The release date for the English version of 'How Music Works' by
David Byrne is Sep 2012. If you enjoy this novel, it is available for buy as a paperback from Barnes & Noble or Indigo, as an ebook on the Amazon Kindle store, or as an audiobook on Audible.
David Byrne's extraordinary and upbeat appreciation of a topic he has thought about his whole life is called How Music Works. In it, he examines the ways in which location and time have a significant influence on music and shows how the development of recording technology in the 20th century fundamentally altered our connection with creating, performing, and enjoying music.
In his roles as historian, anthropologist, raconteur, and social scientist, he looks for trends and demonstrates how those trends have influenced his own work with Talking Heads and his many colleagues over the years, including Brian Eno and Caetano Veloso. According to Byrne, music is a component of a broader, almost Darwinian pattern of reactions and adaptations to its environmental and cultural surroundings. His range is panoptic, spanning from reel-to-reel recordings made in high school to his most recent work in a home music studio (and all the large studios in between), from Wagnerian opera theatres to African communities.
How Music Works is a clever, captivating journey that passionately defends the freeing, life-affirming power of music. It touches on the pleasure, the physics, and even the business of generating music.