For the recording sessions of Music for Airports, Eno’s approach involved using several small pre-recorded snippets of music; single notes or 3-4 note phrases, mostly piano, choir and synth. The phrases are all set to loop at different rates, determined by the length of tape they are recorded on. The differing tape lengths played simultaneously cause the relationship between the musical phrases to constantly shift. On each round, phrases will intersect differently, sometimes appearing to coalesce into new phrases and variations on existing themes. Eno himself puts it best:

“The particular piece I’m referring to was done by using a whole series of very long tape loops, like fifty, sixty, seventy feet long. There were twenty-two loops. One loop had just one piano note on it. Another one would have two piano notes. Another one would have a group of girls singing one note, sustaining it for ten seconds. There are eight loops of girls’ voices and about fourteen loops of piano. I just set all of these loops running and let them configure in whichever way they wanted to, and in fact the result is very, very nice. The interesting thing is that it doesn’t sound at all mechanical or mathematical as you would imagine. It sounds like some guy is sitting there playing the piano with quite intense feeling. The spacing and dynamics of “his” playing sound very well organized. That was an example of hardly interfering at all.“

Music for Airports liner notes contains a graphic score designed by Eno himself. Not a trained musician, and unable to read or write sheet music, Eno instead used graphic symbols to denote each musical phrase, or loop. Look closely and you can see individual symbols on each row, each spaced apart differently, reflecting the recording technique used to craft the album.