During my break, I signed up for the course with Brian Eno, held by the School of Song, which has a fantastic community of songwriters and built a strong platform for working musicians to teach live workshops (like masterclass, but better). Continued education is a large part of my creative process, and the School of Song provided me with life changing content that I feel very grateful for, and I will always want to give them a shout out. Laura Marling is teaching their next workshop. I highly recommend!
What was so unexpected, I was selected to ask Brian Eno a question! The course had many people in attendance, over 1,000 - only 40 questions were asked, and they gave priority to famous musicians, long time attendees and past workshop teachers, so it was kind of cool odds to be up against.
I had spent a week thinking up a unique question I wanted to ask Brian Eno if given the opportunity. For some reason, I thought I might have the best chance during the last Q&A. I tuned into the first Q&A on January 8th, David Bowie’s birthday, watching with my niece from the playroom floor and submitted my question. 5-10 minutes into the call, they made me a panelist!
I was still watching with my niece from the playroom floor, because everyone had WFH meetings except me. The school didn’t say what order the questions would be asked in, and we didn’t know how long he would speak to each question - so I sat in limbo unsure if I had time to move or to pass my niece back to my sister. We managed to get set up in the kitchen, and within in seconds of them calling my name, my sister was able to take my niece — you can hear her babble at the start of my question, she’s very musical.
Brian Eno is a great teacher. It was really cool to get to speak with him and hear his thoughts. Someone posted their summarized notes of the Q&A to reddit, and I took a screenshot of my question and his answer.
The exact question I submitted was, “As a producer, how do you approach framing strengths and weaknesses while evolving the sound in a new direction? The Edge said you taught him pragmatism.”
I asked my question because as an autodidact and music teacher, I am constantly thinking about my students’ (and my own) strengths and weaknesses and how to work within them and what to strategically grow and lean into. I think if more people understood how to work within their limits, their unique container, they would make more art.
To elaborate on and illustrate what he said, another great example is Sister Act’s Oh Maria.
The arranger used all the actresses’s unique voices to illustrate Whoopi Goldberg’s character’s creative genius and ability to work what she’d been given, but especially Kathy Najimy’s voice at 2:46 and at 3:26. A part of the plot, Kathy’s character has a shrill high note she likes to sing. So they featured it as a note for building tension through the key change and a final trumpet like note in the song’s climax.
What Brian Eno was talking about is the way artists think: the creative problem solving skill of working with what you have, and to pragmatically observe the qualities of what something is, and what those qualities can contribute - and use it effectively to make something. What role can it play?
When I graduated college, I made a list of musicians I admired, which included Brian Eno and The Talking Heads, and they all had either lived in NYC/Brooklyn or gone to Art School. I didn’t have the money to go back to school, so I moved to Brooklyn.
Songwriting and recording being accessible to everyone is a relatively new medium. Art has been around for centuries, and they have the creative practice baked into how they teach it and pass it down. Songwriting doesn’t yet have the creative process in it the widespread way art does.
When I was stretching and refining my creative practice, I turned to the artists in my life and learned from the way they think about their creative process. I talked to my artist friends, and I watched a lot of Art21 videos and learned about TAB (Teaching Artistic Behavior).
I wrote 52 songs in 2022 and 59 songs in 2023 when I looked at songwriting through an artist’s lens. I created a “How To Write A Song Now” workbook-zine about what I learned and printed 12 copies and gave it away for free.
It was very cool and affirming to hear Brian Eno speak to and elaborate on what I learned and am still learning in my lived experience as he explained his own creative process.
Labyrinth
The song-experiment I’m sharing today is called Labyrinth. I wrote it stream of conscious in a flow state on January 12th, 2025 using the instructions Brian gave for the second writing assignment.
Odd meter
Chords: G & D and to flip a coin for their order
Lyrics: he gave a list of random English lines from a Spanish translation book for us to make a song from
I started making a beat and chose 7/8, and laid down a foundation of G - D movements, picking a synth. I didn’t toss a coin like he said, but did what felt good with G-D and repeated it. I pressed record and improvised the lyrics from the list + melody off the cuff in one take - the vocal in the recording is the original idea, unedited.
The lyrics I improvised are:
My brother, You can count on me x2
The window, oh, and the echo
My brother, You can count on me
The window
“My brother” stuck out first. “You can count on me” was directly below it and caught my eye. “The window” was below that and also caught my eye. I randomly sang “the echo” and repeated it.
I built the rest of the track around the vocal. I heard the piano riff and quickly wrote it out, and then I kept hearing a saxophone underneath it, but I didn’t have any good saxophone sounds, so I found a baritone oboe instead.
I finished it in 30 minutes. I spent about 3-4 hours over a few days tuning up the parts I was hearing and messing with the octaves and panning. Then I put it through Landr’s AI mastering.
It was basically a David Bowie themed month, and a few days later, I watched Labyrinth for the first time. I realized the lyrics I sang fit the plot, and Sarah didn’t get a song in the movie.
Sarah devotedly worked to save her brother “my brother you can count on me”, and the goblin king turns into an owl and flies into/out of the bedroom window as he steals her brother “the window”, and I imagine “the echo” to be some sort of sentient feeling. The 7/8 groove was like the confusing and unsettling labyrinth maze of the castle.
Anyway - I really like it. I think it’s fun to share. I’ve been practicing production in songs I wrote 8 and 7 years ago, it’s fun to hear the contrast in what I’m composing organically right now.
Thank you for reading!!
All the songs on Organic Noise are for listening purposes only via the Substack platform, unless you have my written permission, and they are not to be used in any unauthorized capacity.