How Music Works

by David Byrne

  Though visiting all these folks where they lived became expensive, one could sense that a whole new era of music making was beginning. With the advent of relatively cheap recording equipment with studio-quality sound, not only would anybody with two turntables and a microphone be making records, but everyone else would, too, in an incredible variety of styles and approaches, everywhere and anywhere. Musicians didn’t have to migrate to the big cities with their expensive studios anymore. If they were careful, they wouldn’t get themselves in hock to the record companies either. As the costs of recording dropped precipitously, emerging musicians all over the world were increasively on an equal footing with professional and well-funded Western pop/alt/ urban musicians. Amateur musicians have always been equal as far as playing and writing go, but now more and more of them will be taken seriously—the quality of the recordings will be virtually indistinguishable.

  HOMEMADE

  I first saw a performance by Ultima Vez, the Belgian dance-theater group led by Wim Vandekeybus, in Seattle in 1991. I was knocked out. They were inspiring and inventive right down to the sets—I think that piece featured a backdrop of thrift store dresses all stitched together.

  Wim, the dancers, and I spoke after their show, and we more or less kept in touch after that. Some years later we talked about me doing music for a film that Wim had in mind based on a Paul Bowles short story. The film didn’t happen, but the project managed to get us back together. I went to Brussels, where I watched an early rehearsal of the piece that would become In Spite of Wishing and Wanting. I liked what I was seeing and I offered to try to do as much music as possible, even the whole piece. I said that if Wim and company would like a trial, I would send them rough musical sketches as test material.

  By now I had started getting the hang of recording with my home gear all by myself. I did almost all the recording for this project in my apartment. We recorded the strings, horns, and a few other instruments in a studio, but those sessions were generally fairly short. This was another big step away from where I had begun—that horrible feeling of not being in control of how things sound, the clock ticking, being at the mercy of strangers. The mixing, however, was still done in a “real” studio. A fresh set of ears at that stage can be useful, as one tends to fall in love with parts for reasons that no one else can actually hear.

  In Spite of Wishing and Wanting, recorded in 1998, was the first record I owned completely, so I began to sell copies at my concerts. I didn’t sell very many, but it was satisfying to know that even that limited income helped offset some of the production costs, and it was equally satisfying that I had done so much of it myself. A new kind of music economy was coming into being, mostly facilitated by new recording technology.

  THE WORLD AROUND US

  I go about my business, mostly here in New York, traveling from Midtown to my office Downtown and back up again. Often I go to Brooklyn, less often to Hoboken or Queens. I live in an industrial neighborhood, but there’s a family that lives across the street from me, and a sweatshop across the street, too. There’s a police station next door, and farther down the block is a halfway house, a Chinese/Mexican take-out, and an Off-Broadway theater center.

  Sometimes it seems as if writing a group of songs is like getting groceries, or doing the laundry—banal things I do more or less on a day-to-day basis. We deal with the issues involved in our mundane activities as they come up, and songwriting might be viewed similarly, as the response to specific and even pedestrian needs. It might seem that in our day-to-day activities there is no overall plan at work, no consideration of where things are ultimately going. So too, sometimes, with the process of writing songs. Little decisions are made invisibly every minute, and the cumulative effect, and the often unspoken principals that have guided them, define what appears to be, in retrospect, a conscious plan, with an emotional center and compass. What begins as a random walk often ends up taking you somewhere, somewhere that you later realize was exactly where you wanted to go.

  During the time I was writing the songs for the record that became Grown Backwards, there was love, anger, sadness, and frustration in my life. There were two wars: one begun out of revenge and the second seemingly to consolidate oil interests. Huge amounts of money were expended in what seemed to be obviously futile and counterproductive efforts that many felt would not only bring death to many innocent people, but would end up making us, as a nation, less admired and certainly less safe, both physically and economically, for the foreseeable future. Along with many others, I felt angry—alienated, even—and I did my best to stop the rush into the second conflict, but it was inevitable. It seemed like a misdirected legacy of a nation still stunned, hurt, reeling—a fighter ready to strike out at anything that could be accepted as an enemy. I blogged, and began a campaign that resulted in full-page ads in the New York Times and Rolling Stone urging restraint. You can see an example of one of those ads on the next page.K

  But it was hopeless. Recent studies have shown that people ignore facts that contradict what they want to believe. Even “smart” people I knew, and many others I respected, were convincing themselves we had to invade. It made me feel like I didn’t know my country and its people, or even my own friends anymore. How does one react and respond to that? I felt lost and adrift in my home. What kind of music would emerge from living with those feelings? These were not simply abstract political ideas. I felt angry and fucked up every day.

  Protest songs? They can express what folks are already feeling, what they sense but have not yet been able to articulate, but they’re maybe not the best way of changing people’s minds—or even encouraging a second look. Ultimately, it’s an act of hubris to try to do so. Maybe, I was thinking, songs and music should instead present an alternative path. Maybe songs can make an emotional case for inclusiveness and openness instead of just being critical. Maybe songs can be that possibility, rather than just a rational argument for it. I didn’t know if I could write songs like that, but I was thinking about it.

  I’d had a wonderful time performing the songs from my previous record, Look Into the Eyeball, so my instinct was to refine that approach and continue down that road. Musician and composer Stephen Barber had rearranged many of the string parts for the touring group, and I suggested that he do all the new arrangements on this next record. The string players on those North American dates were from Austin, Texas, like Barber, so he could work with them and iron out any issues on the next set of songs before we went into the studio. In keeping with the idea of presenting an alternative to what I saw as lies and the ugliness we were being dragged into, this set of songs was even more lush than what I had recorded a couple of years earlier. The opera arias I’d been hearing and had been moved by not long before were signposts, in a way. I sensed that I wanted something that could be unashamedly pretty and full on, so I covered a couple of those tunes as a way of making that point. I didn’t try to sing with the typical opera voice—I wanted the songs to be understood as the proto-pop songs they once were. People used to sing the catchy arias as they worked and played; everyone knew them. The closest I came to making an actual protest song was a cover of a Lambchop tune, but the lyrics for that came from an Egyptian poem dating back thousands of years—a cry against violence and alienation. Not a lot has changed.

  Ad originally appeared in the New York Times

  I recorded my demos of the songs at home, and now I was getting more accustomed to yet another technology that once again changed the way I worked and recorded. Bulky machines were no longer needed to record demos; even at home you could now record into your laptop (or a regular desktop computer) using music software and some fairly modest gear.

  I’d had a revelation about a year previously, after I’d been asked by British DJs X-Press-2 to write a tune and sing over a track they had. I had previously admired their work, so I said I’d give it a try. They sent me a track which I loaded onto my laptop (a black plastic Mac G3). It took a little time to learn the software and the
audio connections, but once I figured them out, I recorded a vocal on the laptop and sent it back to them. They then made further changes to the music under my vocal. Whereas at first what they sent me sounded vaguely Talking Heads–like (hence their desire to approach me, I suspected), now it was the same song, same tempo, same key, but as a stripped-down house track. The resulting song, “Lazy,” was released to club DJs in the UK, and ever-so-gradually became hugely popular. (In the UK and anywhere but in the United States, club songs can cross over and become radio hits.) I was delighted, and no one ever complained that the vocal sounded like it had been recorded on a laptop. The homemade recording had quietly passed the litmus test. Now I knew that I didn’t have to use real recording studios for my work unless I was working with a sizable group of musicians, or with strings or live drums.

  Not only were the demos for my newer songs all recorded at home, as they had been for years, but now various vocals, instruments, and electronic sounds could all be recorded at home too—often serving as the framework over which additional instruments were recorded in “real” studios. This did not signal the end of the recording studio—lots of artists still use them exclusively—but most emerging artists do exactly what I’ve been doing: they use studios more sparingly than bands used to, and only when the need arises. The big-studio era has ended; most of the ones in New York have closed down. (Although, in a weird reversal, the few that are left are now booked solid.) There are still times when I need to use a fully equipped studio for a project, but increasingly we keep the costs down by doing much of the initial work at home. We still need the studios—we’d be in trouble if they all vanished—but we’re not held captive by their costs and the prevailing recording orthodoxies anymore.

  These changes have had a pretty big financial impact on the recording process. The cost of making records can now be so low—if you don’t count the rare transatlantic flights I took for my recent record with Brian Eno, of course—that average musicians can pay for it out of their own pockets. This means that when the time comes to think about a distribution arrangement, you aren’t beholden to anyone. You don’t come to the table already in debt. In effect, the ease and facility of home recording made me rethink how one might survive in the music business, given the ongoing collapse of the old system.

  It’s sad that just as it has gotten easier for anyone to make a record exactly in the way they envision, the traditional means of selling and distributing music are becoming less viable. Increasingly, recordings are the loss leaders for merchandise, live-performance tickets, and licensing opportunities. Recording, which used to be basically the most important thing one did as a professional musician, is increasingly just part of a larger package. That doesn’t mean everyone except a few pop stars will stop recording, but it does mean that the way a musician survives is no longer primarily via sales of recordings. The era when all the various ways in which we hear and enjoy music are secondary to the most well-known recording of that music might be over. We soon might begin to view recordings as they were perceived when they came into being, as fixed versions of compositions—but not as the only or even the primary way the music is supposed to sound.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Collaborations

  The online music magazine Pitchfork once wrote that I would collaborate with anyone for a bag of Doritos.1 This wasn’t intended as a compliment—though, to be honest, it’s not that far from the truth. Contrary to their insinuation, I am fairly picky about who I collaborate with, but I am also willing to work with people you might not expect me to. I’ll risk disaster because the creative rewards of a successful collaboration are great. I’ve been doing it my whole life.

  I discovered early on that collaborating is a vital part of music’s essence and an aid to creativity. Unless you’re a solo folk singer or a laptop jockey, live performance usually involves playing with other musicians. A successful ensemble inevitably requires a certain amount of push and pull and creative compromise. Although there’s usually a hierarchy and often assigned parts and arrangements, the idiosyncrasies of each player’s interpretations make the sound of every group unique. And when an ensemble is also involved in the creation and/or recording of a piece of music, those individual expressive tendencies are that much more apparent. Even if I wrote a song myself, then played and sang it for Talking Heads or some other group of musicians on my guitar, their individual interpretations, abilities, and ensemble skills would make their collective version and performance of that song different from anyone else’s.

  Players inevitably add things that the songwriter might not have thought of, so you often end up with something very different from what a solo musician would have arrived at on his own. Sometimes this new thing is restricted by the players’ abilities and sensibilities, but rather than being a liability, these restrictions can actually be liberating. Odd that I’m more focused on the limitations than the fact that some musicians might be able to play something better than anyone else. One adjusts to both the limitations and particular talents of a given set of musicians. Writers and composers learn to anticipate what is and is not likely to happen musically. Over time you internalize the tendencies and playing approaches of your fellow players, and after a while you don’t even consider writing certain parts or in certain styles, because the musicians you’re working with wouldn’t naturally go that way. You play to their strengths. You don’t try to reverse the river, or get it to jump over a mountain, you harness its flow and energy to gently urge that it join up with other tributaries.

  One might assume that having better players, with a higher level of musicianship, means that a composer can be more adaptable, free, and wide-ranging in what he writes. One might also assume that this would be a good thing, but the conventional hierarchy of musical skills is deceptive. Classically trained players often can’t get the feel of what may seem like a simple pop or funk tune, and a great rock drummer may play in time but never learn to swing. It’s not that technical abilities are beyond some players; it’s more the sharpening of the ear and brain that happens over time. We learn to hear (or not hear) certain things, different things. The classical players who think all popular music is simple tend not to hear the nuances involved, so naturally they can’t play very well in that style. Simplicity is a kind of transparency in which subtle nuances can have outsize effects. When everything is visible and appears to be dumb, that’s when the details take on larger meanings.

  There is really no hierarchy in music—good musicians of any given style are no better or worse than good musicians of another. Players should be viewed as existing across a spectrum of styles and approaches, rather than being ranked. If you follow this reasoning to the end, then every musician is great, a virtuoso, a maestro, if only they could find the music that’s right for them, their personal slot in the spectrum. I’m not sure I’m actually willing to go that far, but there may be a little bit of truth in the idea.

  Many songwriters write in teams: Lennon and McCartney, Jagger and Richards, Bacharach and David, Leiber and Stoller, Holland-Dozier-Holland, Jobim and De Moraes, Rodgers and Hammerstein. One person might write the words and the other the music, which is the division of labor I’ve often followed in my own collaborations. But just as often, the division of labor is less clear—ideas may get passed back and forth, collaborators may work on specific sections of a song. With some songwriting teams, the equality between the collaborators is less than obvious, and it can seem as though one of the partners was more of an instigator on a particular song than the other. But the fact that there have been so many of these teams, and that they achieved such heights, seems significant.

  There are obvious benefits to working in a team. Your weaker ideas might get corrected. My original concept for “Psycho Killer” was to play against type and do it as a ballad, but when the other bandmembers joined in, it took a more energetic direction, which proved to be popular with our audience. There’s a good chance you might be inspired by ideas that originate outsid
e yourself.

  Music written by teams makes the authorship of a piece indistinct. Could it be that when hearing a song written by a team, a listener can sense that they aren’t hearing an expression of a solitary individual’s pain or joy, but that of a virtual conjoined person? Can we tell that an individual singer might actually represent a collective, that he might have multiple identities? Does that make the sentiments expressed more poetically ambiguous and therefore more potentially universal? Can eliminating some portion of the authorial voice make a piece of music more accessible and the singer more empathetic?

  PLAYING WELL WITH OTHERS

  Many of my songs were written without songwriting partners. Are they less good than the ones where the job was split, or where a partner modified, added to, or rejected my ideas, or I theirs? I can’t answer that, but certainly musical partnerships have often led me to places I might not otherwise have gone.

  With Talking Heads we always collaborated on the interpretation, realization, and performance of the music, even if I brought a finished song to the table. We all had similar things in our record collections—O’Jays, Stooges, James Brown, Roxy Music, Serge Gainsbourg, King Tubby—so regardless of the limitations imposed by our playing abilities, there was another set of limitations—good ones, we felt—shaped by our collective musical tastes. As much as we wanted to sound like something entirely new, we communicated by referencing music that we all loved. An early Talking Heads song, “The Book I Read,” had a middle section that to my ears sounded like KC and the Sunshine Band, whom I liked, so that reference was, for us, a good thing. No one else seemed to hear it, though. Perhaps my yelping vocal and other factors obscured those influences and touchstones? Though we may have combined those influences in a skewed and mangled manner, we could hear bits of the music that had preceded us all over our material. In the absence of any formal training, this mostly unspoken set of references was how we communicated. It’s probably what made communication and collaboration possible for us in the first place.