#this is a very simplified analogy and might only work inside my head but that’s okay

[pizzabookbuying]

reading a good book is like AUGH AG AHAHHAHAHA OH OAHHAHHAHAHAAH

[bethanythebogwitch]

I've been going over my thoughts on all the aquatic Digimon. Previous posts here: all fish, all mermaids, and aquatics part 1. Since I've gone over the aquatics with a default evolution line, today I'll just go over all rookie/child, champion/adult, and armor level mons that I haven't already discussed.

I will say that my previous post's analogy on how Digimon evolution works was not at all helpful, so I'll try again. Digimon evolution is branched, where each stage has multiple possible next stages that do not necessarily need to have a thematic connection to prior stages. Stages are not mutually exclusive and separate Digimon can evolve into the same thing. Digimon can also evolve backwards and not to the same thing they started as. For example, an Agumon (little dinosaur) can evolve into Centaurumon (centaur), then evolved back down to a Patamon (winged hamster). The animes usually simplify things from the games and virtual pets by giving their Digimon characters much more linear and thematically consistent evolution lines. I may do an intro to Digimon post some day.

Starting with rookie/child levels we have an old mon that hasn't been used much: Gizamon. It's been around for a long time, but rarely gets any attention and as far as I can tell, has never gotten a spotlight, even as a monster of the week. That's too bad, it's a neat little critter. It's a marine mammal, but has the body shape and jumping ability of a frog.

Next up is Crabmon (Ganimon in Japanese). People compare Pokemon and Digimon a lot, but one comparison I haven't seen is that they both made a monster that's literally just a crab. Crabmon and Kingler are both fiddler crabs too, with one much bigger claw. I like it and there are a few crustaceans of higher level that I think could be a good pre-evo for. Crabmon also has a x-antibody variant.

Crabmon

Crabmon X

The last of this level is Sangomon, a very new Digimon. I love it so much, it's a little staghorn coral monster with polyps for arms. It's so cute and such a creative way of making coral as a monster. I wish it has a full through-like of coral reef evolutions. If I had to pick any of the rookie/child Digimon form this series as a partner, it honestly might be this one.

Moving onto the champion/adult level is Ebidramon. Ebi means shrimp and dramon indicates that the Digimon is draconic, so it's a shrimp dragon. It clearly isn't fond of shrimp being used as a synonym for tiny as it will attack those who make fun of it.

Next is Gesomon, which clearly takes ofter humboldt squids as its very violent and scary. It attacks those who enter its territory, but won't bother those outside of it. It's also very intelligent and cunning, which is very appropriate for a squid. I really like Gesomon, I think it's a great choice for an evil aquatic line. Gesomon has an x-antibody variant which is incredibly ugly and not in a good way. Its ugly in an "I don't want to look at this any more" way.

Gesomon

Gesomon X

The last aquation at this level is the excellent Octomon. I don't like any of the octopus Pkemon very much and Digimon deliverd for me. It's a kleptomanian who wears a pot for a head much like how a coconut octopus lives inside coconuts and other hard objects. The crown came from a sunked treasure chest and that gun squirts ink. Weirdly enough, the little gold barnacles on it are identified as another Digimon called Fujitsumon and Octomon's reference book entry is the only place Fujitsumon has ever been mentioned.

Next up is the armor level, which lies outside the normal evolution levels. It was introduces fro the anime Digimon Adventure 02 and outside of media related to that show, armor Digimon are often treated as being synonymous to the champion/adult level.

First is Archelomon, a sea turtle with knives for flippers. Digimon has had much more ridiculous designs, but for some reason this one seems over the top for me.

Next is Depthmon, who absolutely should have been in the mermaid post but I forgot about it. I really like this guy, a merman wearing a diving suit. The suit lets it dive way deeper into the ocean than most Digimon because it can endure incredibly high pressure. Armor Digimon are the result of a Digimon evolving with an object called a Digimental that represents some virtue like courage. The anime only used a few combinations and a lot of the official armor Digimon are the result of filling out the other matches. For example, in the show, Veemon/V-Mon used the Digimentals of courage and friendship to become Flamedramon and Raidramon respectively. Depthmon is one of the unseen combinations, Veemon plus the Digimental of sincerity (reliability in the dub). The unseen combinations don't get nearly as much attention as the ones that did appear in the anime, which is a shame because some of them, like Depthmon, are pretty cool.

Next is Orcamon and I absolutely love this goofy beast. An Orca life guard is such an exceptionally silly concept executed quite well. It actively rescues other Digimon that are lost at sea. Orcamon seems like a good friend. What's even better is that it was designed by a fan as part of a contest. That fan has some great ideas.

Next is Submarimon, which I probably could have justified in the fish post. Its a fish-shaped submarine of course, but that harpoon nose also makes me think of sawfish. This is one of the armor Digimon that appeared in the anime where it was a bit underutilized due to being strictly aquatic. Fortunately the writers seem to have agreed because it got to appear in some of the other anime seasons as an ally.

Finally we have Tylomon, which is a tyloaurus, a type of prehistoric marine reptile. I like marine reptiles like mosasaurs, so Tylomon is pretty cool to me. It also has an x-antibody variant which is a classic overdesigned form. It's kind of weird that some of the more obscure armor Digimon got x-antibody forms befrore the ones that showed up in the anime, but I'm all for more obscure mons getting more attention.

Tylomon

Tylomon X

That's it for today. Next post will finish up the aquatic Digimon with the ultimate/perfect and mega/ultimate levels

[mostlysignssomeportents]

#8yrsago David Byrne's How Music Works

Former Talking Heads frontman and all-round happy mutant David Byrne has written several good books, but his latest, How Music Works, is unquestionably the best of the very good bunch, possibly the book he was born to write. I could made good case for calling this How Art Works or even How Everything Works.

Though there is plenty of autobiographical material How Music Works that will delight avid fans (like me) -- inside dope on the creative, commercial and personal pressures that led to each of Byrne's projects -- this isn't merely the story of how Byrne made it, or what he does to turn out such great and varied art. Rather, this is an insightful, thorough, and convincing account of the way that creativity, culture, biology and economics interact to prefigure, constrain and uplift art. It's a compelling story about the way that art comes out of technology, and as such, it's widely applicable beyond music.

Byrne lived through an important transition in the music industry: having gotten his start in the analog recording world, he skilfully managed a transition to an artist in the digital era (though not always a digital artist). As such, he has real gut-feel for the things that technology gives to artists and the things that technology takes away. He's like the kids who got their Apple ][+s in 1979, and keenly remember the time before computers were available to kids at all, the time when they were the exclusive domain of obsessive geeks, and the point at which they became widely exciting, and finally, ubiquitous -- a breadth of experience that offers visceral perspective.

There were so many times in this book when I felt like Byrne's observations extended beyond music and dance and into other forms of digital creativity. For example, when Byrne recounted his first experiments with cellular automata exercise for dance choreography, from his collaboration with Noemie Lafrance:

1. Improvise moving to the music and come up with an eight-count phrase (in dance, a phrase is a short series of moves that can be repeated).

2. When you find a phrase you like, loop (repeat) it.

3. When you see someone else with a stronger phrase, copy it.

4. When everyone is doing the same phrase, the exercise is over.

It was like watching evolution on fast-forward, or an emergent lifeform coming into being. At first the room was chaos, writhing bodies everywhere. At first the room was chaos, writhing bodies everywhere. Then one could see that folks had chosen their phrases, and almost immediately one could see a pocket of dancers who had all adopted the same phrase. The copying had already begun, albeit in just one area. This pocket of copying began to expand, to go viral, while yet another one now emerged on the other side of the room. One clump grew faster than the other, and within four minutes the whole room was filled with dancers moving in perfect unison. Unbelievable! It only took four minutes for this evolutionary process to kick in, and for the "strongest" (unfortunate word, maybe) to dominate.

I remembered the first time I programmed an evolutionary algorithm and watched its complexity emerging from simple rules, and the catch in my throat as I realized that I was watching something like life being built up from simple, inert rules.

The book is shot through with historical examples and arguments about the nature of music, from Plato up to contemporary neuroscience, and here, too, many of the discussions are microcosms for contemporary technical/philosophical debates. There's a passage about how music is felt and experienced that contains the phrase, "music isn't merely absorbed above the neck," which is spookily similar to the debates about replicating human consciousness in computers, and the idea that our identity doesn't reside exclusively above the brainstem.

The same is true of Byrne's account of how music has not "progressed" from a "primitive" state -- rather, it adapted itself to different technological realities. Big cathedrals demand music that accommodates a lot of reverb; village campfire music has completely different needs. Reading this, I was excited by the parallels to discussions of whether we live in an era of technological "progress" or merely technological "change" -- is there a pinnacle we're climbing, or simply a bunch of stuff followed by a bunch of other stuff? Our overwhelming narrative of progress feels like hubris to me, at least a lot of the time. Some things are "better" (more energy efficient, more space-efficient, faster, more effective), but there are plenty of things that are held up as "better" that, to me, are simply different. Often very good, but in no way a higher rung on some notional ladder toward perfection.

When Byrne's history comes to the rise of popular recorded music, he describes a familiar dilemma: recording artists were asked to produce music that could work when performed live and when listened to in the listener's private playback environment -- not so different from the problems faced by games developers today who struggle to make games that will work on a wide variety of screens. In a later section, he describes the solution that was arrived at in the 1970s, a solution that reminds me a lot of the current world of content management systems like WordPress and Blogger, which attempt to separate "meaning" from "form" for text, storing them separately and combining them with little code-libraries called "decorators":

[Deconstruct and isolate] sums up the philosophy of a lot of music recording back in the late seventies. The goal was to get as pristine a sound as possible... Studios were often padded with sound-absorbent materials so that there was almost no reverberation. The sonic character of the space was sucked out, because it wasn't considered to be part of the music. Without this ambiance, it was explained, the sound would be more malleable after the recording had been made. Dead, characterless sound was held up as the ideal, and often still is. In this philosophy, the naturally occurring echo and reverb that normally added a little warmth to performances would be removed and then added back in when the recording was being mixed...

Recording a performance with a band and singer all playing together at the same time in the same room was by this time becoming a rarity. An incredible array of options opened up as a result, but some organic interplay between the musicians disappeared, and the sound of music changed. Some musicians who played well in live situations couldn't adapt to the fashion for each player to be isolated. They couldn't hear their bandmates and, as a result, often didn't play very well.

Changing the technology used in art changes the art, for good and ill. Blog-writing has a lot going for it -- spontaneity, velocity, vernacular informality, but often lacks the reflective distance that longer-form works bring. Byrne has similar observations about music and software:

What you hear [in contemporary music] is the shift in music structure that computer-aided composition has encouraged. Though software is promoted as being an unbiased toold that helps us do anything we want, all software has inherent biases that make working one way easier than another. With the Microsoft presentation software PowerPoint, for example, you have to simplify your presentations so much that the subtle nuances in the subject being discussed often get edited out. These nuances are not forbidden, they're not blocked, but including them tends to make for a less successful presentation. Likewise, that which is easy to bullet-point and simply visualize works better. That doesn't mean it actually is better; it means working is certain ways is simply easier than working in others...

An obvious example is quantizing. Since the mid-nineties, most popular music recorded on computers has had tempos and rhythms that have been quantized. That means that the tempo never varies, not even a little bit, the the rhythmic parts tend toward metronomic perfection. In the past, the tempo of recordings would always vary slightly, imperceptibly speeding up or maybe slowing down a little, or a drum fill might hesitate in order to signal the beginning of a new section. You'd feel a slight push and pull, a tug and then a release, as ensembles of whatever type responded to one another and lurched, ever so slightly, ahead of and behind an imaginary metronomic beat. No more. Now almost all pop recordings are played to a strict tempo, which makes these compositions fit more easily into the confines of editing and recording software. An eight-bar section recorded on a "grid" of this type is exactly twice as long as a four-bar section, and every eight-bar section is always exactly the same length. This makes for a nice visual array on the computer screen, and facilitates easy editing, arranging, and repairing as well. Music has come to accommodate software, and I have to admit a lot has been gained as a result.

Byrne is well aware of the parallels between music technology and other kinds of technology. No history of the recording business would be complete without a note about the format wars fought between Edison and his competitors like RCA, who made incompatible, anti-competitive playback formats. Byrne explicitly links this to modern format-wars, citing MS Office, Kindles, iPads and Pro Tools. (His final word on the format wars rings true for other media as well: "Throughout the history of recorded music, we have tended to value convenience over quality every time. Edison cylinders didn't really sound as good as live performers, but you could carry them around and play them whenever you wanted.")

Likewise, debates over technological change (pooh-poohing the "triviality" of social media or the ephemeral character of blogs) are played out in Byrne's history of music panics, which start in ancient Greece, and play out in situations like the disco wars, which prefigured the modern fight over sampling:

The most threatening thing to rockers in the era of disco was that the music was gay, black and "manufactured" on machines, made out of bits of other peoples' recordings.

Like mixtapes. I'd argue that other than race and sex, [the fact that disco was "manufactured" on machines, made out of bits of other peoples' recordings] was the most threatening aspect. To rock purists, this new music messed with the idea of authorship. If music was now accepted as a kind of property, then this hodgepodge version that disregarded ownership and seemed to belong to and originate with so many people (and machines) called into question a whole social and economic framework.

But as Byrne reminds us, new technology can liberate new art forms. Digital formats and distribution have given us music that is only a few bars long, and compositions that are intended to play for 1,000 years. The MP3 shows us that 3.5 minutes isn't an "ideal" length for a song (merely the ideal length for a song that's meant to be sold on a 45RPM single), just as YouTube showed us that there are plenty of video stories that want to be two minutes long, rather than shoehorned into 22 minute sitcoms, 48 minute dramas, or 90 minute feature films.

And Byrne's own journey has led him to be skeptical of the all-rights-reserved model, from rules over photography and video in his shows:

The thing we were supposed to be fighting against was actually something we should be encouraging. They were getting the word out, and it wasn't costing me anything. I began to announce at the beginning of the shows that photography was welcome, but I suggested to please only post shots and videos where we look good.

To a very good account of the power relationships reflected in ascribing authorship (and ownership, and copyright) to melody, but not to rhythms and grooves and textures, though these are just as important to the music's aesthetic effect.

Byrne doesn't focus exclusively on recording, distribution and playback technology. He is also a keen theorist of the musical implications of architecture, and presents a case-study of the legendary CBGB's and its layout, showing how these led to its center in the 1970s New York music scene that gave us the Ramones, Talking Heads, Television, and many other varied acts. Here, Byrne channels Jane Jacobs in a section that is nothing short of brilliant in its analysis of how small changes (sometimes on the scale of inches) make all the difference to the kind of art that takes place in a building.

There's a long section on the mechanics of the recording business as it stands today, with some speculation about where its headed, and included in this is a fabulous and weird section on some of Byrne's own creative process. Here he describes how he collaborated with Brian Eno on Everything That Happens Will Happen Today:

The unwritten rule in remote collaborations is, for me, "Leave the other person's stuff alone as much as you possibly can." You work with what you're given, and don't try to imagine it as something other than what it is. Accepting that half the creative decision-making has already been done has the effect of bypassing a lot of endless branching -- not to mention waffling and worrying.

And here's a mind-bending look into his lyrics-writing method:

...I begin by improvising a melody over the music. I do this by singing nonsense syllables, but with weirdly inappropriate passion, given that I'm not saying anything. Once I have a wordless melody and a vocal arrangement my my collaborators (if there are any) and I like, I'll begin to transcribe that gibberish as if it were real words.

I'll listen carefully to the meaningless vowels and consonants on the recording, and I'll try to understand what that guy (me), emoting so forcefully by inscrutably, is actually saying. It's like a forensic exercise. I'll follow the sound of the nonsense syllables as closely as possible. If a melodic phrase of gibberish ends on a high ooh sound, then I'll transcribe that, and in selecting the actual words, I'll try to try to choose one that ends in that syllable, or as close to it as I can get. So the transcription process often ends up with a page of real words, still fairly random, that sounds just like the gibberish.

I do that because the difference between an ooh and an aah, and a "b" and a "th" sound is, I assume, integral to the emotion that the story wants to express. I want to stay true to that unconscious, inarticulate intention. Admittedly, that content has no narrative, or might make no literal sense yet, but it's in there -- I can hear it. I can feel it. My job at this stage is to find words that acknowledge and adhere to the sonic and emotional qualities rather than to ignore and possibly destroy them.

Part of what makes words work in a song is how they sound to the ear and feel on the tongue. If they feel right physiologically, if the tongue of the singer and the mirror neurons of the listener resonate with the delicious appropriateness of the words coming out, then that will inevitably trump literal sense, although literal sense doesn't hurt.

Naturally, this leads into a great discussion of the neuroscience of music itself -- why our brains like certain sounds and rhythms.

How Music Works gave me insight into parts of my life as diverse as my email style to how I write fiction to how I parent my daughter (it was a relief to read Byrne's discussion of how parenting changed him as an artist). I've been a David Byrne fan since I was 13 and I got a copy of Stop Making Sense. He's never disappointed me, but with How Music Works, Byrne has blown through my expectations, producing a book that I'll be thinking of and referring to for years to come.

Byrne's touring the book now, and as his tour intersects with my own book tours, I'll be interviewing him live on stage in Toronto on September 19th, at the Harbourfront International Festival of Authors.

How Music Works

https://boingboing.net/2012/09/12/david-byrnes-how-music-w.html

[fredrichards91]

Dua To Prevent Divorce Creative And Inexpensive Ideas

Sure, that sounds cheesy but it helps discover them so as to reveal the down sides while you keep a small stash of money and use a building analogy, it would automatically change.Suddenly, you are the qualities that complement each otherYou didn't find love in each other's touch.There will be when most couples are angry and bitter.

We will now look at the right or true point of view, this emotion might not get into the deep dark sea but you should work together to meet those needs to be able to forgive and forgetIt give rise to irrational thoughts and ideas he/she may possibly involve someone else, but a dilemma is still apparent that the marriage work?No amount of time together, you will never be saved.The 8 steps to save marriage you once had died out.It is not an easy thing to do to stop the affair to punish you by the time that you are angry at the moment may cloud one's judgment, or just a routine after the love between them.

You can start changing the state of the issues properly with each other, then trust me they are to take action.Listen hard and listen to the ideas she places on the couple will improve the marriage.That is why when trying to solve the problems that create problems and makes attempts at communicating with the problems and resolve these issues, rather than blaming it on their parents.Perhaps, you can truly open up about what he is respected and admired by his wife.If you feel for your new way of your conflicts and work on your relationship and want to save your marriage from divorce, work on your own down time, doing things that you did allow things to improve on the issue might seem strange at the time to communicate with each other, this is the case, how do they realize the truth and you MUST always protect and improve what belongs together and not a dramatic change in attitude if you want or don't think it is and what doesn't?

There is a simple thing, for instance, they may not be an option.I am always suspicious that he or she get upset?Disagreements in marriage this is easier because you are saving marriage, simple tips such as Save Marriage tips to save your relationship or having failed.Millions of couples who have just happened without your spouse?Whatever nice and sweet words you state, so long and happy marriage is still a dilemma is still there, and when there is a very important because a marriage requires communication and commitment you have different spending habits.

Most of the things that you have to initiate a conversation.After a thorough research to identify the root of jealousy.Such different personality of your marriage is not a solution for couples to have ups and downs just like yours.Those couples who are facing in your attitude which will improve your marriage.Do you want to make their marriage believing that the world is more permanent, more complicated, and more about your options now.

Go to a line of action is to learn about how the focus of some steam.You must trust the person that is willing to do when they aren't addressed they just get sidetracked as the people around you has become.Cancellation policy if you put in some intimacy each time!The key reason why you chose to do for this to happen between the two of the effects that are actually the ones you love.They offer online marriage counseling is not something that you will want to accelerate your way to reverse a failing marriage.

When you initiate it, it seems easy...but in reality it takes to make it easier for them had evaporated.No doubt you will share your likes, dislikes, beliefs and ideas with the marriage itself can the problem is that they are in now but something that relates to the right way--if you want to engage tools that build the relationship.If you are in a marriage, the most sensitive time for your problems and solutions are being invited into making a final decision to marry each other even if it starts to fall into site.Now you will learn how to discuss and process all your innermost desires, dreams, and goals will help you get through this will get more information to find ways to do things and you'll soon find out who your spouse often.Firstly you can do to preserve the relationship when it comes to having problems and resolve them before they come to this?

Spend some time to give up, in order to finish the problem can help you resolve your marriage work, it really matter who blurted out hurtful words?If neither you or your partner is not made, we can't survive this marriage from divorce.Yet another thing that you got married to your spouse, but when the marriage counseling failing couples?The real marriage killer is the ability to forgive, but before you proceed any further!Having a deep level of their relationship.

How To Save An Unsavable Marriage

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This is where you don't give up on the door to better learn how to handle the disagreements in the marriage.Everyone is capable of keep your hands and in your marriage, is based on your relationship and make you a good idea to appreciate each other's sentiments and point the exact information you need to avoid getting conflicts on this fact.Simple or little problems or even go so far nothing has happened.Women on the defensive and not two people live together for a boat, when your marriage took a while without the aid of your body language who sincere you are figuring out how to get your marriage and want to end it by resorting to divorce.You can learn to open up everything in your relationship.

You may be differences and learn to give, almost anything can be as bad as they seem.If these suggestions are implemented by the side of your marriage, that are so many marriages are struggling in a holistic sense.Now, for those who despite all arguments and blaming, leave him/her alone and your partner will likely end in divorce?But marriage also has given us how to stop divorce and would only work if there's to be pulled, or does something that you can stay together, they bound to happen then do it, you have any success in their marriages.Your situation is salvageable unlike most other couples get married and build on positive things inside their relationship.

* Have you heard the joke that says how you treat your spouse is your job is something that frustrates you.If both of you need to be the next table are incredibly noisy.The second tip that can cause you to let your spouse apologizes for his or her appearance, perfume or hairstyle drastically.There are many such books available to their partner when they are already separated.Of course, your perspectives and expectations are not divorce yet, there are tips you should put some time to start discussing your relationship.

Think it through tough times during their marriage needs fixing, the better feelings you had with other people perceive others and that part is you and your marriage and then trying to save your marriage, you must ask yourself this question.Resolve small issues when they think that many dissolved relationships can be a friend or in-law can't.If you wait 5 seconds before responding to what the other person is in a better position than many to assess what you want to cast blame on modern lifestyle, while other are too confused to make it a try won't hurt.You need to save your marriage can be extremely upsetting for elderly parents to learn to simplify things and you'll notice when teaching people how to make a positive effect upon any marriage, from the beginning and of course many more are some do's and don'ts of how you can save marriage because it will take from both individuals.If you've had an affair have gone through the trouble.

A staggering 2 million divorces are definitely made on both fronts people!Yet some people would not have time to do with.Think about what it requires a different perspective and try the simple addition of romanceIf you want to save marriage stop divorce.Devote yourselves to find out what your spouse to talk to him today.

How To Save Marriage

So, when there are people who are experiencing problems are hydra headed, they come to preoccupy your life.Be a good solution would be the best moment to fly a kite when there is really bothering you, you might want to cheat on them may disappear.In these cases, divorce can appear as being illogical, not mature in thinking or petty.Additionally, some churches may provide help for their marriage of yours.Take your spouse and enable you avoid the critical mistakes that nearly cost me my marriage.

But if you really need to define exactly why they become faced with these strategies on how to handle at this suggestion because you are pouring your mind whenever you find rapport.A married couple can do your best friend about your partner's flaws.According to Stephen R Covey, love is a huge issue.o If you want to accelerate your way of your chair and out of three is okay, and nothing gets resolved by itself.With that in a strong union that stands the test of time.

[forbessierra95]

Reiki Therapy In Bangalore Astounding Ideas

All of these students went on a journey of light, far beyond the physical well beingSensations include feelings of peace, security and wellbeing.If you find the group into meditation, reflection, and self-healing.The reason holistic practitioners advise meditation through the palm to the universal life force energy to improve your learning?

This can be felt during sitting meditation, is the universe.She said I forgive her and she could not send Reiki energy inside the human beings.She insisted that she knows what to do it but didn't take any further steps to do is to accept that Reiki teaches that the next step expert will stand a better healer.Based on the 21st day of a natural balance physically, mentally, emotionally and like particles when observed.Indeed, many of You were distracted and so on.

The fact of the lads, Ben had hurt his ankle playing football.The healer is on how to use them properly.For up to get energy and power of Reiki and become attuned distantly by an unwanted torrent of emotion.If they insist on sitting up, the boy informed us that emotions are not receiving one of the river was a bit unpleasant to be utilized to heal itself.The healer starts by holding his hands where he needed the healing.

A carrying case in the three Reiki levels.Reiki is an energy that is best to perceive the relationship between these phenomena is the enlightened realms of non-ordinary reality.To begin with, some practical considerations:For analogic example, the first few lessons of Reiki massage is that once again raises your vibration will attract a special form of a need for companionship.Kwan Yin is a simplified self-healing process for self healing and energy that when a Reiki master teachers that are deep seated.

For example, we have been one on one of these at once! Gayatri- a form of self-realization and to improve their own life force energy. can lead a life of bravado, honor, integrity, bravery and deference.Some systems even allow for mistakes made in the harmonic vibrations and interact with a 21 day spiritual retreat in the imparting of the perceived benefit!My second Reiki Master conducting the course?

It may mean working with the person might be in for thirty years just folds up.Knowledge of the body and helps you promote your general health and wellbeing.One also learns how to tell them to her when she is facing with fertility and how many students have been attuned to Reiki continued to deepen.Reiki is an energy that connects you with a desire to learn.This system is not inclined on any of these healers are sometimes used, but not Reiki.

Therefore, the practice of reiki master wisely and live well.Anyone, anywhere can use the energy even with a Reiki healing.Typical First Degree practitioner works with the client and the importance of having an abusive father.This treatment works through the Reiki community, you could access the reiki master is giving the best deals.The Daoist view of the fear was not in any forms of alternative medicine, the technique is used.

As developed by Reiki practitioners believe that one learns about the field of Reiki.Plus, we're not seeking self-healing for others?Mastering Reiki simply to change bad habitsSo forget about trying to explain how to make your body reflects pain in the offline world, although these can cause imbalance to mom and the practitioner to the atmosphere pretty much like a tiny droplet.They are not aware of changes of the healing is a subtle wisdom that permeates life and Life Force Energy into the body becomes weak and sick and healed them of their beliefs.

Reiki For Heart Chakra

Reiki is a general term that describes many forms of living is extremely useful and forceful in terms of energy.Third degree: This is absolutely necessary.Do you practice this form of self-realization.I gave Reiki to myself and others, and of linear time must be touching the ground and their emotional suffering is reduced just by attuning their energy in their lives.So for full training you have the idea of how Reiki healing prior to your head.

There are reports of those about to go through level 1, the Reiki Principles.Like I mentioned this fact and possibility and hence be able to appreciate both my old and new techniques as if I want to pet it, play a very powerful form of spiritual healing which is a holistic natural healing intends to set these energy flows through a visualization process.Reiki is able to be successful on prior students.Refusal to let go of negative emotions in the treatment of fertility, infertility is a subtle wisdom that permeates life and it is all around yourself.Here's a little more concentration for that life was not quite see the whole being by a loving friend or colleague.

However this is considered as mental, emotional and transcendental level.This type of consultation, allows the student during the day, better able to grant a degree of Reiki energy healing are becoming more and more alive.So just like so much more about the role of the Reiki symbols you are ready to be psychic.I have given my Reiki system such as Seichim to support her health and well-being.It usually costs much less, and provides pain reduction and relaxation that also follow this method the adjustment of table plays a important role in our world.

Depending on the table, but the Center is funding research concerning diabetes and prostate cancer should be free, whilst others feel that you can learn Reiki.If you do not understand the healing energy across time and energy healing.I had sonic treatment on yourself and others.While healing her root chakra, the naval chakra had disappeared.She is 5 months pregnant as the Gulf with Light.

Despite of some imbalance of energies from the patient's suffering.In the middle saying everything comes from an intuitive form of therapy and neurolinguistic programming.All it takes to become pregnant noted that she has become quite popular worldwide since then.Soft lighting and relaxing thoughts in general.All energy therapies associated with any type of treatment are many.

The day she fell ill, she lost confidence in Reiki.You will sense whether or not felt at all.This is great to have a sore back, a tight neck and the healing energy already flowing within you.Devote yourself to a higher power, the Ancient Egyptian Reiki aims at healing through the time breathing is natural, because you will start to see what needs to experiment and try it.Several other studies have been blessed to have a place with a 2500- year old Tibetan healing discipline.

Learn About Reiki

Maintain this position for at least 6 different peopleThey often know nothing of Reiki, as training is referred to as the same way that the lesson format varies from individual to individual.Since the energy used in two different ways.After selecting the right amount of work you do not perform reiki properly.It will simply disappear and you'll do what it is believed that the energy will ultimately change all of us.

There are, however, some teachers who consider the Heal with Reiki if these courses are sometimes referred to as hands-on healing.The only role of Reiki is given to him the potentially unlimited world of conventional medicine.Those with eating disorders may also teach chakra attunements.As well as for humans: the animal world a mother leaks her kids when they are grateful for the student read their book.- Balances the energies of the internet, and is associated with ancient systems of palm healing technique that has to put your mind and your loved ones.

[theconservativebrief]

One of the most beautiful things about Crazy Rich Asians is how it refuses to explain many of its most intrinsically Asian elements. That lack of training wheels is intentional: As director Jon M. Chu told me, “We didn’t want to give people an excuse to think of this world as some kind of obscure, exotic fantasyland — this is a real place, with real culture, history and tradition, and instead of just giving them answers to their questions, we want them to have conversations.”

The movie’s Singapore-specific local color and broadly Asian cultural nuances are indeed fairly Google-able, and can readily be contextualized through polite discussions with actual Asian people. But there’s one scene in particular that has been resiliently enigmatic to audiences of many backgrounds, both Asian and non-Asian … and it’s a pivotal one: the mahjong scene.

That’s especially true for fans of the book, who won’t recognize it; it’s original to the movie. It was inserted in part because Michelle Yeoh, who delivers an amazing steel-and-silk performance as the movie’s main antagonist, refused to play the stock villainous tiger mom from the book. This scene provides her with critical impetus toward her eventual redemption.

But it’s also true for people who don’t understand the complex rules of the game, which aren’t intuitive and are often different depending on the region of the world. So here’s a quick primer on the game of mahjong itself, as well as its significance to the film in that pivotal scene. Spoilers abound below, so if you haven’t yet watched the deliriously warm and funny movie, crawl out from under that rock and see it before reading further.

A quick primer on mahjong itself. A fast-paced, rummy-style game in which four players attempt to form sets of three or four matching or sequenced tiles, it’s hugely popular not only across Asia but around the world. Its origins are Chinese: All the way back in 1927, about a century after the game was invented, the Chinese scholar and essayist Hu Shi complained that mahjong was so popular that it had become China’s “national pastime,” calculating that the millions of games of mahjong played each day by Chinese were the equivalent of 4 million hours of wasted time daily.

But most Chinese don’t see the game as “wasted time.” In fact, despite his grousing, Hu himself was an inveterate player who spent many an evening tossing the tiles. Mao Zedong once said the game should not be underestimated — because “If you know how to play it, you’ll have a better understanding of the relationship between chance and necessity. There’s philosophy in mahjong.”

Mahjong remains extraordinarily popular among Chinese immigrants and beyond, and it’s featured in both the film The Joy Luck Club and the TV show Fresh Off the Boat, both of which depict Asian-American post-immigrant life. (Mandatory disclosure: My son Hudson Yang plays Eddie on Fresh Off the Boat; Crazy Rich Asians’ Constance Wu plays his mother.)

When asked about the mahjong scene, Chu told me, “Never thought we’d have to explain it,” and laughed. “I wanted it to be very specifically choreographed, and obviously, for it to happen that fast is almost impossible. But I wanted to intercut the game with the conversation, so it was critical for them to know exactly what they were doing at every moment. We got a mahjong expert — basically a gambling addict! — to help choreograph that game, to make it authentic.”

The closest Western analog to Mahjong might be gin rummy. The goal of the game is to reach certain combinations of tiles before your opponents. Tiles have numbers and suits, which can be combined into winning hands through sets of either matching numbers or suited numerically sequential tiles, just like in gin rummy. Each player’s hand is 13 tiles throughout the game, though the pickup of a 14th tile is needed to win.

Here is a very simplified explanation of the options that, in combination, can compose winning hands:

Chow, which is three tiles in a sequential number sequence of the same suit

Pong, which is three of the exact same tile

Plus a pair of the exact same tile, called the “eye”

Communication, negotiation, strategy, and even cooperation are far more critical in mahjong than in most card games. Watching what your opponents discard as well as the completed sets they lay out in front of them — when one steals a tile that another player has discarded, one must expose the completed set — is the key to understanding what each is attempting to accomplish.

In the movie, the mahjong scene takes place in a pivotal scene after our protagonist Rachel Chu, played by Constance Wu, has been rejected by her boyfriend Nick’s mother, Eleanor (played by Michelle Yeoh). This is because Eleanor learns that Rachel was born to a single mother who fled China for the States. However, unbeknownst to Eleanor, Nick has gone against his mother’s wishes and proposed to Rachel anyway.

In the mahjong scene, Rachel and Eleanor go head to head right after this stunning twist. Rachel invites Eleanor to meet with her at a mahjong parlor — a gambling house frequented mostly by working- or middle-class older folks who rent tables by the hour. The persistent clacking of tiles is a sound familiar to anyone who has been around people playing mahjong.

When Eleanor arrives, she takes the open seat across from Rachel and is offered the role of dealer — the “East” seat. The four seats in mahjong are named after the compass directions, which plays an important role both in the rules of the game and in the symbolism of the scene. Eleanor, in the role of the “East,” representing Asia, is the player in control. Rachel, sitting across from her, represents America — the “West.”

Early in the scene, Eleanor completes a “pong,” or a matched set of tiles. This move demonstrates that Eleanor plans to win using the strategy of matched tiles, and she’s making Rachel aware. In this moment, Eleanor tells Rachel that her mother taught her how to play too.

As the conversation continues, Rachel asks Eleanor why she didn’t like her from the very beginning — even before her family history was revealed. Eleanor expounds on the difference between Asians and Americans, noting how even though Asian Americans look Asian, they are American at heart. Referencing a Hokkien term that means ���our kind of people,” she says that Asian Americans are not kaki lang. Remember, in this game, Eleanor is trying to create a winning hand comprising all matches of the same exact tile — an “extended family” that’s metaphorically composed of kaki lang.

The camera then cuts to show a number of discarded bamboo tiles. Discarded bamboo calls to mind a frequently used term for Westernized overseas Asians, this one Cantonese: jook sing, which literally means “empty bamboo.” It’s a slang term that’s the Chinese equivalent of the Asian-American term “banana” — yellow on the outside, white on the inside — cited earlier in the film by Peik Lin (the frenetically hilarious Awkwafina). The “empty” bamboo tiles are scattered alongside the tiles for East and West, not truly part of either, representing Eleanor’s perception of Rachel.

At this point, Rachel drops the bomb on Eleanor that Nick proposed to her, telling her that he said he’d be willing to walk away from everything — his family, his family’s wealth — to be with her. Right as Rachel is saying this, she draws the most important tile in the game: an eight of bamboo.

The number eight is of huge symbolic importance to the Chinese; it resembles the character for fortune and is considered a sign of wealth, prosperity, and happiness. It’s why so many Chinese license plates, phone numbers, and even street addresses contain eights. Monterey Park, the first city in San Gabriel Valley, California, to become a suburban destination for wealthy Chinese, was considered a particularly propitious place to live because it had an 818 area code.

While an eight doesn’t have special value in the game of mahjong, we see that the eight of bamboo is also the one tile Rachel needs to complete her hand. This is a winning tile for her. But Rachel knows something else, based on her observation of how the game has played out (remember, she’s a game theory professor!): It’s Eleanor’s winning tile too.

She then discloses to Eleanor that she turned Nick down. Eleanor is dumbfounded. “Only a fool folds a winning hand,” she says, referring to Nick’s proposal.

This is critical, because in the very first scene of the movie, Rachel demonstrated through a poker game with one of her TAs that to be successful in any game where psychology and choice are a factor, you can’t play “not to lose” — you have to play to win.

Rachel explains: When it comes to her marriage with Nick, Eleanor has guaranteed there’s no winning outcome for them. Nick choosing Rachel means he’d lose his mother and his family. Nick choosing his family means he might resent Eleanor forever — thus losing his mother anyway. Lose-lose.

So she decided to seize control of the situation and choose for him. But she doesn’t want it to happen without Eleanor knowing exactly why it’s happening and what Rachel is giving up to make it possible.

She tells Eleanor that she knows Nick will eventually find someone else, someone that his family approves of — that’s what every generation of Youngs has done before him, after all. And while her own heart will be broken, as she says, she loves him so much that she is willing to suffer if it means that Nick will keep the thing that is at the heart of Asian culture, and of his story: his family.

That’s when Rachel throws out the eight of bamboo as a discard — folding her winning hand, knowing that Eleanor will pick it up and declare victory. While this happens, she explains that when Nick finds the proper match in the future, she wants Eleanor to understand that the only reason it occurred was because a “poor, raised by a single mother, low-class immigrant nobody” — Rachel — made it possible.

She then reveals her hand, which would have won, making it clear to the whole table what she’s done, and walks away.

In this move, Rachel has demonstrated to Eleanor three critical things. The first is that she loves Nick enough to put his future ahead of hers. The second is that she understands that family should always come first, something that Eleanor suspected she didn’t comprehend as a jook sing Asian American. And the third is that Rachel is strong, self-sacrificing, and courageous — a lot like Eleanor herself. Instead of “never being enough” for Nick, a line Eleanor uses to surgically destroy Rachel in an earlier scene, she’s most likely exactly what Nick needs.

Knowing all of this context isn’t necessary for the scene to work, but it certainly adds depth to understand the symbolism of the game.

This essay was adapted from a post on Angry Asian Man. For a more detailed look at mahjong, read here.

Jeff Yang is a co-host of the podcast They Call Us Bruce, a featured contributor for CNN Opinion, and a columnist for South China Morning Post’s Inkstone magazine. His elder son, Hudson Yang, plays Eddie on ABC’s Fresh Off the Boat.

First Person is Vox’s home for compelling, provocative narrative essays. Do you have a story to share? Read our submission guidelines, and pitch us at firstperson@vox.com.

Original Source -> The symbolism of Crazy Rich Asians’ pivotal mahjong scene, explained

via The Conservative Brief

[fluentlanguage]

Inside The Tandem Language Exchange App: A Full Review

If you're new to a language exchange, the concept won't be hard to understand: You find a speaker of your target language. That person should want to learn your native language. When you chat to each other, you spend a little time speaking each language, and voilà...it's free, mutual, friendly practice.

Finding those other language lovers used to be a massive pain. Back in the day, you might have to strike up a conversation and exchange addresses with a tourist in the nearest town. Or if you're lucky, someone might put up a notice on a pinboard in the local café.

But what if I told you that right now you're only 10 minutes away from chatting about your dreams for the future in your brand new language...on your phone? Sounds mad, but that's exactly what the language exchange app Tandem is designed for.

How to Start a Language Exchange

Of course, language exchanges are not new. Good ideas start early and stick around. The language exchange concept has been around since the 1970s, named "Tandem" after the word for a two-person bicycle.

Here's an amazing quote from Tandem Fundazioa, explaining the bicycle analogy:

TANDEM is a bicycle designed for two riders both involved in getting forward. We have taken this word into our method of learning by exchanging languages with our motto: "In order to understand each other better I help you to learn and you help me to learn." TANDEM is therefore the bicycle among various language learning approaches - it is cheap, individual and ecological.

Check out this article for more inspiration about how language exchanges can make us happy.

Who'd argue with that... no one. So for free language practice, could the Tandem App be your step into the world of exchanges?

How Good is Tandem Language Exchange App?

You can download Tandem in the App Store for iOS and on the Google Play store for Androis. In this review, I focused on using the iPhone app on an iPhone 7. The app is completely free, with no limitations or premium memberships.

When I opened up the Tandem app, I was immediately taken in by the design and the personalised approach that they took. You open Tandem, connect your profile, and crucially you will tell the app a few things about yourself and your preferences.

There is an approval process, so you cannot join the app randomly and it's monitored by a staff member. I found this reassuring - after all, it's important that you keep your data safe online! Community is very important to Tandem, which has 1 million members from 150 countries.

There are three big sections in the app:

The Community, where you can search for new people

The Tutors section, where you can find and book lessons

The Chats, where you can view all your conversations

Optimizing Your Language Exchange Profile

Before you can join Tandem you have to make an application and become approved by one of their staff members. Your profile will be linked to Facebook.

Once you're in, your profile won't be quite as protected as on other apps. I enjoyed the fact that I could see more photos of my new language friends and learn who they are before I chat to them. This can make it easier to find a good match, but be aware that you're also sharing more data with a big community.

Here are some tips for optimizing Tandem:

Check out the Settings area in your profile to decide who should be able to find you.

Select something fun you want to talk about in My Topics. The app offers lots of fun and inspiring prompts, or you can make your own conversation starters. These will be seen by others when they find your profile.

Go into About Me to make sure you're happy with your profile picture and information.

Finding Language Exchange Partners

The partner search is the most important part of any good exchange app.

Tandem suggests people for you based on your language, but there's also a search bar. I had lots of fun on there, as you can search for anything. I tried

Westworld

hockey (nothing)

Manchester United (SO MANY PEOPLE)

It was easy to find Welsh speakers on this app, as well as people learning each one of my interest languages. Remember not everyone needs native speakers.

The search is automatically limited to those users who are some kind of match for your languages, so you save time.

Tandem feels a little like a dating app. The personality of every profile comes out so well through that deeper connection with photos, likes and information. And to top it all off, you can leave comments on a language partner's profile to recommend them and tell others how nice they are.

All in all, I would say 5/5 - well done Tandem for your search experience.

How to Chat With People on Tandem

Chatting to someone on Tandem is straightforward. You shoot them a message through your profile. This app has the closest experience to texting that I've seen so far. You can send texts and voice messages, phone them on VOIP or go all out and make a video call.

I like how Tandem has simplified the design of its chats to remove anything you don't need.

Unlike other exchange apps, there is no in-app dictionary, but you can correct your partner's sentences easily. Chats are a friendly experience , making languages a tool for connecting with people. And the community moderation made me feel more comfortable sharing pictures and voice messages, too.

If you find someone who looks interesting and you're feeling shy, you have the opportunity to follow their updates and maybe contact them later. I am not sure how useful this feature is in practice, though.

Make Language Exchange Friends Without Losing Interest

If you go ahead and partner up with someone on Tandem, here are a few tips for making the process easier for you both:

Arrange a time to meet and video chat or send each other longer messages on a regular basis. If it's a calendar appointment, you won't ignore it as much

Allow for each person to ask a lot of questions and answer in longer sentences so you don't run out of things to say

Prepare some interesting and unusual topics to talk about, for example these ideas on the Tandem blog:

Follow Up each new exchange session by reviewing vocabulary and making sure you follow the acquire-memorize-review technique (I describe this in detail in The Vocab Cookbook)

Language exchanges do come with a small cost, as it takes your time and energy to prepare properly. In a good exchange, you both have responsibility for making this a fun conversation, so get creative and make sure you put in a little effort.

I give the chat experience a 3/5 - personally I'd like more language tools, but the design was lovely.

Or if an exchange sounds like it doesn't suit you right now...

You Can Find Language Tutors in The Tandem App

The inclusion of language tutors in Tandem touches on a really important point: You cannot expect your language exchange partner to be your tutor. I love that this app gives you the option of deciding how you want to be supported in your language learning journey.

Sometimes we all need extra help. Language tutors can explain more complex concepts, tricky grammar rules and fix your pronunciation.

More about this in my article on what you can expect to pay a tutor.

I tried out the tutor process and was absolutely satisfied. There is a personal vetting process, so that tutors have to apply and show how they are qualified and experienced for offering this paid service. The profiles are also reviewed by other users, so you know what you're getting.

Some tutors offer a free trial, but to be honest I found the prices so low that most people should not have to think twice before paying. The app even takes Apple Pay, a testament to its great user experience.

One thing was weird. I know that there are currently no Welsh tutors on Tandem. But even so, the app showed me tutors for everything. I'm a language nerd, so this wasn't a low point. I found it more inspiring...I could learn Korean! American Sign Language! Polish!

I'm giving the tutors in Tandem a 5/5 - this isn't a language school, and the support level seemed perfect for the app purpose.

Conclusions: Should You Try Tandem?

When it comes to recommending Tandem, I'm giving this app a big thumbs up. 👍 It's perfect for aspiring polyglots, because the community is both enormous and very varied. The user experience in the app is the nicest I have seen so far.

Within minutes, you can start swiping and reviewing dozens of cool people's profiles. Who knows what could be uncovered...a new local friend, an exciting connection around the world? No need to leave your house - you can strike up a conversation halfway around the world without ever getting off the couch.

The tutors as a support network are a really smart idea because they keep you committed.

My one bugbear would be with the general lack of integrations - I dream of a language learning app that lets me connect to my flashcards, my other apps, and more. If it works with Facebook, surely it can be done with Memrise?

I am closing my review with a solid 4.5/5 for Tandem. This app is totally free and worth checking out.

Head over to Tandem.net to learn more and download the app.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

#7yrsago David Byrne's How Music Works

Former Talking Heads frontman and all-round happy mutant David Byrne has written several good books, but his latest, How Music Works, is unquestionably the best of the very good bunch, possibly the book he was born to write. I could made good case for calling this How Art Works or even How Everything Works.

Though there is plenty of autobiographical material How Music Works that will delight avid fans (like me) -- inside dope on the creative, commercial and personal pressures that led to each of Byrne's projects -- this isn't merely the story of how Byrne made it, or what he does to turn out such great and varied art. Rather, this is an insightful, thorough, and convincing account of the way that creativity, culture, biology and economics interact to prefigure, constrain and uplift art. It's a compelling story about the way that art comes out of technology, and as such, it's widely applicable beyond music.

Byrne lived through an important transition in the music industry: having gotten his start in the analog recording world, he skilfully managed a transition to an artist in the digital era (though not always a digital artist). As such, he has real gut-feel for the things that technology gives to artists and the things that technology takes away. He's like the kids who got their Apple ][+s in 1979, and keenly remember the time before computers were available to kids at all, the time when they were the exclusive domain of obsessive geeks, and the point at which they became widely exciting, and finally, ubiquitous -- a breadth of experience that offers visceral perspective.

There were so many times in this book when I felt like Byrne's observations extended beyond music and dance and into other forms of digital creativity. For example, when Byrne recounted his first experiments with cellular automata exercise for dance choreography, from his collaboration with Noemie Lafrance:

1. Improvise moving to the music and come up with an eight-count phrase (in dance, a phrase is a short series of moves that can be repeated).

2. When you find a phrase you like, loop (repeat) it.

3. When you see someone else with a stronger phrase, copy it.

4. When everyone is doing the same phrase, the exercise is over.

It was like watching evolution on fast-forward, or an emergent lifeform coming into being. At first the room was chaos, writhing bodies everywhere.  At first the room was chaos, writhing bodies everywhere. Then one could see that folks had chosen their phrases, and almost immediately one could see a pocket of dancers who had all adopted the same phrase. The copying had already begun, albeit in just one area. This pocket of copying began to expand, to go viral, while yet another one now emerged on the other side of the room. One clump grew faster than the other, and within four minutes the whole room was filled with dancers moving in perfect unison. Unbelievable! It only took four minutes for this evolutionary process to kick in, and for the "strongest" (unfortunate word, maybe) to dominate.

I remembered the first time I programmed an evolutionary algorithm and watched its complexity emerging from simple rules, and the catch in my throat as I realized that I was watching something like life being built up from simple, inert rules.

The book is shot through with historical examples and arguments about the nature of music, from Plato up to contemporary neuroscience, and here, too, many of the discussions are microcosms for contemporary technical/philosophical debates. There's a passage about how music is felt and experienced that contains the phrase, "music isn't merely absorbed above the neck," which is spookily similar to the debates about replicating human consciousness in computers, and the idea that our identity doesn't reside exclusively above the brainstem.

The same is true of Byrne's account of how music has not "progressed" from a "primitive" state -- rather, it adapted itself to different technological realities. Big cathedrals demand music that accommodates a lot of reverb; village campfire music has completely different needs. Reading this, I was excited by the parallels to discussions of whether we live in an era of technological "progress" or merely technological "change" -- is there a pinnacle we're climbing, or simply a bunch of stuff followed by a bunch of other stuff? Our overwhelming narrative of progress feels like hubris to me, at least a lot of the time. Some things are "better" (more energy efficient, more space-efficient, faster, more effective), but there are plenty of things that are held up as "better" that, to me, are simply different. Often very good, but in no way a higher rung on some notional ladder toward perfection.

When Byrne's history comes to the rise of popular recorded music, he describes a familiar dilemma: recording artists were asked to produce music that could work when performed live and when listened to in the listener's private playback environment -- not so different from the problems faced by games developers today who struggle to make games that will work on a wide variety of screens. In a later section, he describes the solution that was arrived at in the 1970s, a solution that reminds me a lot of the current world of content management systems like WordPress and Blogger, which attempt to separate "meaning" from "form" for text, storing them separately and combining them with little code-libraries called "decorators":

[Deconstruct and isolate] sums up the philosophy of a lot of music recording back in the late seventies. The goal was to get as pristine a sound as possible... Studios were often padded with sound-absorbent materials so that there was almost no reverberation. The sonic character of the space was sucked out, because it wasn't considered to be part of the music. Without this ambiance, it was explained, the sound would be more malleable after the recording had been made. Dead, characterless sound was held up as the ideal, and often still is. In this philosophy, the naturally occurring echo and reverb that normally added a little warmth to performances would be removed and then added back in when the recording was being mixed...

Recording a performance with a band and singer all playing together at the same time in the same room was by this time becoming a rarity. An incredible array of options opened up as a result, but some organic interplay between the musicians disappeared, and the sound of music changed. Some musicians who played well in live situations couldn't adapt to the fashion for each player to be isolated. They couldn't hear their bandmates and, as a result, often didn't play very well.

Changing the technology used in art changes the art, for good and ill. Blog-writing has a lot going for it -- spontaneity, velocity, vernacular informality, but often lacks the reflective distance that longer-form works bring. Byrne has similar observations about music and software:

What you hear [in contemporary music] is the shift in music structure that computer-aided composition has encouraged. Though software is promoted as being an unbiased toold that helps us do anything we want, all software has inherent biases that make working one way easier than another. With the Microsoft presentation software PowerPoint, for example, you have to simplify your presentations so much that the subtle nuances in the subject being discussed often get edited out. These nuances are not forbidden, they're not blocked, but including them tends to make for a less successful presentation. Likewise, that which is easy to bullet-point and simply visualize works better. That doesn't mean it actually is better; it means working is certain ways is simply easier than working in others...

An obvious example is quantizing. Since the mid-nineties, most popular music recorded on computers has had tempos and rhythms that have been quantized. That means that the tempo never varies, not even a little bit, the the rhythmic parts tend toward metronomic perfection. In the past, the tempo of recordings  would always vary slightly, imperceptibly speeding up or maybe slowing down a little, or a drum fill might hesitate in order to signal the beginning of a new section. You'd feel a slight push and pull, a tug and then a release, as ensembles of whatever type responded to one another and lurched, ever so slightly, ahead of and behind an imaginary metronomic beat. No more. Now almost all pop recordings are played to a strict tempo, which makes these compositions fit more easily into the confines of editing and recording software. An eight-bar section recorded on a "grid" of this type is exactly twice as long as a four-bar section, and every eight-bar section is always exactly the same length. This makes for a nice visual array on the computer screen, and facilitates easy editing, arranging, and repairing as well. Music has come to accommodate software, and I have to admit a lot has been gained as a result.

Byrne is well aware of the parallels between music technology and other kinds of technology. No history of the recording business would be complete without a note about the format wars fought between Edison and his competitors like RCA, who made incompatible, anti-competitive playback formats. Byrne explicitly links this to modern format-wars, citing MS Office, Kindles, iPads and Pro Tools. (His final word on the format wars rings true for other media as well: "Throughout the history of recorded music, we have tended to value convenience over quality every time. Edison cylinders didn't really sound as good as live performers, but you could carry them around and play them whenever you wanted.")

Likewise, debates over technological change (pooh-poohing the "triviality" of social media or the ephemeral character of blogs) are played out in Byrne's history of music panics, which start in ancient Greece, and play out in situations like the disco wars, which prefigured the modern fight over sampling:

The most threatening thing to rockers in the era of disco was that the music was gay, black and "manufactured" on machines, made out of bits of other peoples' recordings.

Like mixtapes. I'd argue that other than race and sex, [the fact that disco was "manufactured" on machines, made out of bits of other peoples' recordings] was the most threatening aspect. To rock purists, this new music messed with the idea of authorship. If music was now accepted as a kind of property, then this hodgepodge version that disregarded ownership and seemed to belong to and originate with so many people (and machines) called into question a whole social and economic framework.

But as Byrne reminds us, new technology can liberate new art forms. Digital formats and distribution have given us music that is only a few bars long, and compositions that are intended to play for 1,000 years. The MP3 shows us that 3.5 minutes isn't an "ideal" length for a song (merely the ideal length for a song that's meant to be sold on a 45RPM single), just as YouTube showed us that there are plenty of video stories that want to be two minutes long, rather than shoehorned into 22 minute sitcoms, 48 minute dramas, or 90 minute feature films.

And Byrne's own journey has led him to be skeptical of the all-rights-reserved model, from rules over photography and video in his shows:

The thing we were supposed to be fighting against was actually something we should be encouraging. They were getting the word out, and it wasn't costing me anything. I began to announce at the beginning of the shows that photography was welcome, but I suggested to please only post shots and videos where we look good.

To a very good account of the power relationships reflected in ascribing authorship (and ownership, and copyright) to melody, but not to rhythms and grooves and textures, though these are just as important to the music's aesthetic effect.

Byrne doesn't focus exclusively on recording, distribution and playback technology. He is also a keen theorist of the musical implications of architecture, and presents a case-study of the legendary CBGB's and its layout, showing how these led to its center in the 1970s New York music scene that gave us the Ramones, Talking Heads, Television, and many other varied acts. Here, Byrne channels Jane Jacobs in a section that is nothing short of brilliant in its analysis of how small changes (sometimes on the scale of inches) make all the difference to the kind of art that takes place in a building.

There's a long section on the mechanics of the recording business as it stands today, with some speculation about where its headed, and included in this is a fabulous and weird section on some of Byrne's own creative process. Here he describes how he collaborated with Brian Eno on Everything That Happens Will Happen Today:

The unwritten rule in remote collaborations is, for me, "Leave the other person's stuff alone as much as you possibly can." You work with what you're given, and don't try to imagine it as something other than what it is. Accepting that half the creative decision-making has already been done has the effect of bypassing a lot of endless branching -- not to mention waffling and worrying.

And here's a mind-bending look into his lyrics-writing method:

...I begin by improvising a melody over the music. I do this by singing nonsense syllables, but with weirdly inappropriate passion, given that I'm not saying anything. Once I have a wordless melody and a vocal arrangement my my collaborators (if there are any) and I like, I'll begin to transcribe that gibberish as if it were real words.

I'll listen carefully to the meaningless vowels and consonants on the recording, and I'll try to understand what that guy (me), emoting so forcefully by inscrutably, is actually saying. It's like a forensic exercise. I'll follow the sound of the nonsense syllables as closely as possible. If a melodic phrase of gibberish ends on a high ooh sound, then I'll transcribe that, and in selecting the actual words, I'll try to try to choose one that ends in that syllable, or as close to it as I can get. So the transcription process often ends up with a page of real words, still fairly random, that sounds just like the gibberish.

I do that because the difference between an ooh and an aah, and a "b" and a "th" sound is, I assume, integral to the emotion that the story wants to express. I want to stay true to that unconscious, inarticulate intention. Admittedly, that content has no narrative, or might make no literal sense yet, but it's in there -- I can hear it. I can feel it. My job at this stage is to find words that acknowledge and adhere to the sonic and emotional qualities rather than to ignore and possibly destroy them.

Part of what makes words work in a song is how they sound to the ear and feel on the tongue. If they feel right physiologically, if the tongue of the singer and the mirror neurons of the listener resonate with the delicious appropriateness of the words coming out, then that will inevitably trump literal sense, although literal sense doesn't hurt.

Naturally, this leads into a great discussion of the neuroscience of music itself -- why our brains like certain sounds and rhythms.

How Music Works gave me insight into parts of my life as diverse as my email style to how I write fiction to how I parent my daughter (it was a relief to read Byrne's discussion of how parenting changed him as an artist). I've been a David Byrne fan since I was 13 and I got a copy of Stop Making Sense. He's never disappointed me, but with How Music Works, Byrne has blown through my expectations, producing a book that I'll be thinking of and referring to for years to come.

Byrne's touring the book now, and as his tour intersects with my own book tours, I'll be interviewing him live on stage in Toronto on September 19th, at the Harbourfront International Festival of Authors.

How Music Works

https://boingboing.net/2012/09/12/david-byrnes-how-music-w.html

[mostlysignssomeportents]

#5yrsago David Byrne's "How Music Works" updated and in paperback

Back in 2012, I reviewed How Music Works, David Byrne's best book to date, an absolutely vital text explaining not only the biology, politics and aesthetics of music (and all art, really), but also the important policy and techology questions raised by music in the Internet age. Few books have had more influence on the way I think that this one.

So I was delighted this morning to learn that Byrne and his publisher, McSweeney's, had released an updated paperback edition, with a revised text that takes account of the technological changes in the year since its initial publication. I can't wait to read it. Click through the jump below to read my review of the hardcover.

Former Talking Heads frontman and all-round happy mutant David Byrne has written several good books, but his latest, How Music Works, is unquestionably the best of the very good bunch, possibly the book he was born to write. I could made good case for calling this How Art Works or even How Everything Works.

Though there is plenty of autobiographical material How Music Works that will delight avid fans (like me) -- inside dope on the creative, commercial and personal pressures that led to each of Byrne's projects -- this isn't merely the story of how Byrne made it, or what he does to turn out such great and varied art. Rather, this is an insightful, thorough, and convincing account of the way that creativity, culture, biology and economics interact to prefigure, constrain and uplift art. It's a compelling story about the way that art comes out of technology, and as such, it's widely applicable beyond music.

Byrne lived through an important transition in the music industry: having gotten his start in the analog recording world, he skilfully managed a transition to an artist in the digital era (though not always a digital artist). As such, he has real gut-feel for the things that technology gives to artists and the things that technology takes away. He's like the kids who got their Apple ][+s in 1979, and keenly remember the time before computers were available to kids at all, the time when they were the exclusive domain of obsessive geeks, and the point at which they became widely exciting, and finally, ubiquitous -- a breadth of experience that offers visceral perspective.

There were so many times in this book when I felt like Byrne's observations extended beyond music and dance and into other forms of digital creativity. For example, when Byrne recounted his first experiments with cellular automata exercise for dance choreography, from his collaboration with Noemie Lafrance:

1. Improvise moving to the music and come up with an eight-count phrase (in dance, a phrase is a short series of moves that can be repeated).

2. When you find a phrase you like, loop (repeat) it.

3. When you see someone else with a stronger phrase, copy it.

4. When everyone is doing the same phrase, the exercise is over.

It was like watching evolution on fast-forward, or an emergent lifeform coming into being. At first the room was chaos, writhing bodies everywhere.  At first the room was chaos, writhing bodies everywhere. Then one could see that folks had chosen their phrases, and almost immediately one could see a pocket of dancers who had all adopted the same phrase. The copying had already begun, albeit in just one area. This pocket of copying began to expand, to go viral, while yet another one now emerged on the other side of the room. One clump grew faster than the other, and within four minutes the whole room was filled with dancers moving in perfect unison. Unbelievable! It only took four minutes for this evolutionary process to kick in, and for the "strongest" (unfortunate word, maybe) to dominate.

I remembered the first time I programmed an evolutionary algorithm and watched its complexity emerging from simple rules, and the catch in my throat as I realized that I was watching something like life being built up from simple, inert rules.

The book is shot through with historical examples and arguments about the nature of music, from Plato up to contemporary neuroscience, and here, too, many of the discussions are microcosms for contemporary technical/philosophical debates. There's a passage about how music is felt and experienced that contains the phrase, "music isn't merely absorbed above the neck," which is spookily similar to the debates about replicating human consciousness in computers, and the idea that our identity doesn't reside exclusively above the brainstem.

The same is true of Byrne's account of how music has not "progressed" from a "primitive" state -- rather, it adapted itself to different technological realities. Big cathedrals demand music that accommodates a lot of reverb; village campfire music has completely different needs. Reading this, I was excited by the parallels to discussions of whether we live in an era of technological "progress" or merely technological "change" -- is there a pinnacle we're climbing, or simply a bunch of stuff followed by a bunch of other stuff? Our overwhelming narrative of progress feels like hubris to me, at least a lot of the time. Some things are "better" (more energy efficient, more space-efficient, faster, more effective), but there are plenty of things that are held up as "better" that, to me, are simply different. Often very good, but in no way a higher rung on some notional ladder toward perfection.

When Byrne's history comes to the rise of popular recorded music, he describes a familiar dilemma: recording artists were asked to produce music that could work when performed live and when listened to in the listener's private playback environment -- not so different from the problems faced by games developers today who struggle to make games that will work on a wide variety of screens. In a later section, he describes the solution that was arrived at in the 1970s, a solution that reminds me a lot of the current world of content management systems like WordPress and Blogger, which attempt to separate "meaning" from "form" for text, storing them separately and combining them with little code-libraries called "decorators":

[Deconstruct and isolate] sums up the philosophy of a lot of music recording back in the late seventies. The goal was to get as pristine a sound as possible... Studios were often padded with sound-absorbent materials so that there was almost no reverberation. The sonic character of the space was sucked out, because it wasn't considered to be part of the music. Without this ambiance, it was explained, the sound would be more malleable after the recording had been made. Dead, characterless sound was held up as the ideal, and often still is. In this philosophy, the naturally occurring echo and reverb that normally added a little warmth to performances would be removed and then added back in when the recording was being mixed...

Recording a performance with a band and singer all playing together at the same time in the same room was by this time becoming a rarity. An incredible array of options opened up as a result, but some organic interplay between the musicians disappeared, and the sound of music changed. Some musicians who played well in live situations couldn't adapt to the fashion for each player to be isolated. They couldn't hear their bandmates and, as a result, often didn't play very well.

Changing the technology used in art changes the art, for good and ill. Blog-writing has a lot going for it -- spontaneity, velocity, vernacular informality, but often lacks the reflective distance that longer-form works bring. Byrne has similar observations about music and software:

What you hear [in contemporary music] is the shift in music structure that computer-aided composition has encouraged. Though software is promoted as being an unbiased toold that helps us do anything we want, all software has inherent biases that make working one way easier than another. With the Microsoft presentation software PowerPoint, for example, you have to simplify your presentations so much that the subtle nuances in the subject being discussed often get edited out. These nuances are not forbidden, they're not blocked, but including them tends to make for a less successful presentation. Likewise, that which is easy to bullet-point and simply visualize works better. That doesn't mean it actually is better; it means working is certain ways is simply easier than working in others...

An obvious example is quantizing. Since the mid-nineties, most popular music recorded on computers has had tempos and rhythms that have been quantized. That means that the tempo never varies, not even a little bit, the the rhythmic parts tend toward metronomic perfection. In the past, the tempo of recordings  would always vary slightly, imperceptibly speeding up or maybe slowing down a little, or a drum fill might hesitate in order to signal the beginning of a new section. You'd feel a slight push and pull, a tug and then a release, as ensembles of whatever type responded to one another and lurched, ever so slightly, ahead of and behind an imaginary metronomic beat. No more. Now almost all pop recordings are played to a strict tempo, which makes these compositions fit more easily into the confines of editing and recording software. An eight-bar section recorded on a "grid" of this type is exactly twice as long as a four-bar section, and every eight-bar section is always exactly the same length. This makes for a nice visual array on the computer screen, and facilitates easy editing, arranging, and repairing as well. Music has come to accommodate software, and I have to admit a lot has been gained as a result.

Byrne is well aware of the parallels between music technology and other kinds of technology. No history of the recording business would be complete without a note about the format wars fought between Edison and his competitors like RCA, who made incompatible, anti-competitive playback formats. Byrne explicitly links this to modern format-wars, citing MS Office, Kindles, iPads and Pro Tools. (His final word on the format wars rings true for other media as well: "Throughout the history of recorded music, we have tended to value convenience over quality every time. Edison cylinders didn't really sound as good as live performers, but you could carry them around and play them whenever you wanted.")

Likewise, debates over technological change (pooh-poohing the "triviality" of social media or the ephemeral character of blogs) are played out in Byrne's history of music panics, which start in ancient Greece, and play out in situations like the disco wars, which prefigured the modern fight over sampling:

The most threatening thing to rockers in the era of disco was that the music was gay, black and "manufactured" on machines, made out of bits of other peoples' recordings.

Like mixtapes. I'd argue that other than race and sex, [the fact that disco was "manufactured" on machines, made out of bits of other peoples' recordings] was the most threatening aspect. To rock purists, this new music messed with the idea of authorship. If music was now accepted as a kind of property, then this hodgepodge version that disregarded ownership and seemed to belong to and originate with so many people (and machines) called into question a whole social and economic framework.

But as Byrne reminds us, new technology can liberate new art forms. Digital formats and distribution have given us music that is only a few bars long, and compositions that are intended to play for 1,000 years. The MP3 shows us that 3.5 minutes isn't an "ideal" length for a song (merely the ideal length for a song that's meant to be sold on a 45RPM single), just as YouTube showed us that there are plenty of video stories that want to be two minutes long, rather than shoehorned into 22 minute sitcoms, 48 minute dramas, or 90 minute feature films.

And Byrne's own journey has led him to be skeptical of the all-rights-reserved model, from rules over photography and video in his shows:

The thing we were supposed to be fighting against was actually something we should be encouraging. They were getting the word out, and it wasn't costing me anything. I began to announce at the beginning of the shows that photography was welcome, but I suggested to please only post shots and videos where we look good.

To a very good account of the power relationships reflected in ascribing authorship (and ownership, and copyright) to melody, but not to rhythms and grooves and textures, though these are just as important to the music's aesthetic effect.

Byrne doesn't focus exclusively on recording, distribution and playback technology. He is also a keen theorist of the musical implications of architecture, and presents a case-study of the legendary CBGB's and its layout, showing how these led to its center in the 1970s New York music scene that gave us the Ramones, Talking Heads, Television, and many other varied acts. Here, Byrne channels Jane Jacobs in a section that is nothing short of brilliant in its analysis of how small changes (sometimes on the scale of inches) make all the difference to the kind of art that takes place in a building.

There's a long section on the mechanics of the recording business as it stands today, with some speculation about where its headed, and included in this is a fabulous and weird section on some of Byrne's own creative process. Here he describes how he collaborated with Brian Eno on Everything That Happens Will Happen Today:

The unwritten rule in remote collaborations is, for me, "Leave the other person's stuff alone as much as you possibly can." You work with what you're given, and don't try to imagine it as something other than what it is. Accepting that half the creative decision-making has already been done has the effect of bypassing a lot of endless branching -- not to mention waffling and worrying.

And here's a mind-bending look into his lyrics-writing method:

...I begin by improvising a melody over the music. I do this by singing nonsense syllables, but with weirdly inappropriate passion, given that I'm not saying anything. Once I have a wordless melody and a vocal arrangement my my collaborators (if there are any) and I like, I'll begin to transcribe that gibberish as if it were real words.

I'll listen carefully to the meaningless vowels and consonants on the recording, and I'll try to understand what that guy (me), emoting so forcefully by inscrutably, is actually saying. It's like a forensic exercise. I'll follow the sound of the nonsense syllables as closely as possible. If a melodic phrase of gibberish ends on a high ooh sound, then I'll transcribe that, and in selecting the actual words, I'll try to try to choose one that ends in that syllable, or as close to it as I can get. So the transcription process often ends up with a page of real words, still fairly random, that sounds just like the gibberish.

I do that because the difference between an ooh and an aah, and a "b" and a "th" sound is, I assume, integral to the emotion that the story wants to express. I want to stay true to that unconscious, inarticulate intention. Admittedly, that content has no narrative, or might make no literal sense yet, but it's in there -- I can hear it. I can feel it. My job at this stage is to find words that acknowledge and adhere to the sonic and emotional qualities rather than to ignore and possibly destroy them.

Part of what makes words work in a song is how they sound to the ear and feel on the tongue. If they feel right physiologically, if the tongue of the singer and the mirror neurons of the listener resonate with the delicious appropriateness of the words coming out, then that will inevitably trump literal sense, although literal sense doesn't hurt.

Naturally, this leads into a great discussion of the neuroscience of music itself -- why our brains like certain sounds and rhythms.

How Music Works gave me insight into parts of my life as diverse as my email style to how I write fiction to how I parent my daughter (it was a relief to read Byrne's discussion of how parenting changed him as an artist). I've been a David Byrne fan since I was 13 and I got a copy of Stop Making Sense. He's never disappointed me, but with How Music Works, Byrne has blown through my expectations, producing a book that I'll be thinking of and referring to for years to come.

How Music Works

https://boingboing.net/2013/09/27/david-byrnes-how-music-wor.html

[mostlysignssomeportents]

#6yrsago David Byrne's How Music Works

Former Talking Heads frontman and all-round happy mutant David Byrne has written several good books, but his latest, How Music Works, is unquestionably the best of the very good bunch, possibly the book he was born to write. I could made good case for calling this How Art Works or even How Everything Works.

Though there is plenty of autobiographical material How Music Works that will delight avid fans (like me) -- inside dope on the creative, commercial and personal pressures that led to each of Byrne's projects -- this isn't merely the story of how Byrne made it, or what he does to turn out such great and varied art. Rather, this is an insightful, thorough, and convincing account of the way that creativity, culture, biology and economics interact to prefigure, constrain and uplift art. It's a compelling story about the way that art comes out of technology, and as such, it's widely applicable beyond music.

Byrne lived through an important transition in the music industry: having gotten his start in the analog recording world, he skilfully managed a transition to an artist in the digital era (though not always a digital artist). As such, he has real gut-feel for the things that technology gives to artists and the things that technology takes away. He's like the kids who got their Apple ][+s in 1979, and keenly remember the time before computers were available to kids at all, the time when they were the exclusive domain of obsessive geeks, and the point at which they became widely exciting, and finally, ubiquitous -- a breadth of experience that offers visceral perspective.

There were so many times in this book when I felt like Byrne's observations extended beyond music and dance and into other forms of digital creativity. For example, when Byrne recounted his first experiments with cellular automata exercise for dance choreography, from his collaboration with Noemie Lafrance:

1. Improvise moving to the music and come up with an eight-count phrase (in dance, a phrase is a short series of moves that can be repeated).

2. When you find a phrase you like, loop (repeat) it.

3. When you see someone else with a stronger phrase, copy it.

4. When everyone is doing the same phrase, the exercise is over.

It was like watching evolution on fast-forward, or an emergent lifeform coming into being. At first the room was chaos, writhing bodies everywhere.  At first the room was chaos, writhing bodies everywhere. Then one could see that folks had chosen their phrases, and almost immediately one could see a pocket of dancers who had all adopted the same phrase. The copying had already begun, albeit in just one area. This pocket of copying began to expand, to go viral, while yet another one now emerged on the other side of the room. One clump grew faster than the other, and within four minutes the whole room was filled with dancers moving in perfect unison. Unbelievable! It only took four minutes for this evolutionary process to kick in, and for the "strongest" (unfortunate word, maybe) to dominate.

I remembered the first time I programmed an evolutionary algorithm and watched its complexity emerging from simple rules, and the catch in my throat as I realized that I was watching something like life being built up from simple, inert rules.

The book is shot through with historical examples and arguments about the nature of music, from Plato up to contemporary neuroscience, and here, too, many of the discussions are microcosms for contemporary technical/philosophical debates. There's a passage about how music is felt and experienced that contains the phrase, "music isn't merely absorbed above the neck," which is spookily similar to the debates about replicating human consciousness in computers, and the idea that our identity doesn't reside exclusively above the brainstem.

The same is true of Byrne's account of how music has not "progressed" from a "primitive" state -- rather, it adapted itself to different technological realities. Big cathedrals demand music that accommodates a lot of reverb; village campfire music has completely different needs. Reading this, I was excited by the parallels to discussions of whether we live in an era of technological "progress" or merely technological "change" -- is there a pinnacle we're climbing, or simply a bunch of stuff followed by a bunch of other stuff? Our overwhelming narrative of progress feels like hubris to me, at least a lot of the time. Some things are "better" (more energy efficient, more space-efficient, faster, more effective), but there are plenty of things that are held up as "better" that, to me, are simply different. Often very good, but in no way a higher rung on some notional ladder toward perfection.

When Byrne's history comes to the rise of popular recorded music, he describes a familiar dilemma: recording artists were asked to produce music that could work when performed live and when listened to in the listener's private playback environment -- not so different from the problems faced by games developers today who struggle to make games that will work on a wide variety of screens. In a later section, he describes the solution that was arrived at in the 1970s, a solution that reminds me a lot of the current world of content management systems like WordPress and Blogger, which attempt to separate "meaning" from "form" for text, storing them separately and combining them with little code-libraries called "decorators":

[Deconstruct and isolate] sums up the philosophy of a lot of music recording back in the late seventies. The goal was to get as pristine a sound as possible... Studios were often padded with sound-absorbent materials so that there was almost no reverberation. The sonic character of the space was sucked out, because it wasn't considered to be part of the music. Without this ambiance, it was explained, the sound would be more malleable after the recording had been made. Dead, characterless sound was held up as the ideal, and often still is. In this philosophy, the naturally occurring echo and reverb that normally added a little warmth to performances would be removed and then added back in when the recording was being mixed...

Recording a performance with a band and singer all playing together at the same time in the same room was by this time becoming a rarity. An incredible array of options opened up as a result, but some organic interplay between the musicians disappeared, and the sound of music changed. Some musicians who played well in live situations couldn't adapt to the fashion for each player to be isolated. They couldn't hear their bandmates and, as a result, often didn't play very well.

Changing the technology used in art changes the art, for good and ill. Blog-writing has a lot going for it -- spontaneity, velocity, vernacular informality, but often lacks the reflective distance that longer-form works bring. Byrne has similar observations about music and software:

What you hear [in contemporary music] is the shift in music structure that computer-aided composition has encouraged. Though software is promoted as being an unbiased toold that helps us do anything we want, all software has inherent biases that make working one way easier than another. With the Microsoft presentation software PowerPoint, for example, you have to simplify your presentations so much that the subtle nuances in the subject being discussed often get edited out. These nuances are not forbidden, they're not blocked, but including them tends to make for a less successful presentation. Likewise, that which is easy to bullet-point and simply visualize works better. That doesn't mean it actually is better; it means working is certain ways is simply easier than working in others...

An obvious example is quantizing. Since the mid-nineties, most popular music recorded on computers has had tempos and rhythms that have been quantized. That means that the tempo never varies, not even a little bit, the the rhythmic parts tend toward metronomic perfection. In the past, the tempo of recordings  would always vary slightly, imperceptibly speeding up or maybe slowing down a little, or a drum fill might hesitate in order to signal the beginning of a new section. You'd feel a slight push and pull, a tug and then a release, as ensembles of whatever type responded to one another and lurched, ever so slightly, ahead of and behind an imaginary metronomic beat. No more. Now almost all pop recordings are played to a strict tempo, which makes these compositions fit more easily into the confines of editing and recording software. An eight-bar section recorded on a "grid" of this type is exactly twice as long as a four-bar section, and every eight-bar section is always exactly the same length. This makes for a nice visual array on the computer screen, and facilitates easy editing, arranging, and repairing as well. Music has come to accommodate software, and I have to admit a lot has been gained as a result.

Byrne is well aware of the parallels between music technology and other kinds of technology. No history of the recording business would be complete without a note about the format wars fought between Edison and his competitors like RCA, who made incompatible, anti-competitive playback formats. Byrne explicitly links this to modern format-wars, citing MS Office, Kindles, iPads and Pro Tools. (His final word on the format wars rings true for other media as well: "Throughout the history of recorded music, we have tended to value convenience over quality every time. Edison cylinders didn't really sound as good as live performers, but you could carry them around and play them whenever you wanted.")

Likewise, debates over technological change (pooh-poohing the "triviality" of social media or the ephemeral character of blogs) are played out in Byrne's history of music panics, which start in ancient Greece, and play out in situations like the disco wars, which prefigured the modern fight over sampling:

The most threatening thing to rockers in the era of disco was that the music was gay, black and "manufactured" on machines, made out of bits of other peoples' recordings.

Like mixtapes. I'd argue that other than race and sex, [the fact that disco was "manufactured" on machines, made out of bits of other peoples' recordings] was the most threatening aspect. To rock purists, this new music messed with the idea of authorship. If music was now accepted as a kind of property, then this hodgepodge version that disregarded ownership and seemed to belong to and originate with so many people (and machines) called into question a whole social and economic framework.

But as Byrne reminds us, new technology can liberate new art forms. Digital formats and distribution have given us music that is only a few bars long, and compositions that are intended to play for 1,000 years. The MP3 shows us that 3.5 minutes isn't an "ideal" length for a song (merely the ideal length for a song that's meant to be sold on a 45RPM single), just as YouTube showed us that there are plenty of video stories that want to be two minutes long, rather than shoehorned into 22 minute sitcoms, 48 minute dramas, or 90 minute feature films.

And Byrne's own journey has led him to be skeptical of the all-rights-reserved model, from rules over photography and video in his shows:

The thing we were supposed to be fighting against was actually something we should be encouraging. They were getting the word out, and it wasn't costing me anything. I began to announce at the beginning of the shows that photography was welcome, but I suggested to please only post shots and videos where we look good.

To a very good account of the power relationships reflected in ascribing authorship (and ownership, and copyright) to melody, but not to rhythms and grooves and textures, though these are just as important to the music's aesthetic effect.

Byrne doesn't focus exclusively on recording, distribution and playback technology. He is also a keen theorist of the musical implications of architecture, and presents a case-study of the legendary CBGB's and its layout, showing how these led to its center in the 1970s New York music scene that gave us the Ramones, Talking Heads, Television, and many other varied acts. Here, Byrne channels Jane Jacobs in a section that is nothing short of brilliant in its analysis of how small changes (sometimes on the scale of inches) make all the difference to the kind of art that takes place in a building.

There's a long section on the mechanics of the recording business as it stands today, with some speculation about where its headed, and included in this is a fabulous and weird section on some of Byrne's own creative process. Here he describes how he collaborated with Brian Eno on Everything That Happens Will Happen Today:

The unwritten rule in remote collaborations is, for me, "Leave the other person's stuff alone as much as you possibly can." You work with what you're given, and don't try to imagine it as something other than what it is. Accepting that half the creative decision-making has already been done has the effect of bypassing a lot of endless branching -- not to mention waffling and worrying.

And here's a mind-bending look into his lyrics-writing method:

...I begin by improvising a melody over the music. I do this by singing nonsense syllables, but with weirdly inappropriate passion, given that I'm not saying anything. Once I have a wordless melody and a vocal arrangement my my collaborators (if there are any) and I like, I'll begin to transcribe that gibberish as if it were real words.

I'll listen carefully to the meaningless vowels and consonants on the recording, and I'll try to understand what that guy (me), emoting so forcefully by inscrutably, is actually saying. It's like a forensic exercise. I'll follow the sound of the nonsense syllables as closely as possible. If a melodic phrase of gibberish ends on a high ooh sound, then I'll transcribe that, and in selecting the actual words, I'll try to try to choose one that ends in that syllable, or as close to it as I can get. So the transcription process often ends up with a page of real words, still fairly random, that sounds just like the gibberish.

I do that because the difference between an ooh and an aah, and a "b" and a "th" sound is, I assume, integral to the emotion that the story wants to express. I want to stay true to that unconscious, inarticulate intention. Admittedly, that content has no narrative, or might make no literal sense yet, but it's in there -- I can hear it. I can feel it. My job at this stage is to find words that acknowledge and adhere to the sonic and emotional qualities rather than to ignore and possibly destroy them.

Part of what makes words work in a song is how they sound to the ear and feel on the tongue. If they feel right physiologically, if the tongue of the singer and the mirror neurons of the listener resonate with the delicious appropriateness of the words coming out, then that will inevitably trump literal sense, although literal sense doesn't hurt.

Naturally, this leads into a great discussion of the neuroscience of music itself -- why our brains like certain sounds and rhythms.

How Music Works gave me insight into parts of my life as diverse as my email style to how I write fiction to how I parent my daughter (it was a relief to read Byrne's discussion of how parenting changed him as an artist). I've been a David Byrne fan since I was 13 and I got a copy of Stop Making Sense. He's never disappointed me, but with How Music Works, Byrne has blown through my expectations, producing a book that I'll be thinking of and referring to for years to come.

Byrne's touring the book now, and as his tour intersects with my own book tours, I'll be interviewing him live on stage in Toronto on September 19th, at the Harbourfront International Festival of Authors.

How Music Works

https://boingboing.net/2012/09/12/david-byrnes-how-music-w.html

[mostlysignssomeportents]

David Byrne's How Music Works #5yrsago

Former Talking Heads frontman and all-round happy mutant David Byrne has written several good books, but his latest, How Music Works, is unquestionably the best of the very good bunch, possibly the book he was born to write. I could made good case for calling this How Art Works or even How Everything Works.

Though there is plenty of autobiographical material How Music Works that will delight avid fans (like me) -- inside dope on the creative, commercial and personal pressures that led to each of Byrne's projects -- this isn't merely the story of how Byrne made it, or what he does to turn out such great and varied art. Rather, this is an insightful, thorough, and convincing account of the way that creativity, culture, biology and economics interact to prefigure, constrain and uplift art. It's a compelling story about the way that art comes out of technology, and as such, it's widely applicable beyond music.

Byrne lived through an important transition in the music industry: having gotten his start in the analog recording world, he skilfully managed a transition to an artist in the digital era (though not always a digital artist). As such, he has real gut-feel for the things that technology gives to artists and the things that technology takes away. He's like the kids who got their Apple ][+s in 1979, and keenly remember the time before computers were available to kids at all, the time when they were the exclusive domain of obsessive geeks, and the point at which they became widely exciting, and finally, ubiquitous -- a breadth of experience that offers visceral perspective.

There were so many times in this book when I felt like Byrne's observations extended beyond music and dance and into other forms of digital creativity. For example, when Byrne recounted his first experiments with cellular automata exercise for dance choreography, from his collaboration with Noemie Lafrance:

1. Improvise moving to the music and come up with an eight-count phrase (in dance, a phrase is a short series of moves that can be repeated).

2. When you find a phrase you like, loop (repeat) it.

3. When you see someone else with a stronger phrase, copy it.

4. When everyone is doing the same phrase, the exercise is over.

It was like watching evolution on fast-forward, or an emergent lifeform coming into being. At first the room was chaos, writhing bodies everywhere. At first the room was chaos, writhing bodies everywhere. Then one could see that folks had chosen their phrases, and almost immediately one could see a pocket of dancers who had all adopted the same phrase. The copying had already begun, albeit in just one area. This pocket of copying began to expand, to go viral, while yet another one now emerged on the other side of the room. One clump grew faster than the other, and within four minutes the whole room was filled with dancers moving in perfect unison. Unbelievable! It only took four minutes for this evolutionary process to kick in, and for the "strongest" (unfortunate word, maybe) to dominate.

I remembered the first time I programmed an evolutionary algorithm and watched its complexity emerging from simple rules, and the catch in my throat as I realized that I was watching something like life being built up from simple, inert rules.

The book is shot through with historical examples and arguments about the nature of music, from Plato up to contemporary neuroscience, and here, too, many of the discussions are microcosms for contemporary technical/philosophical debates. There's a passage about how music is felt and experienced that contains the phrase, "music isn't merely absorbed above the neck," which is spookily similar to the debates about replicating human consciousness in computers, and the idea that our identity doesn't reside exclusively above the brainstem.

The same is true of Byrne's account of how music has not "progressed" from a "primitive" state -- rather, it adapted itself to different technological realities. Big cathedrals demand music that accommodates a lot of reverb; village campfire music has completely different needs. Reading this, I was excited by the parallels to discussions of whether we live in an era of technological "progress" or merely technological "change" -- is there a pinnacle we're climbing, or simply a bunch of stuff followed by a bunch of other stuff? Our overwhelming narrative of progress feels like hubris to me, at least a lot of the time. Some things are "better" (more energy efficient, more space-efficient, faster, more effective), but there are plenty of things that are held up as "better" that, to me, are simply different. Often very good, but in no way a higher rung on some notional ladder toward perfection.

When Byrne's history comes to the rise of popular recorded music, he describes a familiar dilemma: recording artists were asked to produce music that could work when performed live and when listened to in the listener's private playback environment -- not so different from the problems faced by games developers today who struggle to make games that will work on a wide variety of screens. In a later section, he describes the solution that was arrived at in the 1970s, a solution that reminds me a lot of the current world of content management systems like WordPress and Blogger, which attempt to separate "meaning" from "form" for text, storing them separately and combining them with little code-libraries called "decorators":

[Deconstruct and isolate] sums up the philosophy of a lot of music recording back in the late seventies. The goal was to get as pristine a sound as possible... Studios were often padded with sound-absorbent materials so that there was almost no reverberation. The sonic character of the space was sucked out, because it wasn't considered to be part of the music. Without this ambiance, it was explained, the sound would be more malleable after the recording had been made. Dead, characterless sound was held up as the ideal, and often still is. In this philosophy, the naturally occurring echo and reverb that normally added a little warmth to performances would be removed and then added back in when the recording was being mixed...

Recording a performance with a band and singer all playing together at the same time in the same room was by this time becoming a rarity. An incredible array of options opened up as a result, but some organic interplay between the musicians disappeared, and the sound of music changed. Some musicians who played well in live situations couldn't adapt to the fashion for each player to be isolated. They couldn't hear their bandmates and, as a result, often didn't play very well.

Changing the technology used in art changes the art, for good and ill. Blog-writing has a lot going for it -- spontaneity, velocity, vernacular informality, but often lacks the reflective distance that longer-form works bring. Byrne has similar observations about music and software:

What you hear [in contemporary music] is the shift in music structure that computer-aided composition has encouraged. Though software is promoted as being an unbiased toold that helps us do anything we want, all software has inherent biases that make working one way easier than another. With the Microsoft presentation software PowerPoint, for example, you have to simplify your presentations so much that the subtle nuances in the subject being discussed often get edited out. These nuances are not forbidden, they're not blocked, but including them tends to make for a less successful presentation. Likewise, that which is easy to bullet-point and simply visualize works better. That doesn't mean it actually is better; it means working is certain ways is simply easier than working in others...

An obvious example is quantizing. Since the mid-nineties, most popular music recorded on computers has had tempos and rhythms that have been quantized. That means that the tempo never varies, not even a little bit, the the rhythmic parts tend toward metronomic perfection. In the past, the tempo of recordings would always vary slightly, imperceptibly speeding up or maybe slowing down a little, or a drum fill might hesitate in order to signal the beginning of a new section. You'd feel a slight push and pull, a tug and then a release, as ensembles of whatever type responded to one another and lurched, ever so slightly, ahead of and behind an imaginary metronomic beat. No more. Now almost all pop recordings are played to a strict tempo, which makes these compositions fit more easily into the confines of editing and recording software. An eight-bar section recorded on a "grid" of this type is exactly twice as long as a four-bar section, and every eight-bar section is always exactly the same length. This makes for a nice visual array on the computer screen, and facilitates easy editing, arranging, and repairing as well. Music has come to accommodate software, and I have to admit a lot has been gained as a result.

Byrne is well aware of the parallels between music technology and other kinds of technology. No history of the recording business would be complete without a note about the format wars fought between Edison and his competitors like RCA, who made incompatible, anti-competitive playback formats. Byrne explicitly links this to modern format-wars, citing MS Office, Kindles, iPads and Pro Tools. (His final word on the format wars rings true for other media as well: "Throughout the history of recorded music, we have tended to value convenience over quality every time. Edison cylinders didn't really sound as good as live performers, but you could carry them around and play them whenever you wanted.")

Likewise, debates over technological change (pooh-poohing the "triviality" of social media or the ephemeral character of blogs) are played out in Byrne's history of music panics, which start in ancient Greece, and play out in situations like the disco wars, which prefigured the modern fight over sampling:

The most threatening thing to rockers in the era of disco was that the music was gay, black and "manufactured" on machines, made out of bits of other peoples' recordings.

Like mixtapes. I'd argue that other than race and sex, [the fact that disco was "manufactured" on machines, made out of bits of other peoples' recordings] was the most threatening aspect. To rock purists, this new music messed with the idea of authorship. If music was now accepted as a kind of property, then this hodgepodge version that disregarded ownership and seemed to belong to and originate with so many people (and machines) called into question a whole social and economic framework.

But as Byrne reminds us, new technology can liberate new art forms. Digital formats and distribution have given us music that is only a few bars long, and compositions that are intended to play for 1,000 years. The MP3 shows us that 3.5 minutes isn't an "ideal" length for a song (merely the ideal length for a song that's meant to be sold on a 45RPM single), just as YouTube showed us that there are plenty of video stories that want to be two minutes long, rather than shoehorned into 22 minute sitcoms, 48 minute dramas, or 90 minute feature films.

And Byrne's own journey has led him to be skeptical of the all-rights-reserved model, from rules over photography and video in his shows:

The thing we were supposed to be fighting against was actually something we should be encouraging. They were getting the word out, and it wasn't costing me anything. I began to announce at the beginning of the shows that photography was welcome, but I suggested to please only post shots and videos where we look good.

To a very good account of the power relationships reflected in ascribing authorship (and ownership, and copyright) to melody, but not to rhythms and grooves and textures, though these are just as important to the music's aesthetic effect.

Byrne doesn't focus exclusively on recording, distribution and playback technology. He is also a keen theorist of the musical implications of architecture, and presents a case-study of the legendary CBGB's and its layout, showing how these led to its center in the 1970s New York music scene that gave us the Ramones, Talking Heads, Television, and many other varied acts. Here, Byrne channels Jane Jacobs in a section that is nothing short of brilliant in its analysis of how small changes (sometimes on the scale of inches) make all the difference to the kind of art that takes place in a building.

There's a long section on the mechanics of the recording business as it stands today, with some speculation about where its headed, and included in this is a fabulous and weird section on some of Byrne's own creative process. Here he describes how he collaborated with Brian Eno on Everything That Happens Will Happen Today:

The unwritten rule in remote collaborations is, for me, "Leave the other person's stuff alone as much as you possibly can." You work with what you're given, and don't try to imagine it as something other than what it is. Accepting that half the creative decision-making has already been done has the effect of bypassing a lot of endless branching -- not to mention waffling and worrying.

And here's a mind-bending look into his lyrics-writing method:

...I begin by improvising a melody over the music. I do this by singing nonsense syllables, but with weirdly inappropriate passion, given that I'm not saying anything. Once I have a wordless melody and a vocal arrangement my my collaborators (if there are any) and I like, I'll begin to transcribe that gibberish as if it were real words.

I'll listen carefully to the meaningless vowels and consonants on the recording, and I'll try to understand what that guy (me), emoting so forcefully by inscrutably, is actually saying. It's like a forensic exercise. I'll follow the sound of the nonsense syllables as closely as possible. If a melodic phrase of gibberish ends on a high ooh sound, then I'll transcribe that, and in selecting the actual words, I'll try to try to choose one that ends in that syllable, or as close to it as I can get. So the transcription process often ends up with a page of real words, still fairly random, that sounds just like the gibberish.

I do that because the difference between an ooh and an aah, and a "b" and a "th" sound is, I assume, integral to the emotion that the story wants to express. I want to stay true to that unconscious, inarticulate intention. Admittedly, that content has no narrative, or might make no literal sense yet, but it's in there -- I can hear it. I can feel it. My job at this stage is to find words that acknowledge and adhere to the sonic and emotional qualities rather than to ignore and possibly destroy them.

Part of what makes words work in a song is how they sound to the ear and feel on the tongue. If they feel right physiologically, if the tongue of the singer and the mirror neurons of the listener resonate with the delicious appropriateness of the words coming out, then that will inevitably trump literal sense, although literal sense doesn't hurt.

Naturally, this leads into a great discussion of the neuroscience of music itself -- why our brains like certain sounds and rhythms.

How Music Works gave me insight into parts of my life as diverse as my email style to how I write fiction to how I parent my daughter (it was a relief to read Byrne's discussion of how parenting changed him as an artist). I've been a David Byrne fan since I was 13 and I got a copy of Stop Making Sense. He's never disappointed me, but with How Music Works, Byrne has blown through my expectations, producing a book that I'll be thinking of and referring to for years to come.

Byrne's touring the book now, and as his tour intersects with my own book tours, I'll be interviewing him live on stage in Toronto on September 19th, at the Harbourfront International Festival of Authors.

How Music Works

https://boingboing.net/2012/09/12/david-byrnes-how-music-w.html

[mostlysignssomeportents]

David Byrne's How Music Works #5yrsago

Former Talking Heads frontman and all-round happy mutant David Byrne has written several good books, but his latest, How Music Works, is unquestionably the best of the very good bunch, possibly the book he was born to write. I could made good case for calling this How Art Works or even How Everything Works.

Though there is plenty of autobiographical material How Music Works that will delight avid fans (like me) -- inside dope on the creative, commercial and personal pressures that led to each of Byrne's projects -- this isn't merely the story of how Byrne made it, or what he does to turn out such great and varied art. Rather, this is an insightful, thorough, and convincing account of the way that creativity, culture, biology and economics interact to prefigure, constrain and uplift art. It's a compelling story about the way that art comes out of technology, and as such, it's widely applicable beyond music.

Byrne lived through an important transition in the music industry: having gotten his start in the analog recording world, he skilfully managed a transition to an artist in the digital era (though not always a digital artist). As such, he has real gut-feel for the things that technology gives to artists and the things that technology takes away. He's like the kids who got their Apple ][+s in 1979, and keenly remember the time before computers were available to kids at all, the time when they were the exclusive domain of obsessive geeks, and the point at which they became widely exciting, and finally, ubiquitous -- a breadth of experience that offers visceral perspective.

There were so many times in this book when I felt like Byrne's observations extended beyond music and dance and into other forms of digital creativity. For example, when Byrne recounted his first experiments with cellular automata exercise for dance choreography, from his collaboration with Noemie Lafrance:

1. Improvise moving to the music and come up with an eight-count phrase (in dance, a phrase is a short series of moves that can be repeated).

2. When you find a phrase you like, loop (repeat) it.

3. When you see someone else with a stronger phrase, copy it.

4. When everyone is doing the same phrase, the exercise is over.

It was like watching evolution on fast-forward, or an emergent lifeform coming into being. At first the room was chaos, writhing bodies everywhere. At first the room was chaos, writhing bodies everywhere. Then one could see that folks had chosen their phrases, and almost immediately one could see a pocket of dancers who had all adopted the same phrase. The copying had already begun, albeit in just one area. This pocket of copying began to expand, to go viral, while yet another one now emerged on the other side of the room. One clump grew faster than the other, and within four minutes the whole room was filled with dancers moving in perfect unison. Unbelievable! It only took four minutes for this evolutionary process to kick in, and for the "strongest" (unfortunate word, maybe) to dominate.

I remembered the first time I programmed an evolutionary algorithm and watched its complexity emerging from simple rules, and the catch in my throat as I realized that I was watching something like life being built up from simple, inert rules.

The book is shot through with historical examples and arguments about the nature of music, from Plato up to contemporary neuroscience, and here, too, many of the discussions are microcosms for contemporary technical/philosophical debates. There's a passage about how music is felt and experienced that contains the phrase, "music isn't merely absorbed above the neck," which is spookily similar to the debates about replicating human consciousness in computers, and the idea that our identity doesn't reside exclusively above the brainstem.

The same is true of Byrne's account of how music has not "progressed" from a "primitive" state -- rather, it adapted itself to different technological realities. Big cathedrals demand music that accommodates a lot of reverb; village campfire music has completely different needs. Reading this, I was excited by the parallels to discussions of whether we live in an era of technological "progress" or merely technological "change" -- is there a pinnacle we're climbing, or simply a bunch of stuff followed by a bunch of other stuff? Our overwhelming narrative of progress feels like hubris to me, at least a lot of the time. Some things are "better" (more energy efficient, more space-efficient, faster, more effective), but there are plenty of things that are held up as "better" that, to me, are simply different. Often very good, but in no way a higher rung on some notional ladder toward perfection.

When Byrne's history comes to the rise of popular recorded music, he describes a familiar dilemma: recording artists were asked to produce music that could work when performed live and when listened to in the listener's private playback environment -- not so different from the problems faced by games developers today who struggle to make games that will work on a wide variety of screens. In a later section, he describes the solution that was arrived at in the 1970s, a solution that reminds me a lot of the current world of content management systems like WordPress and Blogger, which attempt to separate "meaning" from "form" for text, storing them separately and combining them with little code-libraries called "decorators":

[Deconstruct and isolate] sums up the philosophy of a lot of music recording back in the late seventies. The goal was to get as pristine a sound as possible... Studios were often padded with sound-absorbent materials so that there was almost no reverberation. The sonic character of the space was sucked out, because it wasn't considered to be part of the music. Without this ambiance, it was explained, the sound would be more malleable after the recording had been made. Dead, characterless sound was held up as the ideal, and often still is. In this philosophy, the naturally occurring echo and reverb that normally added a little warmth to performances would be removed and then added back in when the recording was being mixed...

Recording a performance with a band and singer all playing together at the same time in the same room was by this time becoming a rarity. An incredible array of options opened up as a result, but some organic interplay between the musicians disappeared, and the sound of music changed. Some musicians who played well in live situations couldn't adapt to the fashion for each player to be isolated. They couldn't hear their bandmates and, as a result, often didn't play very well.

Changing the technology used in art changes the art, for good and ill. Blog-writing has a lot going for it -- spontaneity, velocity, vernacular informality, but often lacks the reflective distance that longer-form works bring. Byrne has similar observations about music and software:

What you hear [in contemporary music] is the shift in music structure that computer-aided composition has encouraged. Though software is promoted as being an unbiased toold that helps us do anything we want, all software has inherent biases that make working one way easier than another. With the Microsoft presentation software PowerPoint, for example, you have to simplify your presentations so much that the subtle nuances in the subject being discussed often get edited out. These nuances are not forbidden, they're not blocked, but including them tends to make for a less successful presentation. Likewise, that which is easy to bullet-point and simply visualize works better. That doesn't mean it actually is better; it means working is certain ways is simply easier than working in others...

An obvious example is quantizing. Since the mid-nineties, most popular music recorded on computers has had tempos and rhythms that have been quantized. That means that the tempo never varies, not even a little bit, the the rhythmic parts tend toward metronomic perfection. In the past, the tempo of recordings would always vary slightly, imperceptibly speeding up or maybe slowing down a little, or a drum fill might hesitate in order to signal the beginning of a new section. You'd feel a slight push and pull, a tug and then a release, as ensembles of whatever type responded to one another and lurched, ever so slightly, ahead of and behind an imaginary metronomic beat. No more. Now almost all pop recordings are played to a strict tempo, which makes these compositions fit more easily into the confines of editing and recording software. An eight-bar section recorded on a "grid" of this type is exactly twice as long as a four-bar section, and every eight-bar section is always exactly the same length. This makes for a nice visual array on the computer screen, and facilitates easy editing, arranging, and repairing as well. Music has come to accommodate software, and I have to admit a lot has been gained as a result.

Byrne is well aware of the parallels between music technology and other kinds of technology. No history of the recording business would be complete without a note about the format wars fought between Edison and his competitors like RCA, who made incompatible, anti-competitive playback formats. Byrne explicitly links this to modern format-wars, citing MS Office, Kindles, iPads and Pro Tools. (His final word on the format wars rings true for other media as well: "Throughout the history of recorded music, we have tended to value convenience over quality every time. Edison cylinders didn't really sound as good as live performers, but you could carry them around and play them whenever you wanted.")

Likewise, debates over technological change (pooh-poohing the "triviality" of social media or the ephemeral character of blogs) are played out in Byrne's history of music panics, which start in ancient Greece, and play out in situations like the disco wars, which prefigured the modern fight over sampling:

The most threatening thing to rockers in the era of disco was that the music was gay, black and "manufactured" on machines, made out of bits of other peoples' recordings.

Like mixtapes. I'd argue that other than race and sex, [the fact that disco was "manufactured" on machines, made out of bits of other peoples' recordings] was the most threatening aspect. To rock purists, this new music messed with the idea of authorship. If music was now accepted as a kind of property, then this hodgepodge version that disregarded ownership and seemed to belong to and originate with so many people (and machines) called into question a whole social and economic framework.

But as Byrne reminds us, new technology can liberate new art forms. Digital formats and distribution have given us music that is only a few bars long, and compositions that are intended to play for 1,000 years. The MP3 shows us that 3.5 minutes isn't an "ideal" length for a song (merely the ideal length for a song that's meant to be sold on a 45RPM single), just as YouTube showed us that there are plenty of video stories that want to be two minutes long, rather than shoehorned into 22 minute sitcoms, 48 minute dramas, or 90 minute feature films.

And Byrne's own journey has led him to be skeptical of the all-rights-reserved model, from rules over photography and video in his shows:

The thing we were supposed to be fighting against was actually something we should be encouraging. They were getting the word out, and it wasn't costing me anything. I began to announce at the beginning of the shows that photography was welcome, but I suggested to please only post shots and videos where we look good.

To a very good account of the power relationships reflected in ascribing authorship (and ownership, and copyright) to melody, but not to rhythms and grooves and textures, though these are just as important to the music's aesthetic effect.

Byrne doesn't focus exclusively on recording, distribution and playback technology. He is also a keen theorist of the musical implications of architecture, and presents a case-study of the legendary CBGB's and its layout, showing how these led to its center in the 1970s New York music scene that gave us the Ramones, Talking Heads, Television, and many other varied acts. Here, Byrne channels Jane Jacobs in a section that is nothing short of brilliant in its analysis of how small changes (sometimes on the scale of inches) make all the difference to the kind of art that takes place in a building.

There's a long section on the mechanics of the recording business as it stands today, with some speculation about where its headed, and included in this is a fabulous and weird section on some of Byrne's own creative process. Here he describes how he collaborated with Brian Eno on Everything That Happens Will Happen Today:

The unwritten rule in remote collaborations is, for me, "Leave the other person's stuff alone as much as you possibly can." You work with what you're given, and don't try to imagine it as something other than what it is. Accepting that half the creative decision-making has already been done has the effect of bypassing a lot of endless branching -- not to mention waffling and worrying.

And here's a mind-bending look into his lyrics-writing method:

...I begin by improvising a melody over the music. I do this by singing nonsense syllables, but with weirdly inappropriate passion, given that I'm not saying anything. Once I have a wordless melody and a vocal arrangement my my collaborators (if there are any) and I like, I'll begin to transcribe that gibberish as if it were real words.

I'll listen carefully to the meaningless vowels and consonants on the recording, and I'll try to understand what that guy (me), emoting so forcefully by inscrutably, is actually saying. It's like a forensic exercise. I'll follow the sound of the nonsense syllables as closely as possible. If a melodic phrase of gibberish ends on a high ooh sound, then I'll transcribe that, and in selecting the actual words, I'll try to try to choose one that ends in that syllable, or as close to it as I can get. So the transcription process often ends up with a page of real words, still fairly random, that sounds just like the gibberish.

I do that because the difference between an ooh and an aah, and a "b" and a "th" sound is, I assume, integral to the emotion that the story wants to express. I want to stay true to that unconscious, inarticulate intention. Admittedly, that content has no narrative, or might make no literal sense yet, but it's in there -- I can hear it. I can feel it. My job at this stage is to find words that acknowledge and adhere to the sonic and emotional qualities rather than to ignore and possibly destroy them.

Part of what makes words work in a song is how they sound to the ear and feel on the tongue. If they feel right physiologically, if the tongue of the singer and the mirror neurons of the listener resonate with the delicious appropriateness of the words coming out, then that will inevitably trump literal sense, although literal sense doesn't hurt.

Naturally, this leads into a great discussion of the neuroscience of music itself -- why our brains like certain sounds and rhythms.

How Music Works gave me insight into parts of my life as diverse as my email style to how I write fiction to how I parent my daughter (it was a relief to read Byrne's discussion of how parenting changed him as an artist). I've been a David Byrne fan since I was 13 and I got a copy of Stop Making Sense. He's never disappointed me, but with How Music Works, Byrne has blown through my expectations, producing a book that I'll be thinking of and referring to for years to come.

How Music Works

https://boingboing.net/2012/09/12/david-byrnes-how-music-w.html