Tell us about a book you have read that you found especially challenging, stimulating, or provocative. Explain why it made an impact on you.
"Never lose the groove in order to find a note."
- Victor Wooten (The Music Lesson)
In 1997, I was on vacation, sitting on my couch and flipping through channels, when I happened to watch a video of a bassist... he was playing to a familiar Christian tune, and he seemed pretty skilled, but to my immature ears (at 15, I was very much a rebel, in spirit as well as taste), it wasn't worth listening to more than 15 seconds. Unconsciously, I blocked the ingenuity in his playing from my aural receptors and switched to a random channel.
A decade later, around 2008, a friend gave me his bass guitar, and I started to practice. I was lucky to have a plethora of resources on the internet: videos, articles, books, websites, and forums. Cyberspace seemed to have it all. I practiced regularly, developing an appreciation for the nuances of the instrument and its players. Tone, articulation, dynamics, timing, scales... there were innumerable parts of a performance to learn from, to appreciate.
But ever so often, I would find myself obsessing over things that in retrospect now seem relatively trivial. I started practicing scales religiously, chord patterns, and esoteric lines from Eastern music that sounded important. I came to believe that the best thing I could for myself as an aspiring musician was to have as many scales and chords memorized as possible. Little did I realize that there was more to the game than what notes you had to play with.
I saw him playing the same song again, his interpretation of "Amazing Grace". Immediately, I was locked into the spirit of that song. His expertise with the instrument blew me away. I looked into more of his playing, his books... I had to learn something from this man; if not his musicality, something about his way of life. Clearly there was something special, something unique about this human being.
The Music Lesson is Victor Wooten's first book that is not strictly instructional. It contains a series of semi-fictional encounters between him and a character named Michael. It also describes his learning process in a 'parable' -like form, relating how he too had an approach toward music that was tainted, colored rather, by his own ignorance and presumptions of what it meant to be a musician.
An elemental message of the book would be how music is a language, not just an art-form. One can be artistic in the way one uses a language, but music is a language first, a medium of expression, before it is an art-form.
He explains this concept in a very unique, accessible manner. Here's how I understood it:
When we are born, there is so much about the world that we start to take in, interpret, and react to. One of the first things we learn is our language. We try to speak to our parents, try to tell mom or dad, 'I'm hungry!' or 'I'm happy!'... We feel the urge to talk to them and share our feelings.
Of course, mom and dad are accomplished speakers of their languages, and they initiate a freestyle flavor of communication, where there is as much room for mistakes as there is for proper communication. We start to 'jam' with them. The mood is playful, oohs and aahs, coos and caahs, babies so often seem to enjoy it no end, and yet it is a learning experience! When babies (language amateurs) make those mistakes, adults (language professionals) would playfully repeat those mistakes right along with us!
In 3 or 4 years, that baby that cried because it could not speak suddenly starts talking its parents' ears off, asking more questions about the world than they care to answer!
A passage describes how if a starting musician were to start off jamming with professional, accomplished musicians, it would not take that musician decades of experience to play skillfully; it would take a few years, perhaps less than a decade, as it took for the baby to speak.
There is a strong truth to that message; one often sees musicians born into musical families that are able to develop a skill much faster with practice than, say, a child from a family without professional musicians that goes to music school. Even children that grow up in musical environments (performance venues, studios etc), that get a chance to communicate with people more musically experienced than themselves seem to exhibit a better understanding of music than their peers.
These days when I pick up my bass, I feel less 'hindered' by my prior approach. I feel a certain kind of peace, a freedom of expression. Wooten's book helped me realize for myself that I needed to practice expressing myself as much as I did everything else (technique, scales etc).
It's easy to acknowledge a fact, but a student only truly realizes the fact for him/herself when the master explains it the right way. Victor Wooten did that wonderfully for me with his collection of vignettes he calls 'The Music Lesson'.
The video that I mention at the beginning of this essay is available on youtube. Search for "wooten amazing grace".
_______________________________________________________________
Hope I didn't blowout on the cheese! Thanks for reviewing.
There wasn't a word limit. Think it's too long?
"Never lose the groove in order to find a note."
- Victor Wooten (The Music Lesson)
In 1997, I was on vacation, sitting on my couch and flipping through channels, when I happened to watch a video of a bassist... he was playing to a familiar Christian tune, and he seemed pretty skilled, but to my immature ears (at 15, I was very much a rebel, in spirit as well as taste), it wasn't worth listening to more than 15 seconds. Unconsciously, I blocked the ingenuity in his playing from my aural receptors and switched to a random channel.
A decade later, around 2008, a friend gave me his bass guitar, and I started to practice. I was lucky to have a plethora of resources on the internet: videos, articles, books, websites, and forums. Cyberspace seemed to have it all. I practiced regularly, developing an appreciation for the nuances of the instrument and its players. Tone, articulation, dynamics, timing, scales... there were innumerable parts of a performance to learn from, to appreciate.
But ever so often, I would find myself obsessing over things that in retrospect now seem relatively trivial. I started practicing scales religiously, chord patterns, and esoteric lines from Eastern music that sounded important. I came to believe that the best thing I could for myself as an aspiring musician was to have as many scales and chords memorized as possible. Little did I realize that there was more to the game than what notes you had to play with.
I saw him playing the same song again, his interpretation of "Amazing Grace". Immediately, I was locked into the spirit of that song. His expertise with the instrument blew me away. I looked into more of his playing, his books... I had to learn something from this man; if not his musicality, something about his way of life. Clearly there was something special, something unique about this human being.
The Music Lesson is Victor Wooten's first book that is not strictly instructional. It contains a series of semi-fictional encounters between him and a character named Michael. It also describes his learning process in a 'parable' -like form, relating how he too had an approach toward music that was tainted, colored rather, by his own ignorance and presumptions of what it meant to be a musician.
An elemental message of the book would be how music is a language, not just an art-form. One can be artistic in the way one uses a language, but music is a language first, a medium of expression, before it is an art-form.
He explains this concept in a very unique, accessible manner. Here's how I understood it:
When we are born, there is so much about the world that we start to take in, interpret, and react to. One of the first things we learn is our language. We try to speak to our parents, try to tell mom or dad, 'I'm hungry!' or 'I'm happy!'... We feel the urge to talk to them and share our feelings.
Of course, mom and dad are accomplished speakers of their languages, and they initiate a freestyle flavor of communication, where there is as much room for mistakes as there is for proper communication. We start to 'jam' with them. The mood is playful, oohs and aahs, coos and caahs, babies so often seem to enjoy it no end, and yet it is a learning experience! When babies (language amateurs) make those mistakes, adults (language professionals) would playfully repeat those mistakes right along with us!
In 3 or 4 years, that baby that cried because it could not speak suddenly starts talking its parents' ears off, asking more questions about the world than they care to answer!
A passage describes how if a starting musician were to start off jamming with professional, accomplished musicians, it would not take that musician decades of experience to play skillfully; it would take a few years, perhaps less than a decade, as it took for the baby to speak.
There is a strong truth to that message; one often sees musicians born into musical families that are able to develop a skill much faster with practice than, say, a child from a family without professional musicians that goes to music school. Even children that grow up in musical environments (performance venues, studios etc), that get a chance to communicate with people more musically experienced than themselves seem to exhibit a better understanding of music than their peers.
These days when I pick up my bass, I feel less 'hindered' by my prior approach. I feel a certain kind of peace, a freedom of expression. Wooten's book helped me realize for myself that I needed to practice expressing myself as much as I did everything else (technique, scales etc).
It's easy to acknowledge a fact, but a student only truly realizes the fact for him/herself when the master explains it the right way. Victor Wooten did that wonderfully for me with his collection of vignettes he calls 'The Music Lesson'.
The video that I mention at the beginning of this essay is available on youtube. Search for "wooten amazing grace".
_______________________________________________________________
Hope I didn't blowout on the cheese! Thanks for reviewing.
There wasn't a word limit. Think it's too long?
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