Watch Brian Eno Explain Why Making Music Is Like Gardening

The ambient master has some interesting thoughts about music production…and gardening.

Did you know the idea behind one of Brian Eno’s biggest musical inventions, “generative” music, is taken from the act of planting seeds? Many of his ambient masterworks like Discreet Music, Neroli and Reflections, use the technique of structured randomness to create beautiful worlds of sound. Just like gardening, the general principle of generative music is to use the natural dynamics of a system to create surprising new environments.

Eno’s ideas go so well with the philosophy of gardening that it should come to no surprise that the UK composer has actually spoken on the topic. Talking at the Serpentine Gallery in London, Eno discusses how both gardening and his approach to music harness new approaches to order and disorder, and remove the “creator” from the position of total control over the creative process.  As he says, his approach to music was as “somebody who stood at the bottom of a process, who carefully planted some rather well-selected seeds…and watched them turn into something.” Watch the speech below and read the transcript here.

https://vimeo.com/55969912

Read more: Listen to Brian Eno open up in this funny two-hour interview