The Oblique Strategies

Over 100 worthwhile dilemmas BRIAN ENO and PETER SCHMIDT

Make an exhaustive list of everything you might do and do the last thing on the list

It is quite possible (after all)

Oblique Strategies 1975, 1978, and 1979 Brian Eno/Peter Schmidt

Not building a wall but making a brick

Honor thy error as a hidden intention

Discover the recipes you are using and abandon them g

Would anybody want it?

Mute and continue

Take away the elements in y order of apparent nonimportance

Go to an extreme move back extreme, to a more comfortable place p

Accept advice

Remove ambiguities and convert to specifics p

Listen to the quiet voice

A line has two sides

Remove specifics and convert to ambiguities g

Turn it upside down

Question the heroic approach

Do nothing for as long as p possible

Faced with a choice, do both

Consult other sources -promising -unpromising p g p g

Use fewer notes

Listen in total darkness or in a darkness, very large room, very quietly y g , yq y

Always give yourself credit for having more than p g personality y

Emphasize differences

Simply a matter of work

Courage!

Do something boring

Use an old idea

Do the words need changing?

Look at a very small object object, look at its centre

Is it finished?

Go outside. Shut the door

Mechanicalise something idiosyncratic y

Fill every beat with something

The inconsistency principle

Reverse

Give the game away

Overtly resist change

Short circuit (example; a man eating p g peas with the idea that they will improve his virility shovels them straight into his lap) p)

Imagine the piece as a set of disconnected events

Revaluation (a warm feeling)

Ghost echoes

Tidy up

What mistakes did you make last time?

Disciplined self-indulgence

Don't break the silence

Don t Don't be afraid of things because they're easy to do y y

Be less critical more often

Bridges -build -burn

Intentions -credibility of credibility -nobility of -humility of y y

Infinitesimal gradations

Ask people to work against their better j g judgment

Work at a different speed

Towards the insignificant

You can only make one dot at a time

State the problem in words as clearly as p y possible

Is there something missing?

Give way to your worst impulse p

Go slowly all the way round the outside

Lowest common denominator

Are there sections? Consider transitions

The most important thing is the thing most easily forgotten g y g

Emphasize repetitions

Make a blank valuable by putting it in an exquisite frame p g q

Water

Allow an easement (an ( easement is the abandonment of a stricture)

Just carry on

Use an unacceptable colour

Simple subtraction

Tape your mouth

Change nothing and continue with immaculate consistency y

Look at the order in which you do things g

Decorate, decorate

Do we need holes?

Don t Don't stress one thing more than another

How would you have done it?

Get your neck massaged

Breathe more deeply

Be extravagant

Repetition is a form of change

Humanize something free of error

Is the intonation correct?

Use filters

Be dirty

What would your closest friend do?

You are an engineer

Make a sudden, destructive unpredictable action; incorporate

Into the impossible

Look closely at the most y embarrassing details and amplify them

Once the search is in progress, something will be found

What is the reality of the situation?

Feedback recordings into an acoustic situation

Cut a vital connection

Twist the spine

Don't be frightened of clichs

Disconnect from desire

Emphasize the flaws

Only one element of each kind

Assemble some of the elements in a group and treat the group

Do the washing up

Think of the radio

Take a break

Left channel, right channel channel channel, centre channel

Remember those quiet evenings g

Shut the door and listen from outside

Trust in the you of now

Children -speaking -singing

Only a part, not the whole

Retrace your steps

Always first steps

Define an area as 'safe' and safe use it as an anchor

You don't have to be ashamed don t of using y g your own ideas

Discard an axiom

From nothing to more than nothing g

Once the search is in progress, something will be found

Lost in useless territory

What are you really thinking about just now? j

Don t Don't be frightened to display y your talents

What are the sections sections of? Imagine a caterpillar moving

Destroy -nothing -the most nothing the important thing p g

Abandon normal instruments

Accretion

Use 'unqualified' people