How Music Works

5.00 out of 5 (2 ratings)

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Format:: Hardback
Pages:: 358
Publisher:: Canongate Books Ltd
Publication Date:: 13 September 2012
Category:: Music
ISBN:: 9780857862501

Description

How Music Works is an unparalleled account of a life in music and an explanation of how and why music works from one of the world's most accomplished performers. With his albums for Talking Heads, his work with Brian Eno or his solo output, David Byrne has been consistently at the forefront of musical - and artistic - innovation. In this extraordinary book Byrne explores why the past matters and what the future might bring. From personal accounts of devising and performing his most famous work, to an exploration of the possibilities of new technologies, Byrne discovers that artistic creation is less about an internal creative spark than we thought and more about external factors such as history, architecture and technology. "The universe of music follows broad and basic evolutionary patterns-as does birdsong, to take one example. It seems the will only triumphs if the context is amenable, just as in Darwinian adaptation. What we hear is determined by what we want to hear, by what can be heard, and by the circumstances that allow it to come into being."

Reader Reviews

Showing 1-2 out of 2 reviews.

This is a book that is exactly about how music works. Byrne is lucid and comprehensive on his subject, dealing with it from all angles: biographical, commercial, creative and theoretical. He reads like Brian Eno sounds - spare, precise, detailed and interesting. Though I am not a part of the music industry and I don't even play an instrument, I found the book's content rewarding and insightful.

5.00 out of 5

freelancer_frank
Part cultural anthropology, part history, part biography, How Music Works is a fascinating book about what David Byrne has learned about music. Each chapter covers a slightly different topic, and the book works as a collection of related essays by a single author.Byrne has spent his whole life thinking about one single subject, and this book shares those thoughts with the rest of us. Since the book is a collection of essays, sometimes the same subjects (and indeed the same references) come up several times, making the book occasionally repetitive. Unless you're a working musician, the book provides details about how music is currently made and consumed that you've probably never thought about before. That's a great thing for a book to do.Highly recommended.

5.00 out of 5

shurikt