Windows 95 和電子 Ambient 作曲家 Brian Eno 的二三事

by Zhi

2015.09.08

不知道還有沒有 “骨灰” 級玩家，還記得 20 年前 Windows 95 呢？當時 Windows 95 是劃時代的全圖像化設計，並且帶進多工處理架構到作業系統上。你還記得那經典的開機聲嗎？Windows 跟 Brian Eno 有什麼關係呢？

Brian Eno 是 Ambient 和極簡主義的先鋒，從在 Roxy 樂團時代到 “Ambient” 系列專輯推出，以及與 U2, Devo, David Bowie 等人合作，每次出手都是相當著名的作品，但是大家或許不知，Eno 最多人聽過的作品可能是 Windows 95 的開機聲音！

Windows 95 開機聲音

Microsoft 為 Windows 95 製作相當抽象極簡的電視廣告

當時在 1995 年夏天推出的 Windows 95，成為家喻戶曉人人都使用的作業系統，而 Eno 的作品也在每次大家開機的時候不斷的被播放著，在 1996 年時一段專訪他談到了關於他當初製作這個開機聲音的構想：

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.

但到了 2009 年的時候，他卻用 Mac 做了一段相當諷刺的聲音，說他從來不會使用 PC 因為他不喜歡 PC。不過無論如何，Windows 95 的開機聲音已經成為了一個相當經典的象徵，而 Windows XP 的作曲家 Tom Ozanich 和 Bill Brown，Windows Vista 的 Robert Fripp 也同樣都廣為人知，一起回顧看看 Windows 開機聲音的演進吧～