Brian Eno: Improvising Within The Rules : NPR:
Mr. ENO: Yes. Well, I'm often looking at different ways of creating sort of structures within which improvisations can take place to direct them somewhere interesting. Because the problem with improvisations is that, A, people tend to play within their comfort zone, so - the best things are achieved in a state of surprise, actually. And the second thing is I want to get set up ways of getting people to shut up sometimes. 'Cause the other big problem with improvisation is that everybody plays all the time unless told not to.
So, there are lots and lots of ways of approaching both of these issues. One of them is sort of by role playing, by saying, let's imagine a kind of music that hasn't yet existed.
(Soundbite of music)
Mr. ENO: I imagine that we are living 20 years from now or 50 years from now and we're reading a review. I often write the review of a concert that we're supposed to have seen or has happened where we've seen 25 North African Arabic musicians who have a Japanese bandleader. And they're playing a new kind of music called neagata(ph) machine techno, which appeared in the suburbs of Tokyo in the year 2020. And then I make a description of what that music is like and then we try to make it.
(Soundbite of music)
Mr. ENO: So, sometimes I have quite sort of involved frames that we are working within. But other times very simple ones, like the rule which says you can only use the extremes of your instrument, top or bottom 10 percent of its range. Or you can only play when so and so is playing, when this other person's playing; when he stops you stop. Just little rules like that, and they really aren't sacred in any way. They're very much ad hoc and they're really there to push us into a new place.
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