Ways of Hearing

by Damon Krukowski, Emily Thompson (Foreword)

A writer-musician examines how the switch from analog to digital audio is changing our perceptions of time, space, love, money, and power. Our voices carry farther than ever before, thanks to digital media. But how are they being heard? In this book, Damon Krukowski examines how the switch from analog to digital audio is changing our perceptions of time, space, love, money, and power. In Ways of Hearing —modeled on Ways of Seeing , John Berger's influential 1972 book on visual culture—Krukowski offers readers a set of tools for critical listening in the digital age. Just as Ways of Seeing began as a BBC television series, Ways of Hearing is based on a six-part podcast produced for the groundbreaking public radio podcast network Radiotopia. Inventive uses of text and design help bring the message beyond the range of earbuds. Each chapter of Ways of Hearing explores a different aspect of listening in the digital time, space, love, money, and power. Digital time, for example, is designed for machines. When we trade broadcast for podcast, or analog for digital in the recording studio, we give up the opportunity to perceive time together through our media. On the street, we experience public space privately, as our headphones allow us to avoid “ear contact” with the city. Heard on a cell phone, our loved ones' voices are compressed, stripped of context by digital technology. Music has been dematerialized, no longer an object to be bought and sold. With recommendation algorithms and playlists, digital corporations have created a media universe that adapts to us, eliminating the pleasures of brick-and-mortar browsing. Krukowski lays out a do we want a world enriched by the messiness of noise, or one that strives toward the purity of signal only?

Genres: Music, Nonfiction, Essays, Theory, Cultural, Science, Philosophy

136 pages, Paperback

Published April 9, 2019

About the author

Damon Krukowski is a writer and musician. Author of The New Analog: Listening and Reconnecting in a Digital World, he has taught writing and sound (and writing about sound) at Harvard University. He was in the indie rock band Galaxie 500 and is currently one half of the folk-rock duo Damon & Naomi. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Reviews

[Rob Smith · Rating 1 out of 5]

I think it's kind of ironic for a book obsessed with the downsides of sleek digital music production, it's actually just the transcript from a sleek, digital NPR podcast.

That's all it literally is, and it's pretty okay. I should have figured given the marketing and publishing parallels to John Berger's Ways of Seeing that this would also have been something like a podcast. But unlike Berger's book, this one's a straight up transcript of the podcast episodes, complete with listing the music cues and sound effects.

I like the book but; it has a couple problems. Straight-up, the book has a "old man yells at cloud" vibe. Damon Krukowski talks a lot about how music has changed in the switch from analog to digital, and while he likes digital I'm not sure he does. Gotta be honest, you talk to someone in a local music scene that's well into their 30s and you'll fine a lot of the same opinions here. Digital means you can delete all the noise and acquire pefect signal, record shops/bookstores are dying but are great for curation, and big digital corps are predicting what we want.

And what I find is... well who cares? A lot of the interviews and quotes are also from people who remember the music world before the advent of digital. There's no one prominent in the book who is below the age of what, 30, 40, 45? I'd like to see the perspective as someone who grew up with digital. I'm old enough to have a decent-sized collection of physical media. I love buying books, blu-rays, actual video games discs, and well into my 20s I was buying CDs.

But my problem is... take away all this digital-ness and the music world kinda sucks. My local radio stations are garbage, unless you're in NYC it's almost gonna be impossible to signed, let alone honest-to-God radio play. The competition between noise and signal will still exist... because ya know. People still go to live shows. But if I don't have to lug my CD collection around or burn a CD or choose which songs I want on my iPod/Phone storage (and man we forget how easy - and quick - it is to fill those things up) then sign me up for Spotify forever.

And I know it's based off a podcast. But that's no reason for it to shallow in it's topics. Krokowski touches on some great topics in music, but that's all he does: he just touches on it. My favorite chapter is probably the one where he defends bookstores and record shops as places of curation, where you don't shop for a particular item but you discover something you never knew existed. That part's great, that's something I do in my local indie shops all the time.

But there's no depth. See, what makes of Ways of Seeing stand on it's own as a book, is that Berger just didn't transcribe the documentary series in a book. He used the book, an entirely different medium, with an entirely different sense of time to expand on some of the issues he talks about in the documentary. There are two essays entirely made up of pictures of paintings. Berger uses Ways of Seeing to talk about our ideas of art, of the male gaze/female representation in art, of art as status symbol for the monied classes etc.

Krokowski could have talked about the ingrained sexism in certain music industries and local scenes. He could have fucking talked about local music scenes and how they're thriving and that smaller artists actually benefit more from the internet unmooring us from rich NYC publishing gatekeepers. He could have actually talked about the fucked legal status of music and songs a la Lou Reed getting all of a Tribe Called Quest's royalties because they sampled one of his songs.

What's more, for a guy talking about in a lot of ways how digital has downsides he never once acknowledges that the ultimate irony of talking about all of this while communicating it in the style of one of those NPR-style, sleek well produced podcasts. Most of the podcasts I listen to have some production, but they're never strictly scripted. They're just a bunch of people around a mic talking free style about a subject they've chosen. I've never heard of the terms in the glossary used anywhere but a sleek radio production.

I'm probably being harder on the book than I need to be, mostly because of the pains it takes to compare itself to Ways of Seeing: in advertisement, in format as well. The book is about the dimensions of Ways of Seeing, and laid out a little like his too, complete with the first page also being on the cover. I'm also annoyed because I just paid 20 bucks to read a monied professional podcast script that comes off as a shallow freshman term paper.

He had a different medium, something which he acknowledges in the text is different, and he doesn't fully utilize the medium. Three stars for some of the information, but honestly there are better books on music.

[Kevin · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting, fun, and thoughtful look at sound, both ambient and musical.

[r · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Damon reminds us that our senses’ most fundamental task is not simply to entertain or distract us, but to situate ourselves within our surroundings. By enabling each of us to understand where we are, our senses allow us to understand who we are, as individuals located within networks of physical and social connections. Just as John Berger’s popular television series ‘Ways of Seeing’ showed viewers back in the 1970’s how to understand art—and the vision that art materializes—as a tool for locating ourselves in the world, the ‘Ways of Hearing’ podcast enunciates how temporal, spatial, and social meanings are all encoded in the sounds we hear.”

“Throughout this series, my aim has been to call attention to aspects of sound we may not always think about. You might say, I’ve been trying to highlight different parts of the noise around us.
“And that’s because it’s my hope that by listening to a wider swath of noise, we might discover more about what’s meaningful signal for each of us. And how me might best share those signals with one another.”

[Sue · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a cool book -- a speedy diversion into what it is to hear and to listen in the digital world. It's nostalgic, yes... but also inventive.

This book is the script to a podcast -- which I'm currently listening to. I'm one to tolerate repetition, and enjoy thinking on what each medium -- print and audio -- bring to this story; and how I experience the story through each medium a little differently.

Reading -- or the solo experience of turning down the exterior world to internalize a story -- remains a singular exploratory experience for me.

[Jeff · Rating 4 out of 5]

undertaken as a podcast & turned into a book, putatively on the model of Berger's Ways of Seeing though that's just a smokescreen -- books are silent but not invisible. The analogy Krukowski may have liked is not-and-never-will-be exact. That said, there are intriguing things here, namely about connoisseurship and the mystical in any audio-philia. I have not yet returned to listen to the podcast, which could well have been done with more love than this meta commentary. At some point I will --

[Geoff · Rating 3 out of 5]

It’s sort of weird reading a transcript of a podcast series, but that actually worked for me the same way reading a play works. The actual argument about digital sound was less convincing. It’s clear that digital recording and all of its consequences have changed how we listen to, buy, and interact with music (& the world around us). I’m just not convinced that that change has been bad.

[Jieying Zhang · Rating 3 out of 5]

One star for the pictures, one star for some key points that I can relate, and one last star for making me curious enough to listen to the podcast that I ended up enjoying (much more that the book). It's usually good to make a paper book audible but the other way round doesn't seem to work.. at least in this case.

[Adam · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was lucky enough to attend Krukowski’s book talk in Chicago, in conversation with Steve Albini and Bob Weston, during which the two Shellac-ers related the hilarious story also told in the book about a desktop printer in a neighboring office messing with the electrical current in their recording studio. I really liked the interplay of the 3 musicians’ personalities. Reading this book transcript of Krukowski’s podcast, however, was really disappointing. Sometimes he makes points that just don’t feel that important:

“If you stop up your ears–say, with earbuds listening to this podcast–you’ll find you're not as aware of the space around you. Or of other people. If you’re on the street, you won’t hear their footsteps approaching; you won’t hear their cough letting you know they are right behind you; you may not even hear them yelling at you to get out of the way” (30).

Krukowski makes these comments in the context of celebrating the oceans of sounds on the streets of New York City. Having some moments of meditative private music listening while walking through the city can be a wonderful respite to the otherwise constant sounds of the street. Or even playing noisy music in earbuds as one walks the city, relating one’s movements, the sound in their earbuds, and the movements of the city can be an incredibly inspiring experience. Krukowski, as a musician, should understand this better than most. In fact, Krukowski more or less acknowledges this point elsewhere, when he mentions how Terry Riley said he liked to compose with his windows open. So it just doesn’t feel that important that, when walking the city with earbuds, you might miss the cough of a fellow pedestrian walking behind you.

Other times, he makes important points but doesn’t make strong cases for why they’re important. I think he’s capable of convincing elaboration, but for some reason he doesn’t do it (maybe out of a concern for brevity?).

Weaknesses extend to some of the contributors’ comments in the book as well. For example, the band Downtown Boys overreach in their analysis, attempting to equate capitalism’s exploitation of workers to their hardships of making it as a DIY hardcore the band; the result being them coming off as entitled complainers instead of sharp political antagonists to our unjust political system. Look at how confused their analysis is:

“Yeah like I studied economics or whatever and they teach you this kind of classic market economics graph, and it’s like the way to maximize your profits is to minimize your costs. And we’re a band that we will never be able to minimize our costs–because we are poor, we’re people of color, we’re queer, we’re coming from all these histories, all these backgrounds. The costs are really high. And so the profits will never be like this maximized thing and that's not why we did it. It’s way more of like a reciprocal…The Best parts of the band are when we can reciprocate with the audience and break down that divide between the audience and the crowd and us” (86).

What? Are they complaining they can’t operate their band as a profitable business? Or, if instead their mission is “breaking down barriers with the audience” (commercial barriers?), then why are they lamenting the cost of doing business? Who is the exploitative firm in their analogy? The audience? The “internet?” Themselves as a band?

It seems as though Krukowski felt the need to insert some kind of Marxian-sounding thinking to complete the book’s homage to Jon Berger’s Way of Seeing, on which he clearly models Ways of Hearing, and so he threw in this quasi-analysis from Downtown Boys.

Another contributor, Jeremiah Moss, offers some weak quasi-analysis, which Krukowski uses in an attempt to relate pedestrians wearing earbuds to gentrification, because both involve the privatization of public space. And it’s just not….convincing. Not least of which because developers and property owners aren’t the only people who listen to music when they walk….

Here’s Moss talking about people with their phones (which, Krukowski fails to point out, is actually not exactly the same as listening to their earbuds): “‘When I see people walking around with the screens [phones], I see people who don’t want to be here–they’re not here. They’re opting out of the street life of the city. So you’re creating a private kind of bubble in which to move through public space. So in some ways the public has been triumphed over by the private” (31).

Now, here’s Moss complaining that a space that previously operated as a black market is now a surveilled plaza: “What they’re doing is they’re kind of privatizing public space in this very stealth kind of way. So this is still public, everybody’s welcome here. And yet…You’ll see these private security guards walking around” (33).

Both phenomena he describes may be lamentable, and both could be incorporated in the broadest possible way into some kind of critique of neoliberalism (neither Krukowski or Moss do), but together, they just don’t form a coherent or compelling point for Krukowski to make about different ways of hearing. (Not to mention that the advent of the Walkman made these similar changes to pedestrian life exactly 40 years prior to the publication of this book, and its significance was not lost on cultural commentators past. In fact, it’s strange Krukowski doesn’t mention the Walkman at all). And then, the section with Moss concludes with Krukowski and him mocking how CBGB’s is now a boutique. Again, less than insightful.

This just feels like miscellaneous complaints, layered over with some academic and political language to give it an intellectual sheen that doesn’t really hold up under closer scrutiny.

There are really important questions to explore about the paradigm shift from analog music production and consumption and digital production and consumption. I wish Krukowski would have succeeded more at doing that.

[Patrick · Rating 2 out of 5]

As other reviewers have noted, aside from the addition of an introduction by Emily Thompson, and pictures, this is essentially just a transcript of Krukowski's podcast. It's not uninteresting, but, if you've thought at all about sound or music in the past 30 years, it's nothing new, and it only touches the surface of the issues raised.

I do have a couple of beefs with Krukowski's discussion of copyright and artist's rights generally. In Episode 4, "Money", pp. 78-79 Krukowski appears to claim that there is no copyright in "music". ("What Napster did that was so damaging to the industry, was to separate music - which doesn't have a price attached to it - from the technology that delivers it, which does.") This is simply false. Any fixed expression which has a minimal degree of creativity is subject to copyright. Whether you notate the composition on a piece of paper or sing it into your phone, the music is subject to copyright and as such, pirating by the tech industry aside, has the price the copyright owner (or the government) puts on it. The technology of how the sound recording is distributed may change, from, say, a vinyl LP to a CD shipped to a store, to a digital download or stream (which is actually a download which is deleted from your device after playing), but that doesn't remove the copyright in the composition or the recording.

Krukowski also seems to support artists' rights, but blithely dismisses concerns about wholesale copyright violation and devaluation enabled by the internet, instead focusing on a band called Downtown Boys, whom he characterizes as seeing their rights as artists as a labor issue. Obviously, labor - how musicians are treated and compensated for their performances - is important (and musicians are generally treated poorly by club owners and promoters), but the value of musicians and other artists, and the concomitant wealth generated for them by it, was greatly expanded by the introduction of copyright - that is, by granting property rights to the fixed expression of that labor. Prior to copyright, artists were almost wholly dependent on the patronage of the wealthy or institutions like the church to survive. For a couple of hundred years since the advent of copyright, composers were able to support themselves from the distribution of their works to the masses, and once sound recordings were possible, musicians also benefited from sound recording copyright. Digitization of work and distribution via the internet stripped that support away, enabling a massive transfer of wealth from artists to ISPs, computer and device manufacturers, and tech companies (Google, Facebook, Spotify, etc., as well as owners and enablers of pirating sites like Kim Dotcom) by either ignoring copyright entirely and refusing to pay composers and musicians, or by only paying them compensation which is nominal (and virtually non-existent) for all but the most popular of artists. The result is the end of a middle class career for many musicians. To ignore this in a book/podcast about the effects of digitization of music is to refuse to discuss the elephant in the room.

[Ollie · Rating 4 out of 5]

There is no doubt that Damon Krukowski is the right guy to be talking about music. He understands it at an intimate level where I either wished I could talk about it the same way, or that I could spend a couple hours picking his brain over a cup of coffee. Ways of Hearing is a curious book that doesn’t really have a thesis and is more of a work-in-progress. It discusses different aspects of music and noise. Really, it tries to distinguish between the two because even though this book is mostly about music, it’s also a lot about how we hear it, and as such has to deal with how it is that we hear noise in general.

Right off the bat I knew I’d be in good hands with Krukowski’s book because the first thing he discusses is the metronome, or clicktrack, and how our switch from analog to digital has complicated its use because with digital music., there is a small fraction of time that’s needed for a computer to process analog sound into digital signal, and this causes a delay. The smaller picture is that the approach to using a metronome has to be changed since the beat we’re recording isn’t the same as the one we’re playing along with on our instruments (something I’ve dealt with myself). The larger picture is that this is a shift in the way we hear things because, when dealing with digital recording or broadcasting, nothing is happening in real time, but delayed by microseconds. Is that the end of the world? Not really, but it is a change that has occurred right in front of us that we haven’t even noticed.

It’s topics like this, and many others, that Ways of Hearing explores. Like how the space we inhabit affects the sounds in our life, how technology can be used to manipulate the qualities of the things we hear, and how our purchasing experience affects what music we play. In the latter, imagine two people looking for a particular song. One finds and purchases the song on Amazon as an MP3. The other goes to a record store, browses the bins for the record that has the song they want, purchases that record (along with the other songs it contains), and that other record they happened to come across in that same visit which had a striking cover but contained music they would otherwise never listen to. These two hypothetical people were looking for the same song but ended up with different music. It’s these beautiful little things in our lives that Ways of Hearing makes us aware of.

Now, the format of this book is something entirely different, as it’s made up basically of transcripts of Krukowski’s podcast, right down to the guests he interviews. There’s even photos of the subjects or artists discussed and indications of which song was playing when Krokowski dictated his parts. So, it’s an easy read and super short, but kind of feels unnecessary if you already listen to the podcast. I don’t, so I dug this.

Ways of Hearing is an oddly formatted book with some truly wonderful ideas. It makes you ponder the world around you and makes you appreciate it more. As a music fan, I highly recommend it.

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an engaging and delightful book about how we experience the world. The key examples in this book, which is essentially a transcription of the author's podcast, Ways of Hearing, come from music and sounds. [Full disclosure: I went to grad school with Damon and was at the first show his band Galaxie 500 played in a bar.]

The chapters are on Time, Space, Love, Money, Power, and Signal & Noise. Damon helps us understand how music means something different when recorded and played via analog vs digital means. But it goes a lot farther than that: Our music companies and institutions have been able to seize control of the medium by emphasizing the technological control over signal.

In a tour de force but brief final chapter, Damon tells us that our world is impoverished without noise. Noise provides the opportunity to turn one's attention to other signals -- the conversation across the room, the digital fingerprints captured during an analog recording session. But our culture's ceaseless obsession with making everything available for profit-taking is all about reducing noise in favor of presenting us with choices that satisfy our conscious desires, not leaving much room for the random play of opportunities to experience everything else (and all of those things that are being pushed out of the digital channel). If this book doesn't make you start being your own historian or ethnographer at used record stores, book stores, and live performance, I don't know what will. A funny irony for me reading the book is that in passing Damon suggests that people reading the book have heard the podcast; I didn't! I like books and randomness, and in fact the book was a gift from my friend Jaimie. So I think there are ways to increase the opportunity to grab noise instead of a coroporately-curated signal.

The book is clearly an artifact from the podcast, and Damon doesn't go into a lot of detail with his argument -- the book is really about the examples and conversation, I think. I expect we would find that in his longer book, The New Analog: Listening and Reconnecting in a Digital World, which I'll be putting on my list.

[Ella Kenyon · Rating 2 out of 5]

Wish I could say I liked this book as it’s a topic I’m interested by and even did my dissertation on. It’s basically a book version of a podcast of a guy that is trying to persuade himself and us that he doesn’t mind the digital age of music but every sentence screams ‘I’m lying through my teeth, analogue is better and more meaningful than digital’. There was definitely potential in the content and room to go into interesting detail about the topics he addresses but he barely touches them… no depth to any of his points at all. Just when I think ‘ooh here we go’ he’s moved on, it feels like a bunch of individual sentences which very loosely link to the next. Maybe there’s more detail in the podcast but this book has done nothing to intrigue me enough to go and listen to it. Books to podcasts can work, podcast to book does not - at least in this case.

He gives a continuous vibe of ‘I like analogue so I’m better than you. Let’s talk to loads of people from my generation who have had the same experience and agree with me instead of talking to a more diverse pool for a variation in opinions’.

One star for the occasional interesting comment on specific tracks/albums and one for the lovely aesthetics. I don’t tend to review books but clearly this one got to me - for the wrong reasons.

[Steev Hise · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a really great book. As soon as I saw it I knew I had to get it and read it ASAP. But YMMV. I'm a sound/noise/music/art guy, so am definitely biased.

Anyway, it's about way more than sound and music. It's about what the internet and the digital world we're in now has done to us and our culture and our society.

The design of the book reminds me of McLuhan's The Medium is the Massage. The title is a nod to John Berger, and the book does a good job of aspiring to, but isn't quite get up to the level of, Berger's perspective-shifting book Ways of Seeing. But almost.

Highly recommended to anyone with similar obsessions to my own.

[Andrew · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is actually (at least in part) a transcipted version of a podcast. Much of its content is a comparison between digital and analog methods of recording, and the characteristic distinctions between the two. Many music lovers notice something missing in digital sound; Krukowski digs into the specifics of what that/those something(s) is/are. For example, noise (as in "signal-to-noise" rather than loud clangor), room ambience, the spaces between things.

Really fascinating stuff; recommended. And as this is apparently a condensed version, it would probably be worthwhile to hear the podcast in full.

[Dawn · Rating 4 out of 5]

A transcription of Damon's 6 part Ways of Hearing podcast series. A very light and relaxing but also interesting read, definitely has that easy going podcast vibe to it which works surprisingly well in book format.

It's very loosely based around the change from an analog to digital world and what that does for sound in its many forms. It's a lot warmer and relatable than it sounds! The design of the book is great with interesting formatting and images throughout although I wish it was physically half the size (in thickness) as it's a slight and relaxed read and I wish it had a more slight physical presence to mirror this.

[Michael Chojnacki · Rating 4 out of 5]

A (blog turned into a) book that explores what happens when we move from an analogue to a digital music world. The author considers the technical, economical, sentimental aspects of that shift concluding that : removing 'noise' from 'signal' changes the nature of sound leaving behind lot behind we find near and dear. I have read this book while listening to the podcast, going back and forth. A few very valid points made by a the author/musical.

[Claudia Skelton · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book focuses on how digital culture has changed the making and listening to our music. The author is a musician, author, and professor. Based on a podcast, this book summarizes how the shift from analog to digital audio has changed our perceptions of time, space, noise, and more. It also is about an aspect of how the digital world has changed our culture and society. (I may consider listening to the podcast.)

[Casperdg · Rating 2 out of 5]

Beautifully designed book that invites your reach. A positive attitude throughout makes for quick and fun read. But the same elements also have another side.

It's very interesting to have this story existing both as a podcast and in print. But, while the written audio cues are aesthetically pleasing, they exist only to remind the reader of what it's trying to mimic.

An easy read that will get beginners on the right track but will be lacking for those who already pledged themselves to music.

[Davide · Rating 5 out of 5]

It is hard to convert a podcast into a book. Still, I believe the author and the graphic designer did an amazing job in this case. They converted the audio interludes into illustrations, plus they were also able to convey some sound effects by clever use of typography and fonts. The result is a book that is very easy to read as well as very beautiful to look at.

[Jeremy Hatch · Rating 3 out of 5]

The content is fine. I’m giving it three stars because the book, as such, is simply a transcript of a freely available podcast — albeit in an engagingly designed format filled with illustrations. But those two things add little of value to the podcast itself. I found the best use of the book was to read along while listening to the podcast. Other than that, not really worth the spend.

[Sammy Williams · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think I would have better enjoyed the podcast. Although he brought up interesting points, I don't feel like they were explored deeply enough. Sections about cell phones and digital elimination of noise were the most informative.

[Jehnie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting to read the transcript of a podcast about sound without being able to hear the audio track. A lot of good food for thought that makes me think about sound and noise differently, but the sound is relevant to the argument.

[Scott Holstad · Rating 3 out of 5]

This topic is of great interest to me, but I think his The New Analog: Listening and Reconnecting in a Digital World from just a couple of years ago was quite a bit better. I just sort of left me feeling somewhat unfulfilled. If interested in the topic, I'd start with his previous one.

[dimwig · Rating 3 out of 5]

think i left it on the plane

[Vuk Trifkovic · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nice book - both graphically and in content. Lot of the stuff is interesting but bit artificial. Would totally read a 300-450 page expanded version.

[Scott Schneider · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm not sure it was a good idea to translate a podcast about sound into print. It probably works much better in audio form. Maybe I should get the audiobook version of this podcast book.

[Kat · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is good but the podcast was better

[Kbuxton · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked the podcast version better

[April · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this for my Audio Culture and Digital Sound Production class, and we got to have a Zoom call with Damon at the end!

[Airward · Rating 5 out of 5]

Would highly recommend!