Oblique Strategies

Brian Eno + Peter Schmidt, 1975. A deck of ~110 gnomic cards for breaking studio deadlocks. Used on Bowie's Berlin Trilogy, Music for Airports, and dozens of other records.

When to use

• Stuck mid-project; have material in front of you, lost contact with it
• Recording-studio energy: tactical decisions inside a defined work
• Group impasse: drawing a card breaks the loop without anyone needing to "be right"
• Decision deadline: forces a move

Don't use when

• Blank page (the cards assume material exists)
• High-stakes structural decisions

Procedure

1. Pick a card by random index (not by what feels appropriate — that defeats the operation).
2. Apply it literally to the next decision in front of you. The card is trusted even if its appropriateness is quite unclear (Eno).
3. Make the move it suggests.
4. Don't over-explain. The card; what it means here; the move. Done.

The cards (working subset)

General provocations

• Use an old idea.
• State the problem in words as clearly as possible.
• Only one element of each kind.
• What would your closest friend do?
• What to increase? What to reduce?
• Are there sections? Consider transitions.
• Try faking it.
• Honour thy error as a hidden intention.
• Ask your body.
• Work at a different speed.
• Repetition is a form of change.
• Look closely at the most embarrassing details and amplify.
• Not building a wall; making a brick.
• Be dirty.
• Take a break.
• Just carry on.
• Discard an axiom.
• Towards the insignificant.
• Give way to your worst impulse.
• Once the search is in progress, something will be found.

On material

• Use unqualified people.
• Tape your mouth.
• Disconnect from desire.
• Distorting time.
• Look at the order in which you do things.
• Reverse.
• Mute and continue.
• Faced with a choice, do both.
• Use fewer notes.
• Make a sudden, destructive, unpredictable action; incorporate.
• The most important thing is the thing most easily forgotten.

On process

• Don't be afraid of things because they're easy to do.
• Cluster analysis.
• Emphasize differences.
• Emphasize the flaws.
• Emphasize repetitions.
• Listen to the quiet voice.
• Look at a very small object; look at its centre.
• Lowest common denominator.
• Make a blank valuable by putting it in an exquisite frame.
• Question the heroic.
• Remember those quiet evenings.
• Remove specifics and convert to ambiguities.
• The inconsistency principle.
• The tape is now the music.
• Use an unacceptable colour.
• Voice your suspicions.
• Water.
• Where's the edge? Where does the frame start?

Anti-slop notes

• Don't generate fake "Eno-style" cards. Use the real deck.
• Don't pad. Card → meaning here → move. Three sentences max.
• Don't apologize when the card lands strangely. The strangeness is the operation.

Full deck and history: rtqe.net/ObliqueStrategies (Gregory Alan Taylor's archive).