Music and the Music Business

The 1970s and 80s record business and the promoters who controlled radio play.

How the music business works in contracts and money, from a music lawyer.

The foundational science for any serious musician. Levitin explains what the auditory cortex actually does with rhythm, timbre, and expectation — why a note landing slightly behind the beat feels groovy rather than wrong, and why tension-resolution in harmony triggers the same neurochemistry as certain drugs. Knowing the mechanics does not kill the magic; it deepens it.

Byrne argues that music is not created in a vacuum but is shaped by the spaces it's designed to fill — a cathedral's reverb, a club's noise floor, an iPod earbud. Part memoir, part cultural history, part production theory. The chapter on how CBGB's acoustics shaped Talking Heads's sound alone is worth the cover price.

A method for playing music free of the fear and self-judgment that freeze performers.

Strategies for electronic music producers stuck starting, finishing or arranging.

Recording from cylinder to Pro Tools: should it capture reality or improve on it?

A novel in which a teacher upends a musician's ideas about practice and mistakes.

Musicians describe the one song that made them want to make music.

How music acts on the brain, through patients, musicians and ordinary people.