ldte http://music.hyperreal.org/artists/brian_eno/ http://www.inmotionmagazine.com/eno1.html (a must read) == Credits == This entry was written by Brent Musat

Return to Brian Eno.