
Brian Eno: Composers as Gardeners - GuiA
https://www.edge.org/conversation/brian_eno-composers-as-gardeners
======
hosh
Tangent:

I've been reading about Christopher Alexander's work, particularly his keynote
for the 1996 OOPSLA conference. Alexander introduced the idea of pattern
languages to architecture in the 70s, and it has influenced computer science.
However, reading further, it doesn't look like Alexander's deeper work ever
caught on: his follow up work (in The Nature of Order) speaks about things
that makes architecture more like a gardener.

Alexander talked about it in that OOPSLA keynote, how he and his collaborators
discovered pattern languages that guarantees cohesive design. By iterating it,
a design would emerge that is in harmony within context. He likens it that use
of pattern languages to DNA. (He then found 15 'deep patterns' in which all
pattern languages that guarantee cohesiveness in design shares ...) I
understood this to mean, the architecture is in the DNA, the "deep patterns",
while at the same time, the design are grown like a gardener. At that point,
there is no dichotomy of architect vs. gardener.

Ironic, I think, one of the most influential architects and philosopher was
speaking on things that got co-opted into reaffirming that dichotomy.
"Patterns" came to be used as a way of creating rigid, dead designs. I don't
know of many people practicing this in fullness in either building
architecture or software architecture.

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badmadrad
As someone who makes music from the bottom up. I find its not really a black
as white as bottom up vs top down. Sometimes I go into a composition with an
idea of what I want to do and the sound I want to create. However, I find in
the execution small nuances and details present themselves somehow completely
alter the creative direction. In short, unlike building a physical building
music is fluid enough to react to the the chaos and randomness of creativity
very elegantly.

~~~
thirteenfingers
Fellow composer here - I completely agree, and I suspect the great classical
composers often felt as much, that their own musical ideas led them in a
totally different direction than they originally intended.

My personal feeling about Eno's approach is that it almost deserves a
different label than "composing" \- maybe "incubating" (you know, like a
startup incubator). For me, and I suspect for a great many music lovers,
"composing" implies a process that may be evolutionary to some degree but is
still overseen and directed from beginning to end by a particular artist.
Contrast that with the case of traditional music from $REGIONAL_CULTURE where
the process is more truly evolutionary as songs are passed from one generation
of bards to another.

(I don't mean to say that Eno's approach to making music is somehow less
legitimate than any other. It just seems better described by some other word.)

~~~
TheOtherHobbes
Coincidentally I was pulling apart a generative music app when I saw this
post.

I think you make a very good point - which is that in the bigger picture,
music is inherently evolutionary in a way that generative music isn't.

Having some experience with generative apps, I know that they absolutely do
not make music spontaneously. You have to invent them, build them, and tune
them - all by hand/ear.

It's more like building an instrument - i.e. a machine - and tuning/debugging
it than cultivating a garden.

Music as a whole is much more free. When it's loose in a culture, it can
evolve in weird, unexpected directions that no individual composer would ever
be able to imagine, and no app today would come close to copying.

~~~
fenomas
What were you pulling apart?

I'm a couple of years into playing with generative music, and one of my big
problems is finding prior art to imitate...

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DonHopkins
Sauce Faucet is my all time favorite Heavy Metal Brian Eno Cover Band. (Well
actually, they did one cover album, and I don't know of any other Heavy Metal
Brian Eno Cover Bands, but it's uniquely awesome!)

[http://www.saucefaucet.com/tiger.html](http://www.saucefaucet.com/tiger.html)

30th Anniversary remake of Brian Eno's 1974 Classic!!!

Taking Tiger Mountain (by Strategy)

This is a heavy handed recreation of Brian Eno’s 1974 masterpiece. Oddly
enough, Eno was one of the first people to hear it, and commented "I am deeply
moved by your versions of my songs". "I like it very, very much!"

We were just making this cd for ourselves for the fun of it. We're big fans.
It's amazing how it's all worked out, and now you can hear it too!

These versions lack some of the finesse and subtleties of the original, but
retain the arrangements, and add a joyously aggressive rock edge.

It's as if we remade the whole album with me playing everything and Caroleen
singing. Yay!

It sure was a lot of fun to make. I hope you enjoy it too.

Please listen to Brian Eno's music.

Thanks to Mr. Eno for creating such a great collection of songs that have
endured the test of time, still great today.

A phone call from Eno:
[http://www.saucefaucet.com/enomessage.mp3](http://www.saucefaucet.com/enomessage.mp3)

Liner notes:
[http://www.saucefaucet.com/dug_notes.html](http://www.saucefaucet.com/dug_notes.html)

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beat
As an improvising musician, I think "composition" is viewed very narrowly,
through a classical lens. In classical music, the performer's duty is merely
to interpret the piece as closely as possible to what someone perceives to be
the composer's intent. But in improvisational music, the composition isn't an
explicit instruction for performance, but rather a framework within which the
performers are free to move. It's a set of constraints, agreed upon.

I don't think that's either architecture or gardening. It's more like
community-building.

~~~
thirteenfingers
Classical composer and performer here. You just hit upon the one aspect of my
chosen genre that drives me batshit insane.

I've had countless arguments with other performers about how rigid one has to
be when performing any given classical composition. I'm told over and over
again that, for example, Glenn Gould's unorthodox interpretations "aren't
musical", but when I press my interlocutors for a justification of that
statement, all they can offer is "it's not what the composer intended", which
only begs the question. Composers aren't infallible, and they definitely don't
always see or hear all the possibilities inherent in their own music.

The whole division-of-labor between composer and performer is, I think, both a
strength and a weakness in classical music. It's a strength because it's
allowed composers to concentrate on exploring the possibilities of musical
ideas and working out something marvelously and intricately crafted in
advance. It's a weakness because it encourages this hard-set absolute-textual-
fidelity mentality among performers, and discourages them from really leaving
their individual mark on a performance (unlike in jazz). The great classical
composers are among my heroes, but they weren't gods, and performers shouldn't
treat them as such.

~~~
Neeek
Weren't most big name composers from all "classical" periods prolific
improvisers also? Stories of Bach's fugue battles come to mind so I don't
think the two have to be mutually exclusive. I think it's more that
transcribed music is as close as we have to recorded music from periods before
vinyl which inevitably draws a certain crowd of purist. To me it feels like a
subculture within the classical space.

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smnscu
My favourite piece on Brain Eno from my favourite music reviewer:
[http://starling.rinet.ru/music/eno.htm](http://starling.rinet.ru/music/eno.htm)

> If there is anybody in this world who could really penetrate into the very
> nature of SOUND itself and analyze it with the sharpest scalpel, yet leaving
> no traces of rude treatment upon its delicate soul, it is Mr Brian Eno.

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nicklaf
I recently came across an improvement to a Frank Zappa quote that Butler
Lampson included in slide from a 2014 presentation titled "Hints and
Principles for Computer System Design".[1]

 _" [Data is not information, ] Information is not knowledge, Knowledge is not
wisdom, Wisdom is not truth, Truth is not beauty, Beauty is not love, Love is
not music and Music is THE BEST” --Frank Zappa_

I find it interesting that some of the greater computer architects decide to
spend their later years immersed more in music than in programming (L Peter
Deutsch comes to mind here).

[1] [https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/wp-
content/uploads/...](https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/wp-
content/uploads/2014/08/6-butlerlampson.pdf)

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centrinoblue
This echo's some thoughts I've had about application development lately
especially wrt TDD.

My preferred style of app. development is much more about exploring what is
possible and what works as opposed to implementing a fully fledged concept of
the finished application.

I find the application begins to take on it's finished state only after I have
had time to explore new ideas and techniques that I don't necessarily
understand completely when I begin.

TDD seems to be tailored towards the architectural / fully conceptualized
application whereas the gardening metaphor seems more appropriate for the way
I tend to approach app development. I find it counter-productive to try to
write tests for code before I even figure out what it will do yet. YMMV.

Thanks again Brian.

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swayvil
The #1 "gardening club" (generative art forum) on the planet if anybody's
interested : [http://reddit.com/r/generative](http://reddit.com/r/generative)

~~~
stevehiehn
nice link, thx

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smrtinsert
I agree with this statement. Whereas previously composers had to conceptualize
layering in their minds prior to hiring the orchestra to play it, composers
these days can select from an unlimited supply of synthesizer presets for
instant timbre and mood.

On one hand I think it contributes the diversity and range of modern music,
but at the other end it definitely enables some lazy music making.

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stevehiehn
I can relate to this. I often think musicians of the past looked to the future
for inspiration. It seems that many now look to just recreate the past. I
really believe that interactive procedural music is around the corner. I
predict once you can interact with music in settings like VR/AR it will render
pop bands as we know them nearly obsolete.

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nyolfen
here's my favorite eno quote that i break out at any opportunity:

“Whatever you now find weird, ugly, uncomfortable and nasty about a new medium
will surely become its signature. CD distortion, the jitteriness of digital
video, the crap sound of 8-bit - all of these will be cherished and emulated
as soon as they can be avoided. It’s the sound of failure: so much modern art
is the sound of things going out of control, of a medium pushing to its limits
and breaking apart. The distorted guitar sound is the sound of something too
loud for the medium supposed to carry it. The blues singer with the cracked
voice is the sound of an emotional cry too powerful for the throat that
releases it. The excitement of grainy film, of bleached-out black and white,
is the excitement of witnessing events too momentous for the medium assigned
to record them.”

― Brian Eno, A Year With Swollen Appendices (1996)

~~~
hammock
I would add that the distortion, the voice crack, the grain of the image -
these bring the medium itself to light. Without them the medium is (more or
less) invisible. These defects represent the interaction, the connection
between a metaphysical work of art and the physical reality.

~~~
miceeatnicerice
Also - the glistening of jewellery.

~~~
DonHopkins
The spectacular blooming of a vidicon tube.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rs9wuaVV33I](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rs9wuaVV33I)

~~~
miceeatnicerice
Chastisement and reconfirmation in one glittering, bulging codpiece

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big_spammer
The relevant quote from this article is:

"we're so used to dignifying controllers that we forget to dignify
surrenderers."

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swayvil
My favorite Brian Eno song ever :
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K50nzcEhPKg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K50nzcEhPKg)

It's 3AM in fairyland

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bitwize
Ah, Edge.org, the Medium of the late nineties.

