blissblogger
Well-known member
"Sometimes my contribution [as a record producer] might have been as minimal as just saying, 'Shall we stop for a few minutes?... And then of course, other times I work like a normal musician. I say, 'Why don’t we have a G major instead of that B minor' or whatever. In fact, I nearly always say that, 'Why don’t we have a major instead of a minor?' It’s part of my destroy-minor-chords crusade that has been going on for 50 years or so" - Brian Eno, in the LA Times.
Curious if any music-makers here want to take a guess at the thinking behind Eno's provocation here?
Presumably he's saying that the idea that minor chords are more subtle, emotionally complex, etc is a middlebrow viewpoint.
The only other time I have seen anything like this voiced is from this NYC group Band of Susans who had a wall of guitars sound - three or four guitars playing simple parts at top volume. Everything they did was major chords and unlike their contemporaries like Sonic Youth, they favored consonance as opposed to dissonance. So everything they did was noisy but uplifting, as can be seen from the title of their defining song "Hope Against Hope". Robert Poss the leader (and possibly one of the other guitarists) had been in Rhys Chatham's ensemble (many, many guitarists repetitively playing the same chords at deafening volume). Which came out of the downtown New York experimental scene (Chatham had been the director of The Kitchen at one point).
So I'm wondering if this anti-minor chord thing is a hallmark of minimalism - i.e. the kind of composers who Eno was influenced by, in fact.
Does Eno tend to avoid minor chords in his work?
Curious if any music-makers here want to take a guess at the thinking behind Eno's provocation here?
Presumably he's saying that the idea that minor chords are more subtle, emotionally complex, etc is a middlebrow viewpoint.
The only other time I have seen anything like this voiced is from this NYC group Band of Susans who had a wall of guitars sound - three or four guitars playing simple parts at top volume. Everything they did was major chords and unlike their contemporaries like Sonic Youth, they favored consonance as opposed to dissonance. So everything they did was noisy but uplifting, as can be seen from the title of their defining song "Hope Against Hope". Robert Poss the leader (and possibly one of the other guitarists) had been in Rhys Chatham's ensemble (many, many guitarists repetitively playing the same chords at deafening volume). Which came out of the downtown New York experimental scene (Chatham had been the director of The Kitchen at one point).
So I'm wondering if this anti-minor chord thing is a hallmark of minimalism - i.e. the kind of composers who Eno was influenced by, in fact.
Does Eno tend to avoid minor chords in his work?