How Music Works

by David Byrne

  Take a look at Bayreuth, the opera house Wagner had built for his own music in the 1870s.K You can see it’s not that huge. Not very much bigger than La Scala. Wagner had the gumption to demand that this venue be built to better accommodate the music he imagined—which didn’t mean there was much more seating, as a practical-minded entrepeneur might insist on today. It was the orchestral accommodations themselves that were enlarged. He needed larger orchestras to conjure the requisite bombast. He had new and larger brass instruments created too, and he also called for a larger bass section, to create big orchestral effects.

  La Scala by Blake Hooper, Hooper & Co. Photography

  La Scala by Blake Hooper, Hooper & Co. Photography

  Wagner in some ways doesn’t fit my model—his imagination and ego seemed to be larger than the existing venues, so he was the exception who didn’t accommodate. Granted, he was mainly pushing the boundaries of preexisting opera architecture, not inventing something from scratch. Once he built this place, he more or less wrote for it and its particular acoustic qualities.

  As time passed, symphonic music came to be performed in larger and larger halls. That musical format, originally conceived for rooms in palaces and the more modest-sized opera halls, was now somewhat unfairly being asked to accommodate more reverberant spaces. Subsequent classical composers therefore wrote music for those new halls, with their new sound, and it was music that emphasized texture, and sometimes employed audio shock and awe in order to reach the back row that was now farther away. They needed to adapt, and adapt they did.

  The music of Mahler and other later symphonic composers works well in spaces like Carnegie Hall.L Groove music, percussive music featuring drums—like what I do, for example—has a very hard time here. I’ve played at Carnegie Hall a couple of times, and it can work, but it is far from ideal. I wouldn’t play that music there again. I realized that sometimes the most prestigious place doesn’t always work out best for your music. This acoustic barrier could be viewed as a subtle conspiracy, a sonic wall, a way of keeping the riffraff out—but we won’t go there, not yet.

  Carnegie Hall by Peter Borg, Westminster Choir College of Rider University

  Buddy Bolden’s band, from the personal collection of trombonist Willie Cornish

  POPULAR MUSIC

  At the same time that classical music was tucking itself into new venues, so too was popular music. In the early part of the last century, jazz developed alongside later classical music. This popular music was originally played in bars, at funerals, and in whorehouses and joints where dancing was going on. There was little reverberation in those spaces, and they weren’t that big, so, as in CBGB, the groove could be strong and up front.M

  It’s been pointed out by Scott Joplin and others that the origin of jazz solos and improvisations was a pragmatic way of solving a problem that had emerged: the “written” melody would run out while the musicians were playing, and in order to keep a popular section continuing longer for the dancers who wanted to keep moving, the players would jam over those chord changes while maintaining the same groove. The musicians learned to stretch out and extend whatever section of the tune was deemed popular. These improvisations and elongations evolved out of necessity, and a new kind of music came into being.

  By the mid-twentieth century, jazz had evolved into a kind of classical music, often presented in concert halls, but if anyone’s been to a juke joint or seen the Rebirth or Dirty Dozen brass bands at a place like the Glass House in New Orleans, then you’ve seen lots of dancing to jazz. Its roots are spiritual dance music. Yes, this is one kind of spiritual music that would sound terrible in most cathedrals.

  The instrumentation of jazz was also modified so that the music could be heard over the sound of the dancers and the bar racket. Banjos were louder than acoustic guitars, and trumpets were nice and loud, too. Until amplification and microphones came into common use, the instruments written for and played were adapted to fit the situation. The makeup of the bands, as well as the parts the composers wrote, evolved to be heard.

  Likewise, country music, blues, Latin music, and rock and roll were all (originally) music to dance to, and they too had to be loud enough to be heard above the chatter. Recorded music and amplification changed all that, but when these forms jelled, such factors were just beginning to be felt.

  QUIET, PLEASE

  With classical music, not only did the venues change, but the behavior of the audiences did, too. Around 1900, according to music writer Alex Ross, classical audiences were no longer allowed to shout, eat, and chat during a performance.2 One was expected to sit immobile and listen with rapt attention. Ross hints that this was a way of keeping the hoi polloi out of the new symphony halls and opera houses. (I guess it was assumed that the lower classes were inherently noisy.) Music that in many instances used to be for all was now exclusively for the elite. Nowadays, if someone’s phone rings or a person so much as whispers to their neighbor during a classical concert, it could stop the whole show.

  This exclusionary policy affected the music being written, too—since no one was talking, eating, or dancing anymore, the music could have extreme dynamics. Composers knew that every detail would be heard, so very quiet passages could now be written. Harmonically complex passages could be appreciated as well. Much of twentieth-century classical music could only work in (and was written for) these socially and acoustically restrictive spaces. A new kind of music came into existence that didn’t exist previously—and the future emergence and refining of recording technology would make this music more available and ubiquitous. I do wonder how much of the audience’s fun was sacrificed in the effort to redefine the social parameters of the concert hall—it sounds almost masochistic of the upper crust, curtailing their own liveliness, but I guess they had their priorities.

  Although the quietest harmonic and dynamic details and complexities could now be heard, performing in these larger more reverberant halls meant that rhythmically things got less distinct and much fuzzier—less African, one might say. Even the jazz now played in these rooms became a kind of chamber music. Certainly no one danced, drank, or hollered out “Hell, yeah!” even if it was Goodman, Ellington, or Marsalis playing—bands that certainly swing. The smaller jazz clubs followed suit; no one dances anymore at the Blue Note or Village Vanguard, though liquor is very quietly served.

  One might conclude that removing the funky relaxed vibe from refined American concert music was not accidental. Separating the body from the head seems to have been an intended consequence—for anything to be serious, you couldn’t be seen shimmying around to it. (Not that any kind of music is aimed exclusively at either the body or head—that absolute demarcation is somewhat of an intellectual and social construct.) Serious music, in this way of thinking, is only absorbed and consumed above the neck. The regions below the neck are socially and morally suspect. The people who felt this way and enforced this way of encountering music probably didn’t take the wildly innovative and sophisticated arrangements of mid-century tango orchestras seriously either. The fact that it was wildly innovative and at the same time very danceable created, for twentieth-century sophisticates, a kind of cognitive dissonance.

  RECORDED MUSIC

  With the advent of recorded music in 1878, the nature of the places in which music was heard changed. Music now had to serve two very different needs simultaneously. The phonograph box in the parlor became a new venue; for many people, it replaced the concert hall or the club.

  By the thirties, most people were listening to music either on radio or on home phonographs.N People probably heard a greater quantity of music, and a greater variety, on these devices than they would ever hear in person in their lifetimes. Music could now be completely free from any live context, or, more properly, the context in which it was heard became the living room and the jukebox—parallel alternatives to still-popular ballrooms and concert halls.

  The performing musician was now expected to write and create for two very d
ifferent spaces: the live venue, and the device that could play a recording or receive a transmission. Socially and acoustically, these spaces were worlds apart. But the compositions were expected to be the same! An audience who heard and loved a song on the radio naturally wanted to hear that same song at the club or the concert hall.

  These two demands seem unfair to me. The performing skills, not to mention the writing needs, the instrumentation, and the acoustic properties for each venue are completely different. Just as stage actors often seem too loud and demonstrative for audiences used to movie acting, the requirements of musical mediums are somewhat mutually exclusive. What is best for one might work for the other, but it doesn’t always work that way.

  Performers adapted to this new technology. The microphones that recorded singers changed the way they sang and the way their instruments were played.O Singers no longer had to have great lungs to be successful. Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby were pioneers when it came to singing “to the microphone.” They adjusted their vocal dynamics in ways that would have been unheard of earlier. It might not seem that radical now, but crooning was a new kind of singing back then. It wouldn’t have worked without a microphone.

  Chet Baker even sang in a whisper, as did João Gilberto, and millions followed. To a listener, these guys are whispering like a lover, right into your ear, getting completely inside your head. Music had never been experienced that way before. Needless to say, without microphones this intimacy wouldn’t have been heard at all.

  Technology had turned the living room or any small bar with a jukebox into a concert hallP—and often there was dancing. Besides changing the acoustic context, recorded music also allowed music venues to come into existence without stages and often without any live musicians at all. DJs could play at high school dances, folks could shove quarters into jukeboxes and dance in the middle of the bar, and in living rooms the music came out of furniture. Eventually venues evolved that were purposefully built to play only this kind of performerless music—discos.Q

  Shure Brothers model 55S microphone by John Schneider

  Graetz Melodia radio

  Music written for contemporary discos, in my opinion, usually only works in those social and physical spaces—it really works best on the incredible sound systems that are often installed in those rooms. It feels stupid to listen to club music at its intended volume at home, though people do it. And, once again, it’s for dancing, as was early hip-hop, which emerged out of dance clubs in the same way that jazz did—by extending sections of the music so the dancers could show off and improvise. Once again the dancers were changing the context, urging the music in new directions.R

  In the sixties the most successful pop music began to be performed in basketball arenas and stadiums, which tend to have terrible acoustics—only a narrow range of music works at all in such environments. Steady-state music (music with a consistent volume, more or less unchanging textures, and fairly simple pulsing rhythms) works best, and even then rarely. The roar of metal works fine. Industrial music for industrial spaces. Stately chord progressions might survive, but funk, for example, bounced off the walls and floors and became chaotic. The groove got killed, though some funky acts persevered because these concerts were social gatherings, bonding opportunities, and rituals as much as music events. Mostly the arenas were filled with white kids—and the music was usually Wagnerian.

  The gathered masses in sports arenas and stadiums demanded that the music perform a different function—not only sonically but socially—than what it had been asked to do on a record or in a club. The music those bands ended up writing in response—arena rock—is written with that in mind: rousing, stately anthems. To my ears it’s a soundtrack for a gathering, and listening to it in other contexts recreates the memory or anticipation of that gathering—a stadium in your head.

  Photo by Harry Sprout

  Photo by Joe Conzo

  CONTEMPORARY MUSIC VENUES

  Where are the new music venues? Are there venues I’m still not acknowledging that might be influencing how and what kind of music gets written? Well, there is the interior of your car.S I’d argue that contemporary hip-hop is written (or at least the music is) to be heard in cars with systems like the one below. The massive volume seems to be more about sharing your music with everyone, gratis!T In a sense, it’s a music of generosity. I’d say the audio space in a car with these speakers forces a very different kind of composition. The music is bass heavy, but with a strong and precise high end as well. Sonically, what’s in the middle? It’s the vocal, allocated a vacant sonic space where not much else lives. In earlier pop music, the keyboards or guitars or even violins often occupied much of this middle territory, and without those things, the vocals rushed to fill the vacuum.

  Hip-hop is unlike anything one could produce with acoustic instruments. That umbilical cord has been cut. Liberated. The connection between the recorded music and the live musician and performer is now a thing of the past. Although this music may have emerged from dance-oriented early hip-hop (which, like jazz, evolved by extending the breaks for dancers), it’s morphed into something else entirely: music that sounds best in cars. People do dance in their cars, or they try to. As big SUVs become less practical I foresee this music changing as well.

  Photo by Eric W. Beasman

  Photo by Olaf Mooij

  One other new music venue has arrived.U Presumably the MP3 player shown below plays mainly Christian music. Private listening really took off in 1979, with the popularity of the Walkman portable cassette player. Listening to music on a Walkman is a variation of the “sitting very still in a concert hall” experience (there are no acoustic distractions), combined with the virtual space (achieved by adding reverb and echo to the vocals and instruments) that studio recording allows. With headphones on, you can hear and appreciate extreme detail and subtlety, and the lack of uncontrollable reverb inherent in hearing music in a live room means that rhythmic material survives beautifully and completely intact; it doesn’t get blurred or turned into sonic mush as it often does in a concert hall. You, and only you, the audience of one, can hear a million tiny details, even with the compression that MP3 technology adds to recordings. You can hear the singer’s breath intake, their fingers on a guitar string. That said, extreme and sudden dynamic changes can be painful on a personal music player. As with dance music one hundred years ago, it’s better to write music that maintains a relatively constant volume for this tiny venue. Dynamically static but with lots of details: that’s the directive here.

  If there has been a compositional response to MP3s and the era of private listening, I have yet to hear it. One would expect music that is essentially a soothing flood of ambient moods as a way to relax and decompress, or maybe dense and complex compositions that reward repeated playing and attentive listening, maybe intimate or rudely erotic vocals that would be inappropriate to blast in public but that you could enjoy privately. If any of this is happening, I am unaware of it.

  We’ve come full circle in many ways. The musical techniques of the African Diaspora, the foundation of much of the contemporary world’s popular music, with its wealth of interlocking and layered beats, works well acoustically in both the context of the private listening experience and as a framework for much contemporary recorded music. African music sounds the way it does because it was meant to be played out in the open (a form of steady-state music loud enough to be heard outdoors above dancing and singing) but it turns out to also work well in the most intimate of spaces—our inner ears. Yes, people do listen to Bach and Wagner on iPods, but not too many people are writing new music like that, except for film scores, where Wagnerian bombast works really well. If John Williams wrote contemporary Wagner for Star Wars, then Bernard Herrmann wrote contemporary Schoenberg for Psycho and other Hitchcock movies. The symphony hall is now a movie theater for the ears.

  BIRDS DO IT

  The adaptive aspect of creativity isn’t limited to musicians and composers (or artists in an
y other media). It extends into the natural world as well. David Attenborough and others have claimed that birdcalls have evolved to fit the environment.3 In dense jungle foliage, a constant, repetitive, and brief signal within a narrow frequency works best—the repetition is like an error-correcting device. If the intended recipient didn’t get the first transmission, an identical one will follow.

  Birds that live on the forest floor evolved lower-pitched calls, so they don’t bounce or become distorted by the ground as higher-pitched sounds might. Water birds have calls that, unsurprisingly, cut through the ambient sounds of water, and birds that live in the plains and grasslands, like the Savannah Sparrow, have buzzing calls that can traverse long distances.

  Eyal Shy of Wayne State University says that birdsongs vary even within the same species.4 The pitch of the song of the Scarlet Tanager, for example, is different in the East, where the woods are denser, than it is in the West.V

  And birds of the same species adjust their singing as their habitat changes too. Birds in San Francisco were found to have raised the pitch of their songs over forty years in order to be better heard above the noises of the increased traffic.5

  It’s not just birds, either. In the waters around New Zealand, whale calls have adapted to the increase in shipping noise over the last few decades—the hum of engines and thrash of propellers. Whales need to signal over huge distances to survive, and one hopes that they continue to adapt to this audio pollution.

  So musical evolution and adaptation is an interspecies phenomenon. And presumably, as some claim, birds enjoy singing, even though they, like us, change their tunes over time. The joy of making music will find a way, regardless of the context and the form that emerges to best fit it. The musician David Rothenberg claims that “life is far more interesting than it needs to be, because the forces that guide it are not merely practical.”