Review of The Music Lesson, A spiritual search for growth through music by Victor Wooten.
Do you find that the quantity of you music you play is growing but you are not sure if whether or not the quality of your music is growing at the same rate?
With music as with anything in life, sometimes we can get so caught up with trying to learn more that we don’t always try to do better. In other words, we perform more music, but the overall quality stays the same.
Often times we are so focused on trying to beat the deadline of bringing the music up to a certain level, that we don’t have the time to improve the level itself. Another way that this idea shows up is when we work on details so much that we forget to look at the big picture of being a musician, in other words we can’t see the forest through the trees.
Well the antidote to that is “The Music Lesson” by Victor Wooten. This story can help to immediately increase the quality of your “relationship with music”, and it makes no difference what level or style of performer you are. From pop to jazz, and country to classical the information is universal enough that it will dramatically improve your musicianship.
For those of you unfamiliar with Victor Wooten, he has won four Grammy awards and also won Bass Player magazine’s Player of the Year award 3 times. He is the only bass player to win the award more than once. So needless to say he does have some experience.
This book is written so that it will help you out no matter what level your currently are at, from beginner to advanced to very advanced. The principles and concepts that are shown in this book can help you to grow from whatever level you are at, to whatever levels you would like to get to.
I know what you are thinking…the book probably reads like a textbook. That couldn’t be further than the truth, the best part of the book is that it is in story form. I think that each of the 4 times that I have read this book over the years…I have read the whole book in about 2 days, so it reads really easily, and you will have a hard time putting it down.
The story is about Victor Wooten and his surprise guest Michael who shows him about music and life through talking about the 10 elements of music that are:
1. Notes
2. Articulation/Duration
3. Technique
4. Emotion/Feel
5. Dynamics
6. Rhythm/ Tempo
7. Tone
8. Phrasing
9. Space/Rest
10. Listening
Using these elements, Michael systematically goes through each of these and destroys, builds, and expands Victor’s concept of each. The book goes through all of these concepts reiterating how important each one is in the big picture, and demonstrating how they are all represented in everyday life, and then how they work in music.
They discuss concepts such as the difference between playing an instrument, and playing music using an instrument, to how to play so that people applaud after your solo. It covers an amazing mix of philosophical and practical advice, most of which is not common knowledge.
This is a book that I have read several times, each time I come away from it with a new perspective and having learned something new. The funniest thing about this book is that it will cause you to ask yourself 5 new questions for each one that it answers…but it still answers about 200 of them, so you will certainly not be without
It is probably one of the most informative and entertaining books on music that I have ever read, and is of value to anyone interested in giving themselves a new perspective and bringing their playing and understanding up to the next level.
Read it and feel free to comment on it…
Victor also has a video out called Groove Workshop where he teaches a lot of these concepts in a bass masterclass. The video shows how to practice to improve different aspects of your playing, and covers many of the ideas covered in the book. It is a two DVD set and is worth the price.
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