How Music Works

David Byrne

May 2017 · Sold by Crown

About this eBook

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • David Byrne’s incisive and enthusiastic look at the musical art form, from its very inceptions to the influences that shape it, whether acoustical, economic, social, or technological—now updated with a new chapter on digital curation.

“How Music Works is a buoyant hybrid of social history, anthropological survey, autobiography, personal philosophy, and business manual”—The Boston Globe

Utilizing his incomparable career and inspired collaborations with Talking Heads, Brian Eno, and many others, David Byrne taps deeply into his lifetime of knowledge to explore the panoptic elements of music, how it shapes the human experience, and reveals the impetus behind how we create, consume, distribute, and enjoy the songs, symphonies, and rhythms that provide the backbeat of life. Byrne’s magnum opus uncovers thrilling realizations about the redemptive liberation that music brings us all.

Ratings and reviews

This wasn't quite the book I expected. What did I expect? Well, the title and the reputation of the prolific David Byrne as the author had me intrigued. I thought that this book would be an in depth exploration of the workings of music. In many ways it is, but the word work has so many meanings that my own expectations mislead me. The book starts with an intriguing premise with some interesting ideas relevant to the effects that physical space impact the aural experience of performance. This was what I thought the book was going to explore in detail: things like the impacts of auditory and emotion, the relationship of performer and listener, the nuances between orchestration and improvisation. Byrne does in fact play with many of these intriguing ideas throughout the this text and he does so with an enthusiastic voie of experience. I really enjoyed his chronological exploration about the impact that recorded music had upon the art form from first recorded records through the digital age. He does great service in this book to use a historical lens that reflects how musical styles have changed not simply due to cultural changes but due to technological changes. However, what I didn't expect from this book was how much memoir it would contain. If Byrne had written this book with only a vague mention of the Talking Heads or his solo projects I think that this book would have been an insightful read about music in general. Yet, much of the book is focused inward upon his Byrne's stylistic changes in both performance and recording. I think that a memoir from David Byrne would be fine, but the title and presentation of this book doesn't really portray how much memoir is interspersed in these pages and therefore I felt slightly mislead. The early chapters that went in detail about recording each and every Talking Heads album was a bit too much for my liking. Sure it was interesting, but it distracted from some of the really interesting stuff that Byrne had to say about music in general. The Talking Heads were always a band I respected as stylistically and artistically unique, but they weren't ever a band I was overly drawn towards. I enjoy them enough but now I know way too much about them than I had expected I would ever know! All that being said, it was an enjoyable and quick read.

This book changed my idea of what it means to be a musician and expanded my definition of music itself.

About the author

DAVID BYRNE is an author, a musician, and a filmmaker known for his creative collaborations and work with the Talking Heads. He resides in New York.