How Music Works

2024 book #12. 2017. David Byrne (of Talking Heads fame) gives his musings on what music is, where it comes from, how it is made and sold, and what it's good for, with copious examples from his long and successful career. Very enjoyable and even informative. Recommended.

An odd book, but I really liked it. Partly about his own life as a musician, partly about the music business, partly about what music actually is, partly about how music fits in with human psychology and culture. Maybe there are some other parts too... I love Byrne’s conversational writing style. He doesn’t sound at all like a professional book-writer, more like a wonderfully intelligent and knowledgeable yet humble and self-deprecating friend sitting in your living room and just speaking to you as a peer.

9/10

David Byrne provides some incredible insight and commentary on music in this book, and I say this as someone who isn't a fan of the Talking Heads. This is a surprisingly accurate title, as he goes over "how music works" in multiple ways. From theory, to history, to it's effect on evolution, to how scenes develop (like at CBGB's), to highlight various methods albums are recorded, to how record deals are made, to how touring works, to how collaboration and songwriting works, and everything in between. This book is incredibly researched, and provides a lot of insight, and provokes a lot of questions.

How Music Works by David Byrne This book covers the historical, social and political history of pop music. Maybe it's more than that too. It is also a meditation on who we are as a culture.

A progression from a time in history where everyone made their own music to the twentieth century where we all became passive consumers of music. How music went from being a shared participatory social experience to a solitary passive experience with headphones. How the advent of electricity and the time pressure of working in factories and offices changed how we lived beyond all previous recognition.

The forces both social and financial that brought this about and how the money works.
How in the past musicians had been at the mercy of the large music labels. But now with the advent of cheap high quality recording equipment and the Internet as the delivery mechanism how that power balance has shifted and what that means both financially and socially.

He goes through the production costs of one of his albums and the income derived from that and though we imagine a luxurious lifestyle from large record sales it is indeed easy to go broke and not only make no money, but to end up millions of dollars debt to the recording labels.

Why the production of mega stars like Justin Beiber is such a necessity and why such "products" has very little to do with talent or skill and a lot to do with marketing.

He talks about various community based programs that teach kids how to make music and how in crime infested, gang dominated, slums these programs are actively turning kids away from that self destructive lifestyle and giving them some hope and ambition:

Maybe the most successful music education program in the world originated in a parking garage in Venezuela in 1975. It’s called El Sistema (the system), and it was begun by economist and musician José Antonio Abreu with just eleven kids. Having now produced high-level musicians, two hundred youth orchestras, 330,000 players, and quite a few conductors (Gustavo Dudamel was a product of this program), it is being adopted by countries all over the world.

As Abreu says, "Essentially this is a system that fights poverty… A child’s physical poverty is over-come by the spiritual richness that music provides". When asked if his music program was a vehicle for social change, he replied, “Without a doubt that is what is happening in Venezuela.” The kids who might otherwise feel that their options in life are extremely limited are passionate about the program. “From the minute a child is taught how to play an instrument, he is no longer poor. He becomes a child in progress, heading for a professional level, who’ll later become a citizen.


In other places he talks about the funding for music and how millions is poured into classical music but by comparison, community based schemes like the one above struggle for money. Inevitably he points to class and money and how classical music is perceived as "better" than other forms and how in America arms dealers, oil men and Swiss banks with dubious histories all gain "social kudos" by donating money to various orchestra and opera houses. As he points out about the composers whose music is played, "the ain't writing any new stuff".

Also consider this for a sobering thought: "As a result of the "No Child Left Behind" policy and its inherent emphasis on test scores, US schools gutted their arts programs by more than half in most states.

Makes you wonder what's happening here at home in NZ with National Standards.
David Byrne is a clever guy. He is intelligent, thoughtful and inventive. This book was everything that I imagined it to be and then a lot more than I imagined too.

A wonderful book about pretty much every aspect of music and the music business. One strange thing though: Byrne numerous times during the book talks about money and whether he made enough in a certain year or on a certain project to get by, and another time he talks about the "1 percent" who fund opera and symphonies and how 'we' aren't part of that, or some such. Hmmm. Unless he made some grave errors during his life, he is a many times over multi-millionaire, and part of the 1%, whether he likes it or not. Regardless, a great book!

A fun, informative, helpful and inspiring read. I would encourage every muso to read this one. Byrne does depend heavily on Milne's work, but his personal anecdotes and observations are worthwhile stuff.

A good read. I must admit, I found the chapters on Business and Finance and "How to Make a Scene" (detailing the experiences at CBGBs) more interesting than some of the latter chapters.

This is the second book I've read this year by a musician. The first, by Pete Townshend, was mostly a memoir. Townshend was already a musical superstar by the time I was becoming acquainted with pop music. David Byrne however, saw his star rise when my interest in pop music was at its climax -- late teens, early 20's. As someone more from "my generation," I've maintained a strong affinity for Byrne and others of this era.

That's not to say I wallow in nostalgia for days of Talking Heads gone by. Byrne, like Devo frontman Mark Mothersbaugh, has remained very active in music, even though the days of large stadium shows has long passed him by. If your tastes venture beyond Top-40 or American Idol, then when David Bryne talks, it's worth taking the time to listen.

How Music Works is a chimera of a book. In parts, Bryne does explain the evolution of music from primitive man, and how it functions on a subconscious level. This ground has already been recently covered by Alex Ross in his excellent book "The Rest is Noise," which is duly credited by Bryne. But of greatest interest to me was how the industry works -- and how it evolved from a label-centric distribution model to today's internet free-for-all. Bryne tells us about the finance of the business -- how in the day of the label, bands might be courted with private planes and mountains of cocaine, but all of that expense was applied against advances given to artists, and in many cases, blockbuster albums could net little or no profit. The real money is in song credits that could provide perpetual income. In this, Byrne has done quite well for himself, well enough to eke out a career in music with the resources to conduct his own financial experiments in music distribution. He has discovered the label no longer plays a pivotal role for artists seeking a profit. A label can create greater exposure, but at greater cost. When the artist can keep a majority of profits from the get-go, as long as he has some following, a decent wage can be earned. Byrne explains that today, the means to create a top-notch recording are within the means of anyone so inclined with a PC and skills. This also cuts down or eliminates recording studio expense (many famous studios have been shuttering their doors of late).

And of course, we get anecdotes from Byrne's colorful career. We learn about the inner-workings of that magical New York nightclub, CBGB, and how the likes of The Ramones, Blondie, Patty Smith, and The Talking Heads all rose from neighborhood rats to international prominence, ostensibly on the wave of punk rock, although in the case of The Talking Heads, they never really fit the canonical punk motif.

While I'd often pick up a new David Byrne CD when I noticed one was out, I never closely followed his career. One thing I found interesting was that three years ago (2010) he released a double-CD set (recorded with Fat Boy Slim) where the lyrics were based on the testimony of former Filipino dictator Ferdinand Marcos wife Imelda during their corruption trials It was intended to be the soundtrack to a musical, which apparently will be put on in New York sometime this year. Might be a good excuse for a road trip.

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.

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.