Learn something new every day.



I had no idea that Brian Eno wrote the little Windows start-up ditty.



...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.



sfgate.com :: Q and A With Brian Eno