microsoft asked brian eno for 3¼ seconds.

brian eno, who gave ambient music its name, wrote the windows 95 start-up sound when he’d run out of ideas.

he’d been working on his own music, and was, he said, “quite lost”.

then an agency working for microsoft sent him a list of adjectives: “optimistic, futuristic, sentimental, emotional”.

and at the bottom: “it must be three and a quarter seconds long”.

he thought it was funny, and an amazing thing to try. “it’s like making a tiny little jewel,” he said.

he made eighty-four little pieces, for microsoft to choose from.

one became the sound windows 95 played as it started.

years later, on bbc radio, he was asked if he’d written it on a pc. “no, i wrote it on a mac.”

making all those tiny pieces had broken a logjam in his own work.

when he went back to pieces three minutes long, they seemed like “oceans of time”.