How Music Works Audiobook By David Byrne cover art

How Music Works

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How Music Works

By: David Byrne
Narrated by: Andrew Garman, David Byrne
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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. Business Aspects History & Criticism Music Business History

Critic reviews

“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.”—The Washington Post

“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.”—The New York Times Book Review

“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 nineteenth-century poet.”—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 . . . 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.”—New York Magazine

“Highly recommended—anyone at all interested in music will learn a lot from this book.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“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)

“Endlessly fascinating, insightful, and intelligent.”—Booklist (starred review)

“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.”—The Globe and Mail
Fascinating Insights • Comprehensive Exploration • Wonderful Delivery • Thought-provoking Content • Educational Information

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Besides being one of the greatest working artist alive (let alone musician/songwriter), David Byrnes curiosity and exploration is thorough and thoughtful. This, to me, is a MUST read/listen for anyone interested or simply instinctively drawn to making things.

Brilliant from start to finish!

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Byrne brings up issues that I never thought about regarding the creation, performance, and listener's perspective of music. He discusses how certain constraints like the acoustics of the venue it will be played, or the length of a recording on a 78 record, or the compression of CDs, all influence how music is written. The ideas of whether music is written to be listened to live or on a recording were interesting. His work with music of multiple cultures and the responses (or maybe his perception of the responses) were also quite interesting.

He kind of lost me when he spent a lot of time on issues of money in music and some of his political views - but it's his book. He managed to do quite well in spite of the bleak way he describes the renumeration for creating music.

I found the book to be engaging and thought-provoking.

Interesting concepts about music creation

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Picked this up on sale, and was pleasantly surprised. This is such a great overview of the artistic approach to pop music from one of the greats. I have always been a Talking Heads fan, but many friends make Byrne out to be a pompous and arrogant A-hole. I went into the book with no expectations but was constantly amazed by the detail and color of the author’s observations and personal experiences. I learned at least 3 books worth of history and references from the first half of this book alone. It’s truly a gift to be able to get such a vivid peek behind the curtain of one of our generations most creative pop artists.

One of the best

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It’s cool to read David Byrne in his own voice. Great rundown on business and licensing models, useful outside music in entrepreneurial ventures.

Lovely meditation on the nature of music

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This is not really a book on theory and not the story of David Byrne. This is a philosophical look at music from the perspective of one of the modern geniuses. David is so expressive it makes the monotonous reading a little hard to get through but worth while to have the book in the library.

Great book. Decent reading

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