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How Music Works Hardcover – September 12, 2012

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Product Details

  • Hardcover: 352 pages
  • Publisher: McSweeney's (September 12, 2012)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 1936365537
  • ISBN-13: 978-1936365531
  • Product Dimensions: 1.2 x 7.2 x 9.2 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 2 pounds
  • Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (181 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #274,462 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

167 of 179 people found the following review helpful By Dr. Debra Jan Bibel TOP 500 REVIEWER on September 6, 2012
Format: Hardcover Verified Purchase
Byrne begins his wide-ranging historical, technological, psychological and sociological examination of music with a novel insight: architecture of musical venues shape composition and instrumental arrangements. Regarding huge gothic cathedrals, intimate nightclubs, and jungle camp sites, room reverberation, volume of space, and audience vocal ambience dictate modal versus scale works, instrument development, and performance dynamics. The great revolutionary divide was recording technology, and musicians discovered that what works live does not necesarily achieve the same result on vinyl, tape, CD, or .mp3, and vice versa. Expectations often lead to disappointment and the performance and performer suffers. With such an interesting introduction, the book offers much promise. It almost fulfills expectations with both personal and general tidbits and theses that reward the reader, though for myself his personal examples are somewhat weaker.

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.
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41 of 41 people found the following review helpful By David M. Scott on September 27, 2012
Format: Hardcover Verified Purchase
This is David Byrne week for me. On Sunday, I caught the sensational David Byrne and St. Vincent show at the Orpheum Theater in Boston. The last time I saw Byrne live was when I caught the Talking Heads on August 19, 1983 at the old Forrest Hills Tennis Stadium in New York City. So, clearly I was already a Byrne fan.

How Music Works

The other part of David Byrne week is his fabulous new book How Music Works. The book is Byrne's take on the industry he's succeeded in. He offers keen observations about the music industry, the art of making music, telling stories in the book using a combination of history, anthropology, and music theory. I love this book!

In particular, Byrne has a fascinating take on the development of music, which is quite different from what other music historians say. In a chapter titled "Creation in Reverse" he argues that music evolves to fill the space where it is performed.

For example, the Talking Heads evolved in the 1970s at New York punk club CBGB requiring volume to overcome the din. The sparse music that came out of the CBGB scene such as the Ramones and Television worked perfectly for that room.

Music that evolved in gothic cathedrals (lots of reverberation) has long notes with no key changes. Carnegie Hall and other similar rooms require texture. With discos, people made music to exploit the fantastic sound systems and people's need to dance. Rock music played in hockey arenas (the worst acoustics on the planet) must be straightforward with medium tempos. You get the idea. The music that is successful works perfectly for each venue.

With personal sound systems (starting with the Walkman in the 1970s then evolving into MP3 players such as the iPod), all of a sudden you can hear every single detail.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful By Acorn on October 22, 2012
Format: Kindle Edition Verified Purchase
David Byrne is best known for his work with Talking Heads, his collaborations with various other artists and the diversity of the musical styles that he embraces. He is an enthusiastic amateur in the original sense of that word: a man in love with music. In recent years he has also taken to writing and it is hard not to be impressed by the keen interest he takes in the world around him. This is the first book in which he turns his attention to music: what it is, why it moves us, how it has been shaped by technology and its physical surroundings, and the way that modern capitalism turned it into a lucrative business. Well, lucrative for some.

He hypothesizes that music is made to fit the physical locations in which it is performed, and later looks at how technology has both shaped music and how music can be played and heard. There are plenty of examples, but there are also some things that contradict his argument. Mozart might have written music to suit the parlours of his patrons, but brash and bossy Wagner demanded that bigger halls be built to accommodate his musical ego. The technology of recording limited what could be played as well as the duration of songs, but people (including Byrne) were always pushing new technology to do more, experimenting with ways to subvert existing limits. What he shows in fact is that the physical constraints of venues and technology are in constant tension with music makers and performers, and it is this which propels innovation. His deterministic argument is therefore too one-sided. He covers this field well, but another chapter on instruments themselves would have rounded out his theme.
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