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How Music Works Hardcover – September 12, 2012
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Acting as historian and anthropologist, raconteur and social scientist, he searches for patternsand shows how those patterns have affected his own work over the years with Talking Heads and his many collaborators, from Brian Eno to Caetano Veloso. Byrne sees music as part of a larger, almost Darwinian pattern of adaptations and responses to its cultural and physical context. His range is panoptic, taking us from Wagnerian opera houses to African villages, from his earliest high school reel-to-reel recordings to his latest work in a home music studio (and all the big studios in between).
Touching on the joy, the physics, and even the business of making music, How Music Works is a brainy, irresistible adventure and an impassioned argument about music’s liberating, life-affirming power.
- Print length352 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherMcSweeney's
- Publication dateSeptember 12, 2012
- Dimensions9.1 x 7.1 x 1.6 inches
- ISBN-101936365537
- ISBN-13978-1936365531
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Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com Review
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Review
Kirkus (Starred Review)
"In this fascinating meditation, Talking Heads frontman Byrne (Bicycle Diaries) explores how social and practical context, more than individual authorship, shaped music making in history and his own career... his chapters on Heads recording sessions are some of the most insightful accounts of musical creativity yet penned. The result is a surprising challenge to the romantic cliché of musical genius... Byrne’s erudite and entertaining prose reveals him to be a true musical intellectual, with serious and revealing things to say about his art."
Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)
David Byrne is a brilliantly original, eccentric rock star, and he has written a book to match his protean talents ... What’s best about [it] is that Byrne concentrates on his own experience, from a teenage geek splicing layers of guitar feedback on his father’s tape recorder (he had a mild self-diagnosed case of Asperger’s syndrome, he writes) to arty if neo-primitive rock star with the early Talking Heads at CBGB to increasingly sophisticated, globe-wandering art-rocker, happily collaborating with all manner of world musicians and pop-technological innovators.”John Rockwell, The New York Times Book Review
"Endlessly fascinating, insightful, and intelligent."
June Sawyers, Booklist (Starred Review)
"[How Music Works is] the book [Byrne] was born to write. I could make a good case for calling this How Art Works or even How Everything Works."Cory Doctorow, Boing Boing
"Byrne explores a whole symphony of argument in this extraordinary book with the precise, technical enthusiasm you'd expect from the painfully bright art school-educated son born in Scotland, raised in the States of an electrical engineer, occasionally mopping his fevered brow in the crestfallen manner of a 19th-century poet... It's fascinating."Mark Ellen, The Guardian
"'How Music Works,' is as engaging as it is eclectic: a buoyant hybrid of social history, anthropological survey, autobiography, personal philosophy, and business manual, sometimes on the same page... We’re changed. Even for the most ardent explorers (and Byrne is one) this is some seriously unknowable territory."The Boston Globe
By all accounts, Byrne’s style and energy are as apparent on the page as on the stage.”Kathryn Schulz, New York Magazine
[Byrne] wraps his keen cultural insights in a sheath of self-aware subjectivity and unapologetic personal conviction, with just the right amount of conversational candor”Maria Popova, Brain Pickings
"How Music Works is a good read for anyone interested in art and technology and how creativity has been transformed in the digital age."Bryant Frazer, Studio Daily
Truly dazzling, covering a staggering scope of topics ... Almost every page [is] a song.” Jason Heller, The Onion A.V. Club
In the course of How Music Works, Byrne integrates his discussion of all the issues of recording and live performance into a personal account of his own career. Although this book stops short of turning into a memoir or autobiography, fans seeking a behind-the-scenes account of Byrne's life and times won't be disappointed ... An essential guide to performance and recording, honest and up-to-date, and filled with both practical advice and insightful commentary.”Ted Gioia, The San Francisco Chronicle
Bob Dylan, Keith Richards, Jay Z, even Daniel Lanois have all given us books in recent years. And they’ve all been interesting and worth reading. But none of them is as good as David Byrne’s book ... He weaves his account of the evolution of music from animals to humans and the history of changes in the way music studios work into the most accessible and unpretentious narrative of such a story that I have yet come across.”David Rothenberg, The Globe and Mail
A decidedly generous book welcoming, informal, digressive, full of ideas and intelligence and one has the pleasant sense that Byrne is speaking directly to the reader, sharing a few confidences he has picked up over the years. ” Tim Page, The Washington Post
An accomplished celebration of an ever-evolving art form that can alter how we look at ourselves and the world... a meticulously researched and hugely absorbing history of music”Fiona Sturges, The Independent
An entertaining and erudite book, from a figure who has spent his career proving that those two adjectives can happily coexist ... The chapter on the economics of music should be required reading for all 16-year-olds tinkering with their GarageBand software and dreaming of dollar signs, while the section on How to Make A Scene” is nothing less than a manual for urban regeneration through pop culture ... A serious, straightforward account of an art form that also manages to be inspiring. You could do a lot worse than use it as a thinking-outside-the-box management manual or a college primer. Art and Society 101: Stop Making Sense.”Peter Aspden, Financial Times
David Byrne deserves great praise for How Music Works. It is as accessible as pop yet able to posit deep and startlingly original thoughts and discoveries in almost every paragraph ... This book will make you hear music in a different way.Oliver Keens, The Telegraph
Smart and impeccably researched ... A text to read and pick through time and again ... all this is what you’d expect, and hope for, from the foremost heady apologist of pop music. It’s a must-read for anyone who has ever felt moved by a catchy tune and wanted more.”James Ramsay, BlackBook
About the Author
Product details
- Publisher : McSweeney's (September 12, 2012)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 352 pages
- ISBN-10 : 1936365537
- ISBN-13 : 978-1936365531
- Item Weight : 2.44 pounds
- Dimensions : 9.1 x 7.1 x 1.6 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #437,938 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #136 in Music Business (Books)
- #139 in Music Appreciation (Books)
- #875 in Music History & Criticism (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author
A cofounder of the musical group Talking Heads, David Byrne has also released several solo albums in addition to collaborating with such noted artists as Twyla Tharp, Robert Wilson, and Brian Eno. His art includes photography and installation works and has been published in five books. He lives in New York and he recently added some new bike racks of his own design around town, thanks to the Department of Transportation.
Photo © Catalina Kulczar-Marin
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Clearly at age 60 David Byrne has had a lot of experience in the world of music and has had a lot of time to think about it and he has graciously decided to share his thoughts here.
The book starts out as a sort of anthropological look at music in general, then continues as he explains how the actual space in which the music is created (a small tavern, a concert hall, or a forest, for example) influences what type of music is produced. Or how technology changes and influences music.
There is quite a bit of musical autobiography here as he discusses his work with Talking Heads, and subsequent projects. Personally the first five Talking Heads albums (especially #1 and #2) were and are incredibly important and influential in my own personal history, and even in my development from a youth to an adult; but after the fifth album I moved in a different direction musically than Byrne did and honestly, unless I heard it on the radio, I have never even listened to his subsequent works - so it was interesting read about them here.
As the book progresses Byrne explains much about the technical processes involved in recording music and the business side of music - that is to say different ways in which the music is marketed and sold. It's all fascinating, the writing is just right - I never actually thought "Oh, get over yourself!" even during the autobiographical sections, (this demonstrates the perfection of his writing style), the illustrations were interesting, and physically the hard cover McSweeney's edition is in itself a work of art.
This is interesting - I recommended this book to my Dad, who is 76 years old. He knows who David Byrne and Talking Heads are and he never really liked them at all (but I know he got to hear a lot of their music, probably against his will, as I lived in his house during my five year infatuation with Talking Heads) but he loved the book stating he thought Byrne was a genius!
Actually I will just go ahead and quote his email review - I don't think he will mind:
"I've mentioned this book, recommended to me by Michael, to each of you whom I've seen in the past week or so. I found "How Music Works" by David Byrne to be fascinating and it's opened up to me new ways of looking at music in the world. I'll leave it to the Amazon description which I've included to give you a general overview. I have never been a 'Talking Heads' fan but that doesn't matter while reading this thing. This guy is a genius and his observations are very stimulating, thought provoking. He knows whereof he speaks and, though I didn't grasp some topics. I am really glad I tried."
He is also a thoughtful human that transcends music into enlightened thoughts and brilliant ideas about life. So inspiring!
Many people may not be as interested as I am, understandably. That is a warning that it is not for most. It is for dedicated, earnest people who have a passion to learn more about David Byrne. It is definitely not a casual read. Listening to his music is a wonderful way to experience his life inspiration too.
It’s a longer read than I thought and complex. However, it was pleasurable and worth the time for me.. I’m thrilled to find this book. I may read it again in the near future. It’s a keeper!
There are a very few mentions of outdated technologies as it changes so quickly, but that is easy to disregard.
It is his biography up to the time that this was written. It is about the evolution of his career, influences, experiences and creative processes for him and others. There is a deep connection about how he was inspired to collaborate with other musicians and find meanings from different cultures. Later in the book he addresses the complexity of the music business. Throughout the book I was able to better understand him.
The second chapter is an musical autobiographical section describing the evolution of his music and stage attire over the succeeding eras of rock. In his world travels, his encounter with Japanese and Balinese traditional music and theatre art had a profound influence on the development of his stage craft. One of his suits clearly had classic Japanese origins.
Chapters 3 and 4 return to musicology with an expansion of the role of technology, recording and playback. The historical account is amusing when considering the delusions of reality instilled by each new device on the unconditioned and uneducated ear. The ideal of recordings was and remains an actual live performance, particularly among classical music fans; but the alternative worthy philosophy is the electronic creation of uniquely shaped sound itself, as with tape editing, synthesizers and digital programming, and electric instrument design. Oddly, computerized editing of recordings to achieve perfection in tempo, pitch, and so forth proved imperfect to the ear and lacking in warmth and positive emotional value. Byrne does not elaborate in later chapters, but recordings (and its transmission over radio) changed society by uniting peoples, speeding musical development, and (for instance, in Brazil) of overturning governmental policy of approved musical forms. I do not share Bryne's lament about the calculus-like wave sectioning of digital CDs over analogue LPs because of psychoacoutics, an aging ear, and the fact that speakers are yet analogue in their cone movement and shaping. Of interest is Byrne's belief that we are now so awash in music, indeed private music on personal .mp3 players and smart phones, that live performances are becoming more important, as that increasingly rare commodity, silence. I enjoyed Bryne's relating, in brief James Burke fashion, the connection of the Chinese mouth organ, the shen, to digital computers.
Chapter 5 is again more personal with Bryne's experiences in a recording studio and the art, engineering, and strategy of creating an album. Entire books have been written and documentary films have focused on this subject, but the use of computers on mixing boards is a new phenomenon.
The following chapter discusses his collaborations. He had already mentioned his albums with Brian Eno, but now Byrne moves beyond Talking Heads by developing music with Caetano Veloso and choreographer Twyla Tharp and creating with Norman Cook [Fatboy Slim] a theatrical piece on the Philippine's Imelda Marcos.
Chapter 7 is all about the business and financial side of the music industry. There are pie charts. He explains the very recent changes in industry, when musicians can edit and mix their music on their laptop computers and distribute it via digital download and cloud companies and promote themselves with YouTube videos and have kickstarter campaigns to get public underwriters. The giant brick & mortar record shops (Tower, Borders, Virgin Megastore) are no more and the power of music labels are severely diminished. This chapter should be read by anyone considering how to create and promote their own music; he describes various business models.
The next chapter furthers practical advice on the choice of venues, song material, the courage to be different, responsibility to band members and fellow musicians, and so on. It is a peculiar chapter for such a book.
Chapter 9 pulls back to a shotgun approach critical of musical elitism and lauding the amateur musician. In the days before mass-marketed recordings, there was a piano in the parlor. Even in the 1960s, every kid (yours truly included) had an acoustic guitar, singing folk songs. Until very recently, courses in music appreciation were dedicated only to classical music and rarely jazz. Governmental and corporate funding erected costly symphony halls and museums. Byrne seems to ignore the reality that these measures were to preserve and encourage endangered music styles and that the masses are doing fine in supporting pop and avant-garde culture, filling stadiums and arenas and small local music joints. Symphony halls are not restricted to dead European composers; I have heard contemporary American, Japanese, Argentinian, Iranian, and other world composers. Still, the point is taken when middle and high schools do not offer music and art classes and other nations support amateur musicians, music clubs, and youth bands and orchestras. Music and art should not be passive art forms.
The final chapter covers music as a human, biological, and indeed metaphysical essence. This historical and anthropological section sketches prehistorical, ancient, and early modern musical instruments, musical sciences, and philosophies. Everything vibrates, from atoms to planets. He does not include it, but string theory of matter involves vibrating strands of energy. Bryne briefly mentions the differing scales of music across the planet, the relationship of language and speech to music, neurological imprinting of music and its performance, music in religious rituals [Taliban and similar zealots aside], the natural ambient music appreciated by John Cage and the composed ambient music of Satie, Eno, and Feldman, and various other aspects of music. Bryne can only touch upon these large subjects as he closes the book. While it may lead to further reading, I find the section too scattered to be truly effective.
This grand book, with its padded cover, offers a little of everything to everyone. Fans of Bryne, as leader of the Talking Heads or as musicologist, will surely find much to appreciate here. I do think, however, that he could have prepared two smaller books, one dedicated to the practice of musicmaking today and one to music's historical and anthropological aspects.
Top reviews from other countries
Will now revisit all the Talking Heads albums with renewed interest
Mit HOW MUSIC WORKS legt Byrne ein hochinteressantes, cleveres und schlichtweg enorm unterhaltsames Buch vor - mit autobiographischen Bezügen analysiert Byrne, wie Musik ihre Wirkung entfaltet. Es macht großen Spaß, Byrne bei seinen Ausführungen zu folgen, und in vielen Punkten liefert er sehr schlüssige und originelle Sichtweisen. Man merkt dem Autor den enormen Erfahrungsschatz seiner fast 50 Jahre lange Karriere an - hier legt ein Künstler seine Gedanken nieder, welcher sich in vielen Kunstformen aktiv war und ist, und der immer wieder bereit war, neue Ausdrucksformen zu verwenden und auch sich neu zu erfinden.
Der Schreibstil ist dabei sehr klar und strukturiert, und bei all dem auch noch sehr instruktiv, aber immer unterhaltsam... Längen hat dieses durchaus umfangreiche Buch nicht.
Ein Punkt, welcher bei der Lektüre dieses Buches etwas irritiert, ist der Umstand, dass David Byrne, wenn es um das Werk der Talking Heads geht, die Beiträge der anderen drei Bandmitglieder relativ wenig würdigt... Tina Weymouth, Chris Frantz und Jerry Harrison werden eher am Rande erwähnt, und es entsteht bei der Lektüre unwillkürlich das Gefühl, das mindestens 95 % des Schaffens der Talking Heads von David Byrne stammt, was in dieser Form sicherlich nicht stimmt. Der Streit um den kreativen Input war es angeblich auch, welcher das Ende der Talking Heads besiegelt hat, und wenn ich das vorliegende Buch unter diesem Gesichtspunkt lese klingt dies irgendwie einleuchtend. Über seine sehr produktive Zusammenarbeit mit Brain Eno schreibt David Byrne beispielsweise wesentlich mehr als über die Zusammenarbeit mit den übrigen Mitgliedern der Band, die ihn so berühmt gemacht hat. Dieser Kritikpunkt ist allerdings eher sekundär und macht das vorliegende Buch und seine Ausführungen nicht weniger interessant und lesenswert.
Alles in allem: nicht nur für Talking Heads und / oder David Byrne Fans ein hochinteressantes Buch!