All of his personal experiences were drawn upon here as he has seen a lot of change on this topic and his opinions here have a lot of data to draw upon. Chapter five discusses the changes that The Recording Studio has gone through in its history. Accordingly, the digital sound chapter is only half the length of the preceding one. It’s amazing to consider that digital recording has only been around for 40 years. He gives a good history of recorded sound with chapter three dedicated to analog and chapter four dedicated to digital. I suppose we can read between the lines and view his thesis statements as his true feeling on any matters discussed here, no matter how disingenuous he tries to come across by including antithetical postulations afterward. If he postulates a theorem, then he is quick to undercut it with a disputing fact or point of view in the next paragraph.
Byrne claims at one point to have mild Asberger’s Syndrome, and I would not dispute that, based on what I have read, but presumably this is what given him the clinical, somewhat distant point of view that he puts across here. All made interesting by Byrne’s conversational, matter-of-fact tone.
The second chapter was “My Life In Performance.” A succinct summarization of his career onstage from busking to solo tours. This introductory chapter was a good précis for where this book would ultimately go. The lack of subtlety was an intention of the form itself for very practical acoustic reasons. For example, did you know that Arena Rock evolved because bands were playing in large venues with lousy sound as rock got more popular. The first chapter did go into the evolutionary and sociological reasons why certain forms and practices of music took hold. By the title I thought it was going to be one of those books like Oliver Sack’s “Musicophilia.” Yes, in a few places, it did get into the mental and physiological effects of music on the human mind and body.
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