How architecture helped music evolve David Byrne
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[Applause]
this is the venue where as a young man
some of the music that I wrote was first
performed it was remarkably a pretty
good sounding room with all the uneven
walls and all the crap everywhere it
actually sounded pretty good
this is a song that was recorded there
this is not talking heads in the picture
anyway
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so the nature of the room meant that
words could be understood the lyrics of
the songs could be pretty much
understood the sound system was kind of
decent and there wasn’t a lot of
reverberation in the room so the rhythms
could be pretty intact - pretty concise
other places around the country had
similar rooms
this is Tootsie’s orchid lounge in
Nashville the music was in some ways
different but in structure in form very
much the same the clientele behavior was
very much the same - and so the bands at
Tootsie’s or at CBGB’s had to play loud
enough - the volume had to be loud
enough to overcome people falling down
shouting out and doing whatever else
they were doing since then I’ve played
other places that are much nicer I’ve
played the Disney Hall here and Carnegie
Hall and places like that and it’s been
very exciting but I also noticed that
sometimes the music that I had written
or was writing at the time didn’t sound
all that great and some of those halls
we managed but sometimes those halls
didn’t seem exactly suited to the music
I was making or had made so I asked
myself do I write stuff for specific
rooms do I have a place a venue in mind
when I write is that a kind of model for
creativity do we all make things with a
venue or context in mind okay Africa
most of the popular music that we know
now has a big part of its roots in West
Africa and the music there I would say
the instruments the intricate rhythms
the way it’s played the setting the
context it’s all perfect it all works
perfect the music works perfectly in
that setting there’s no big room to
create reverberation and confuse the
rhythms the instruments are loud enough
the
that can be heard without amplification
etc etc it’s no accident it’s perfect
for that particular context and it would
be a mess in a context like this this is
a Gothic cathedral in a Gothic cathedral
this kind of music is perfect
it doesn’t change key the notes are long
is almost no rhythm whatsoever and the
room flatters the music it actually
improves it this is the room that Bach
wrote some of his music for this is the
organ it’s not as big as a Gothic
cathedral so he can write things were a
little bit more intricate he can very
innovatively actually change keys
without risking huge distances
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this is a little bit later this is the
kinds of rooms that Mozart wrote I think
we’re in like 1770 somewhere around
there they’re smaller even less
reverberant so he can write really
freely music that’s very intricate and
the it works
it fits the room perfectly this is La
Scala some around the same time I think
was built around 1776 people in the
audience and these opera houses when
they were built they used to yell out to
one another they used to eat drink and
yell out to people on the stage just
like they do with CBGB’s in places like
that if they liked an area they would
holler and suggest that it be done again
as an encore not at the end of the show
but immediately and well that’s that’s
was an opera experience this is the
Opera House that vogner built for
himself and the size of the room is not
that big it’s smaller than this but well
vogner minute innovation he wanted a
bigger band he wanted a little more bomb
bass so he increased the size of the
orchestra pit so he could get more
low-end instruments in there
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okay this is Carnegie Hall obviously
this kind of thing became popular the
halls got bigger Carnegie Hall is fair
size it’s larger than some of the other
Symphony halls and they’re a lot more
reverberant than La Scala around the
same time according to Alex Ross who
writes for The New Yorker this kind of
rule came into effect that audiences had
to be quiet
no more eating drinking and yelling at
the stage or gossiping with one another
during the show they had to be very
quiet so those two things combined meant
that a different kind of music
worked best in these kind of halls it
meant that there could be extreme
dynamics which there weren’t in some of
these other kinds of music quiet parts
can be heard that would have been
drowned out by all the gossiping and
shouting but because of the
reverberation in those rooms like
Carnegie Hall the music had to be maybe
a little less rhythmic in a little more
textural
with Mahler
it looks like Bob Dylan but it’s smaller
that was Bob’s last record yeah popular
music coming along at the same time this
is a jazz band
according to Scott Joplin the bands were
playing on riverboats
and in clubs again it’s noisy they’re
playing for dancers and there’s certain
sections of the song the songs had
different sections and they that the
dance was really liked and they say play
that part again well there’s only so
many times you can play the same section
of a song over and over again for the
dancers so the band started to improvise
new melodies been a new form of music
was born
these are played mainly in small rooms
people are dancing shouting and drinking
so the music has to be loud enough to be
heard above that same thing goes true
for okay that’s beginning of the century
for the whole 20th century popular music
whether it’s rock or Latin music or
whatever it doesn’t really change that
much it changes about a third of the way
into the 20th century when this became
one of the primary venues for music and
this was one way that the music got
their microphones enabled singers in
particular and musicians and composers
to completely change the kind of music
that they were writing so far a lot of
the stuff that was on the radio is live
music but singers like Frank Sinatra
could use the mic and do things that
they could never do without a microphone
other singers after him went even
further funny
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sweet chet baker man this kind of thing
would have been impossible without a
microphone would have been impossible
without recorded music as well and he’s
singing right into your ear he’s
whispering into your ears the effect is
just electric it’s like the guy is
sitting next to you whispering who knows
what into your ear so at this point
music diverged there’s live music and
there’s recorded music and they no
longer have to be exactly the same
now there’s venues like this a
discotheque and there’s jukeboxes and
bars where you don’t even need to have a
band it doesn’t need to be any live
performing musicians whatsoever and the
sound systems are good people began to
make music specifically for discos and
for those sound systems and as with jazz
the dancers like certain sections more
than they did others so the early
hip-hop guys would loop certain sections
[Music]
pmc would improvise lyrics in the same
way that the jazz players would
improvise melodies and another new form
of music was born live performance when
it was incredibly successful ended up in
what is probably acoustically the worst
sounding venues on the planet sports
stadiums basketball arenas and hockey
arenas musicians that who ended up there
did the best they could they wrote what
is now called arena rock which is medium
speed ballads
[Music]
they did the best they could given that
this is what they’re writing for the
tempos are medium it sounds big it’s
more a social situation than a musical
situation and in some ways the music
that they’re writing for this place
works perfectly so there’s more new
venues one of the new ones is the
automobile I grew up with a radio in a
car but now that’s evolved into
something else the car is a whole venue
the music that I would say is written
for automobiles sound systems works
perfectly on it it might not be what you
want to listen to at home but it works
great in the car has a huge frequency
spectrum you know big bass and high end
and the voice kind of stuck in the
middle
automobile music you can share with your
friends there’s one other kind of new
venue the private mp3 player presumably
this is just for Christian music you and
in some ways just like Carnegie Hall or
that when they were told the audience
had to hush up because you can now hear
every single detail in other ways it’s
more like the West African music because
if the music and an mp3 player gets too
quiet you turn it up in the next minute
your ears are blasted out by a louder
passage so that doesn’t really work
I think pop music mainly that’s written
today to some extent is written for
these kind of players for this kind of
personal experience where you can hear
extreme detail but the dynamic doesn’t
change that much so I asked myself okay
is this a model for creation this
adaptation that we do and does it happen
anywhere else well according to David
Attenborough and some other people birds
do it too that the birds in the canopy
where the foliage is dense they’re calls
tend to be high-pitched short and
repetitive
and the birds on the floor tend to have
lower pitched calls so that they don’t
get distorted when they bounce off the
forest floor and birds like this
Savannah sparrow they tend to have a
buzzing type call and it turns out that
sound like this is the most energy
efficient and practical way to transmit
their call across the field and Savannah
other birds like this can injure have
adapted within the same species the
Tanager and the east coast of the United
States where the Forester little denser
has one kind of call and the Tanager on
the other side on the West has a
different kind of call so birds do it
too and I thought well if this is a
model for creation if we make music
primarily the form at least to fit these
contexts and if we make art to fit
gallery walls and museum walls and if we
write software to fit existing operating
systems is that how it works yeah I
think it’s it’s evolutionary it’s
adaptive but the pleasure and the
passion and the joy is still there this
is a reverse view of things from the
kind of traditional romantic view the
romantic view is that first comes the
passion and then the outpouring of
emotion and then somehow it gets shaped
into something and I’m saying well the
passion is still there but the vessel
that it’s going to be injected into
important to that is instinctively and
intuitively created first we already
know where that passion is going but
this conflict of views is kind of
interesting the writer
thomas frank says that this might be a
kind of explanation why some voters vote
against their best interests that voters
like a lot of us assume that if they
hear something that sounds like it’s
sincere that it’s coming from the gut
that it’s passionate that it’s more
authentic and they’ll vote for that so
that if somebody can fake sincerity if
they can fake passion they stand a
better chance of being selected in that
way which seems a little dangerous I’m
saying the two the passion the joy are
not mutually exclusive maybe what the
world means now is for us to realize
that we are like the birds we adapt we
sing and like the birds the joy is still
there even though we have changed what
we do to fit the context thank you very
much
[Applause]