Music is a product of its environment.

Today when I was having my lunch, I needed something to watch, because I have a weird habit where I can't eat unless I'm watching something. Anyway, it needed to be short because I had to start getting ready for work soon afterwords. I found out the TED website had a David Byrne TED talk called "How Architecture Helped Music Evolve". As soon as I saw that title I thought it was going to be along the same lines as the essay "Rock 'N' Roll As Real Estate" in Ian Svenonius' book, The Psychic Soviet.

I've been a big fan of Ian Svenonius for a long time, as the frontman in The Make-Up and his other bands Weird War and Nation Of Ulysses, and as host of the internet music talk show Soft Focus, and for his book, The Psychic Soviet. "Rock 'N' Roll As Real Estate" is probably my favorite essay in The Psychic Soviet. In it, Svenonius argues that there is a direct link from real estate to music. He says that the Punk movement was started when cheap lofts became abundant in New York City. In the early 2000's, real estate was more expensive, so people who started bands couldn't rehearse anywhere. He says that two movements were born out of that inflation: Folk and Electro-clash. More musicians started writing and recording in their bedroom studios, without the use of drum sets taking up their very limited space. There are even a few terms that have places in their names. Arena rock, bar bands, garage bands. Anyway, he explains it all much better than I do, and I definitely recommend his book The Psychic Soviet for this essay and everything else in it as well.

I've never really gotten into David Byrne's music. Obviously he was in Talking Heads, but I've never really been that into anything I've heard by them. And he's worked with Brian Eno, but for some reason I've never gotten around to listening to that stuff. I still find him to be very interesting though. I've seen interviews with him, back from his days in Talking Heads, and more recently. And his Playing The Building project is absolutely fascinating. If you weren't going to click on any of the links in this blog entry, at least click on this one. But really you should click on them all. Haha.

So anyway, I watched Byrne's TED talk, "How Architecture Helped Music Evolve", and expected it to be along the same lines as what I already read in The Psychic Soviet, but it was quite a bit different. Although he was linking kinds of music to places, it was more about how the places' architectural characteristics affected the music and made it what it is, due to acoustics and the aesthetics. Music is a product of its environment and wouldn't make sense taken out of that environment. Polyrhythmic African music wouldn't make sense if you heard it in a gothic cathedral, and the music traditionally heard in a gothic cathedral wouldn't make sense if you heard it in a punk club.

Although he wasn't rehashing what Svenonius already said, the two subjects are most definitely related. What Byrne was talking about was making me think about things I've thought about many times before. About how when I perform live, I'd try to adapt to whatever environment I'm playing in so that my music makes sense there. If I'm playing some punk club, I can play noisier, louder songs and it would fit. If I was playing a coffee shop or open mic night or something, I'd play something more stripped down. I've already thought about all that stuff, but seeing Byrne talk about it made me more excited to try playing many different kinds of environments, and dealing with the challenge of adapting to them. I've decided I'm not going to be limited by the affects of my environment on my music. Not only will I seek out a variety of venues, but I will also try to write and record my music in different environments.