Brian Eno on composing the startup music for Windows

[0rganism]

Interesting take on a very different sort of composition:

'The idea came up at the time when I was completely bereft of ideas. I'd been working on my own music for a while and was quite lost, actually. And I really appreciated someone coming along and saying, "Here's a specific problem -- solve it."

'The thing from the agency said, "We want a piece of music that is inspiring, universal, blah- blah, da-da-da, optimistic, futuristic, sentimental, emotional," this whole list of adjectives, and then at the bottom it said "and it must be 3 1/4 seconds long."

'I thought this was so funny and an amazing thought to actually try to make a little piece of music. It's like making a tiny little jewel.

'In fact, I made 84 pieces. 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.'

[no name no slogan]

1. Huh. Didn't know that was Eno.

What version of Windows did he do the music for (NT, 95, 98, 2000, Me, XP)?

[0rganism]

2. W95, IIRC

I don't think he did any other versions.

Supposedly, he composed it on a Mac. :P

[no name no slogan]

3. Heh! That figures.

The only thing musically I've ever done on Win95 happened ten years ago, on one of the early HD recording systems called "Session 8". It cost five figures, and gave you a whopping 8 tracks of pristine, 16-bit digital sound.

Those were the days...