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The Listening Book: Discovering Your Own Music
The Listening Book is about rediscovering the power of listening as an instrument of self-discovery and personal transformation. By exploring our capacity for listening to sounds and for making music, we can awaken and release our full creative powers. Mathieu offers suggestions and encouragement on many aspects of music-making, and provides playful exercises to help readers appreciate the connection between sound, music, and everyday life.
192 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1991
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1431 people want to read
About the author
William Allaudin Mathieu
6 books22 followersWilliam Allaudin Mathieu (born 1937) is a composer, pianist, choir director, music teacher, and author. He began studying piano at the age of six, and began recording his music and compositions in the 1970s on his record label, Cold Mountain Music. Mathieu has composed and recorded solo piano works, chamber pieces, choral music, and song cycles, and he has written four books on music, music theory, and how to live a musical life.
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Displaying 1 - 28 of 28 reviews
November 15, 2014
Thoroughly enjoyed this book. I bought it as a present for my boyfriend, who composes music as a hobby (and helps me with music for book trailers!) but decided to try it myself on his recommendation. Really glad I did.
I am not a musician, but still found "The Listening Book" incredibly useful – as a writer and human being! It's not just about listening or music. It's about opening up to the world around us. It's about art and how we respond to it, create it and live with being creative souls. Without ever sounding preachy, WA Mathieu shows us how to channel our creativity in the best ways to get the most effective results FOR US – no one else. And I found that such an essential component of his teaching process. So many artists and writers get lost in trying to please the audience that their art becomes part passion part torture!
Mathieu uses beautifully-written, short bursts of prose like mini-stories to capture the essence of his journey as a musician and music teacher and to inspire his readers to have the courage to explore their own internal 'music', in whatever form it might take. At times, it verges on the best self-help experience I think you can have, but it is FUN and ENTERTAINING, full of life and energy, so don't let the 'self-help' component put you off.
Mathieu's voice really comes through, loud and clear but without shouting – loved it.
I am not a musician, but still found "The Listening Book" incredibly useful – as a writer and human being! It's not just about listening or music. It's about opening up to the world around us. It's about art and how we respond to it, create it and live with being creative souls. Without ever sounding preachy, WA Mathieu shows us how to channel our creativity in the best ways to get the most effective results FOR US – no one else. And I found that such an essential component of his teaching process. So many artists and writers get lost in trying to please the audience that their art becomes part passion part torture!
Mathieu uses beautifully-written, short bursts of prose like mini-stories to capture the essence of his journey as a musician and music teacher and to inspire his readers to have the courage to explore their own internal 'music', in whatever form it might take. At times, it verges on the best self-help experience I think you can have, but it is FUN and ENTERTAINING, full of life and energy, so don't let the 'self-help' component put you off.
Mathieu's voice really comes through, loud and clear but without shouting – loved it.
February 5, 2020
"We ordinarily use mistakes to fuel self-denial, as a proof of our incompetence. But since mistakes are inevitable, try turning them instead to your best advantage. Embrace your mistakes; accept the self who makes them. This is the creative response, one that allows music to find its true shape inside you. Mistakes are your best friends. They bring a message. They tell you what to do next and light the way. They come about because you have not understood something, or have learned something incompletely. They tell you that you are moving too fast, or looking in the wrong direction."
December 31, 2020
I was labeled as “non-musical” way back in elementary school. Mr. Mathieu insists we are all musical. He even has a chapter on how to create and manage a “tone deaf choir”.
This book has already made me listen more closely to my surroundings. I hope to extract more meaning from it when I try the simple note exercises he describes.
This book has already made me listen more closely to my surroundings. I hope to extract more meaning from it when I try the simple note exercises he describes.
December 2, 2013
Never has music had such a written resonance. This book is on the money.
The More You Listen
We can no more hear all the vibrations in a sonata than we can see all the radiation from the stars. There is an effulgence [ a brilliant radiance; a shining forth], a surfeit in the world.
The history of music is the history of our response to tone, our waking up to it, our remembering and forgetting it, our becoming human it in human form. Each time you hear a tone more clearly than the last time, you participate in the Great Remembering. It is collective, but it is simultaneously private and intimate. Your experience of tone is unique and secret.
So try it again: get quiet; then the pluck or the stroke; then the long decay of sound into space.
Lentus Celer Est
bogus Latin for “Slow Is Fast”
the only way to get fast is to be deep, wide awake, and slow.
When you habitually zip through your music, your ears are crystallizing in sloppiness.
It is OK to check your progress with an occasional sprint. But it is better to let speed simply come on as a result of methodical nurturing, as with a lovingly built race car.
Pray to Saint Lentus for release from zealous celerity. Pray for the patience of a stonecutter. Pray to understand that speed is one of those things you have to give up -- like love -- before it comes flying to you through the back window.
When you have found your true teacher, don’t hide. Wherever he or she lives, go there, even if you have to take an airplane or hike into the wilderness; even if you go only occasionally.
The More You Listen
We can no more hear all the vibrations in a sonata than we can see all the radiation from the stars. There is an effulgence [ a brilliant radiance; a shining forth], a surfeit in the world.
The history of music is the history of our response to tone, our waking up to it, our remembering and forgetting it, our becoming human it in human form. Each time you hear a tone more clearly than the last time, you participate in the Great Remembering. It is collective, but it is simultaneously private and intimate. Your experience of tone is unique and secret.
So try it again: get quiet; then the pluck or the stroke; then the long decay of sound into space.
Lentus Celer Est
bogus Latin for “Slow Is Fast”
the only way to get fast is to be deep, wide awake, and slow.
When you habitually zip through your music, your ears are crystallizing in sloppiness.
It is OK to check your progress with an occasional sprint. But it is better to let speed simply come on as a result of methodical nurturing, as with a lovingly built race car.
Pray to Saint Lentus for release from zealous celerity. Pray for the patience of a stonecutter. Pray to understand that speed is one of those things you have to give up -- like love -- before it comes flying to you through the back window.
When you have found your true teacher, don’t hide. Wherever he or she lives, go there, even if you have to take an airplane or hike into the wilderness; even if you go only occasionally.
July 14, 2022
Just as we can look and gave into the distance and note tiny little details and colors, we can also listen into the distance to notice sounds that we otherwise may miss. This book is about listening.
The later half is a lot of music theory, but overall enjoyed this book and a worthwhile reminder to listen more carefully to become more aware.
The later half is a lot of music theory, but overall enjoyed this book and a worthwhile reminder to listen more carefully to become more aware.
April 18, 2012
from
http://buddhistartnews.wordpress.com/...
Book Review by Jonathan Ciliberto, 26 December 2011
The Listening Book
Discovering Your Own Music
By W. A. Mathieu
published by Shambhala
Paperback
List Price: $17.95
978-1-59030-831-8
Aspects of oneself innate or ever-present are often overlooked when considering self-improvement. For instance, while people regularly train themselves to speak better French or acquire a better golf game, it is less obvious that one would seek to improve one’s mind or being.
And what about listening? Like seeing or smelling, one imagines listening to be fixed, not needing (or capable of) improvement, at least without physical or mechanical means.
Buddhist meditation, of course, similarly begins with the premise that something seemingly fixed can take improvement.
The Listening Book is a collection of anecdotes and exercises intended to improve listening, and thereby to find one’s own music.
Originally published in 1991, it was re-issued this year, its text completely re-set, with new cover art.
Although not explicitly about Buddhism, it partakes of many Buddhist approaches, including mindfulness, compassion, and ego-reduction.
On the one hand, the author’s premise is simple: everyone has ears, and so everyone can hear music. On the other, it is subtle, investigating psychological aspects of listening, the metaphysics of music-making, and the primacy of attention to full experience as a listener and musician.
The book consists of many short, practical instructions, some presented anecdotally, others more directly pedagogical. None, however, are superior or overly technical. The author is speaking to those who have faced frustration as listeners or musicians, who, it turns out, is everyone. Many of the exercises germinate out of Mathieu’s experiences as a musician, composer, and teacher, beginning with his own recognition of difficulty and the desire for improvement. This modest approach is extremely effective at eliminating a reader’s negative reaction to sometimes very basic, somewhat vaguely phrased direction.
Many of the exercises are extremely practical and simple.
I read this book not as someone who is tone-deaf, or has been repeatedly frustrated at failing to “get” music (and some of the chapters are devoted to just such individuals), but as a musician of nearly four decades, with a consistently deep and ever-expanding love of listening. Even so, I never felt as if I have nothing to learn from the author, and when I recognized common episodes (“I’ve had that experience…”), it wasn’t to then skip over or think less of the book (as being obvious), but rather to see the commonality in listening that makes a self-help book on the subject possible and successful. Any musician who claims never to have encountered obstacles, felt stopped, or cannot see far greater vistas of music beyond his reach: this is a delusional musician. A large part of this book’s project is showing that everyone, even very talented musicians, has trouble. This is a helpful point to people who have never gotten past the first stumbling block, and have remained stuck at “music isn’t for me.”
Mathieu’s gentle, open-hearted, and joyous heart is written on every page, and one feels urged to cultivate this kind of experience of music, of sound, and of one’s self.
http://buddhistartnews.wordpress.com/...
Book Review by Jonathan Ciliberto, 26 December 2011
The Listening Book
Discovering Your Own Music
By W. A. Mathieu
published by Shambhala
Paperback
List Price: $17.95
978-1-59030-831-8
Aspects of oneself innate or ever-present are often overlooked when considering self-improvement. For instance, while people regularly train themselves to speak better French or acquire a better golf game, it is less obvious that one would seek to improve one’s mind or being.
And what about listening? Like seeing or smelling, one imagines listening to be fixed, not needing (or capable of) improvement, at least without physical or mechanical means.
Buddhist meditation, of course, similarly begins with the premise that something seemingly fixed can take improvement.
The Listening Book is a collection of anecdotes and exercises intended to improve listening, and thereby to find one’s own music.
Originally published in 1991, it was re-issued this year, its text completely re-set, with new cover art.
Although not explicitly about Buddhism, it partakes of many Buddhist approaches, including mindfulness, compassion, and ego-reduction.
On the one hand, the author’s premise is simple: everyone has ears, and so everyone can hear music. On the other, it is subtle, investigating psychological aspects of listening, the metaphysics of music-making, and the primacy of attention to full experience as a listener and musician.
The book consists of many short, practical instructions, some presented anecdotally, others more directly pedagogical. None, however, are superior or overly technical. The author is speaking to those who have faced frustration as listeners or musicians, who, it turns out, is everyone. Many of the exercises germinate out of Mathieu’s experiences as a musician, composer, and teacher, beginning with his own recognition of difficulty and the desire for improvement. This modest approach is extremely effective at eliminating a reader’s negative reaction to sometimes very basic, somewhat vaguely phrased direction.
Many of the exercises are extremely practical and simple.
I read this book not as someone who is tone-deaf, or has been repeatedly frustrated at failing to “get” music (and some of the chapters are devoted to just such individuals), but as a musician of nearly four decades, with a consistently deep and ever-expanding love of listening. Even so, I never felt as if I have nothing to learn from the author, and when I recognized common episodes (“I’ve had that experience…”), it wasn’t to then skip over or think less of the book (as being obvious), but rather to see the commonality in listening that makes a self-help book on the subject possible and successful. Any musician who claims never to have encountered obstacles, felt stopped, or cannot see far greater vistas of music beyond his reach: this is a delusional musician. A large part of this book’s project is showing that everyone, even very talented musicians, has trouble. This is a helpful point to people who have never gotten past the first stumbling block, and have remained stuck at “music isn’t for me.”
Mathieu’s gentle, open-hearted, and joyous heart is written on every page, and one feels urged to cultivate this kind of experience of music, of sound, and of one’s self.
October 8, 2012
This is a very subjective book, with many instructions on how to practice your listening skills. Like for example, how to listen to the subtle sound of your day to day life that you really doesn't pay much attention. It encourages you to dive deep in a kind of contemplative state of listening. It changes the way you listen for the better. But when I was thinking of buying it, I thought that it would have more ways to approach musical instruments in a new way, or even creating your own music, as the title says "discovering your own music". It did, but in a different way. Some people will like it, some won't. For me, this new approach to music was interesting. One of many things that I loved about it, was a chapter that Mathieu talked about the difference between playing/listening with your left brain and with you right, which is the intuition. It makes perfectly sense to me, and it was something that I hadn't realized before. So, if you ask me if it's worth reading, yes it is, even more so if you practice his exercise of listening, which takes some time to "master". That's the kind of book that rests in your shelf for many years and from time to time you only read a page or two. I recommend to all musicians who wants to improve their music and listening skills in general. Or simply people who wants to discover new ways of listening.
October 1, 2014
This isn't really the type of book you "finish", but having technically read each of the pages, it counts for this purpose.
I described the book thusly to a friend, "It's great: philosophical, transcendent, zen in its mindfulness. All this without being new age-y". And it is. It's written from such a high place that it's applicable far beyond just music and musicians, it's for anyone who sees beauty and complexity and wants to create some of their own.
I described the book thusly to a friend, "It's great: philosophical, transcendent, zen in its mindfulness. All this without being new age-y". And it is. It's written from such a high place that it's applicable far beyond just music and musicians, it's for anyone who sees beauty and complexity and wants to create some of their own.
January 17, 2021
Adam Neely mentioned this book in a video called The Worst Jazz Solo of All Time. It is a collection of short essays about different listening and playing practices. In the introduction, Mathieu mentions his hope that you will keep returning back to the book and taking new things from it every time. Here are 12 practices that stuck with me on this read through.
1) Symphony of Place: Combination of mindfulness practice with prose writing. Open your listening to your environment, and then narratively, non-judgmentally, write the things that you hear.
2) Chanting: Mindfully repeat a syllable (e.g. Om, Sa). Try to settle on a single sustained pitch. "You will hear your own overtones at the fringes"
3) One Note After Another: Play a note, hold it and listen intently. Get lost in the landscape of the sound, and scrutinize every detail. When you have heard all you can hear, play another note. Repeat until the experience is reliable. "There will be a moment when your sense of fullness gives you permission to go on to the next note). A connection between the notes eventually emerges. "If you find yourself trying to make a melody, stop. [...] Let the melody make itself, let the sounds choose the sounds. " (Don't be seduced by the melody is the instruction, but really it is OK to go ahead and be seduced, it's only love.)
4) What should I practice: The secret is to keep track of what you do practice, like an anthropologist would. Generally guideline is to spend 1/4 of your time on each: Playing other's music, Theory & Technique, Improvising & Composing, and Listening.
5) Lentus Celer Est: Slow is Fast.
6) Finding a Teacher: Reflect on the person you want to become - "Try to capture the character of your future music in your ear, even if the notes are a blur. [...] When the picture comes into focus, describe it in writing. Tell everything." What has to happen for you to become the person you saw? The person who can guide you there is the teacher you need to find.
7) Singing in Unison With a String: Like the chanting exercise, but first play an open note (doesn't need to be on a string) listening until it fades, and then try and sing that note in unison with the string, make your voice like the string.
8) AMAPFALAP: As Much As Possible From As Little As Possible. Improvisation with one note. So many variations possible: Dynamics, Duration, Timbre, Texture, Feeling & Intention. Eventually, do it with two notes, and then three, four, across octaves. But don't forget about the things you learned when you were only using one note! Another note is another tool in the toolbox, don't forget about the other variations.
9) Touch What You Sing: Strike one note on your instrument, then a second. Compose a brief melody with only these two notes. Then, continue improvising, but now sing what you are playing. Sing at the same time as you play the note, blend your voice with the sound of the instrument. Then, expand to three pitches and believe you are simultaneously singing and playing short passages of real music. Now, instead of pressing the key all the way down, merely touch it - the only sound is your singing but keep going through the motions of playing the instrument. Touch the keys and sing the notes that would sound if you were playing the instrument. If you're unsure of your accuracy, play a note to check it. Sing what you touch, then Touch what you sing, following your voice. This "gives priority to the inner world and asks the outer world to mirror it faithfully. You can then add more notes gradually (this is a life of work, don't rush!) You can play the root note to keep it in the air and stabilize your singing.
10) Play by the Clock: Improvisation and composition practice. Set a timer for exactly one minute and watch it while you play, realize you are half way done at 30 seconds, and that you need to start wrapping up at 45 seconds, at 55 second you need to be concluding. Try to finish the piece at exactly 60 seconds.
11 )Just the News: Improvisation practice - remember a scene or event you saw within the last 48 hours, take some time to mindfully remember what happened and then improvise a short piece that is like a journal entry for the event.
12)The Magic Scale: You don't need to be constrained by the modes, you can make your own mode using: C Db/D Eb/E F/F# G Ab/A Bb/B C - Root and Fifth are given, but for the other degrees let how you feel like playing decide which to choose.
1) Symphony of Place: Combination of mindfulness practice with prose writing. Open your listening to your environment, and then narratively, non-judgmentally, write the things that you hear.
2) Chanting: Mindfully repeat a syllable (e.g. Om, Sa). Try to settle on a single sustained pitch. "You will hear your own overtones at the fringes"
3) One Note After Another: Play a note, hold it and listen intently. Get lost in the landscape of the sound, and scrutinize every detail. When you have heard all you can hear, play another note. Repeat until the experience is reliable. "There will be a moment when your sense of fullness gives you permission to go on to the next note). A connection between the notes eventually emerges. "If you find yourself trying to make a melody, stop. [...] Let the melody make itself, let the sounds choose the sounds. " (Don't be seduced by the melody is the instruction, but really it is OK to go ahead and be seduced, it's only love.)
4) What should I practice: The secret is to keep track of what you do practice, like an anthropologist would. Generally guideline is to spend 1/4 of your time on each: Playing other's music, Theory & Technique, Improvising & Composing, and Listening.
5) Lentus Celer Est: Slow is Fast.
6) Finding a Teacher: Reflect on the person you want to become - "Try to capture the character of your future music in your ear, even if the notes are a blur. [...] When the picture comes into focus, describe it in writing. Tell everything." What has to happen for you to become the person you saw? The person who can guide you there is the teacher you need to find.
7) Singing in Unison With a String: Like the chanting exercise, but first play an open note (doesn't need to be on a string) listening until it fades, and then try and sing that note in unison with the string, make your voice like the string.
8) AMAPFALAP: As Much As Possible From As Little As Possible. Improvisation with one note. So many variations possible: Dynamics, Duration, Timbre, Texture, Feeling & Intention. Eventually, do it with two notes, and then three, four, across octaves. But don't forget about the things you learned when you were only using one note! Another note is another tool in the toolbox, don't forget about the other variations.
9) Touch What You Sing: Strike one note on your instrument, then a second. Compose a brief melody with only these two notes. Then, continue improvising, but now sing what you are playing. Sing at the same time as you play the note, blend your voice with the sound of the instrument. Then, expand to three pitches and believe you are simultaneously singing and playing short passages of real music. Now, instead of pressing the key all the way down, merely touch it - the only sound is your singing but keep going through the motions of playing the instrument. Touch the keys and sing the notes that would sound if you were playing the instrument. If you're unsure of your accuracy, play a note to check it. Sing what you touch, then Touch what you sing, following your voice. This "gives priority to the inner world and asks the outer world to mirror it faithfully. You can then add more notes gradually (this is a life of work, don't rush!) You can play the root note to keep it in the air and stabilize your singing.
10) Play by the Clock: Improvisation and composition practice. Set a timer for exactly one minute and watch it while you play, realize you are half way done at 30 seconds, and that you need to start wrapping up at 45 seconds, at 55 second you need to be concluding. Try to finish the piece at exactly 60 seconds.
11 )Just the News: Improvisation practice - remember a scene or event you saw within the last 48 hours, take some time to mindfully remember what happened and then improvise a short piece that is like a journal entry for the event.
12)The Magic Scale: You don't need to be constrained by the modes, you can make your own mode using: C Db/D Eb/E F/F# G Ab/A Bb/B C - Root and Fifth are given, but for the other degrees let how you feel like playing decide which to choose.
October 30, 2022
My fav quotes (not a review):
- "Dance music wants to have a wedding with your body."
- "People walk approximately two steps per second, about 120 steps per minute. Music played at this “walking tempo” makes you feel as though you are walking even if you are sitting down."
- "It resonates with the shape and function of your body. A little faster tempo, a few more beats per minute—say, 130—feels like a brisk walk, pushing it, maybe. Slightly fewer beats per minute—say, 108—feels like a lazy amble, maybe too slow. We are so sensitive to the precise center of this range that conductors use it as a reference point in memorizing various tempi. Everyone knows the feeling of this center; when you know you know it, magic happens."
- "Try, for instance, asking for a glass of water in gibberish. Listen to the strange, unpremeditated language that has leapt from you. Now explain why you are late. Now lie about your finances. Now define love."
- "Sa is the beginning note of the musical scale. It comes from Sanskrit and is used in Indian music. The note that has its name is intended to be the foundation of something. When sung it makes an open sound, and wins hands down over the do of do re mi. It is a world and it implies a world. Both sa and om are meant to bring you into the present, into the act of making the sounds themselves, with their boundless intricacy, as well as into the simplicity of the gesture."
- "“Listening to a String,” which means, in this case, striking a key and holding it down. Any key will do, though the ones more or less in the middle of the keyboard are best to begin with. As you hold the key down, listen intently to the note thus produced. Immerse yourself in the ray of sound as though it were the light of a landscape. Get lost in it. Although it begins as a concentration on individual notes, a connection between notes gradually emerges. The nature of the connection deserves our attention. When the game is well played, you do not consciously choose the new note; there is no right or wrong. The unconscious does it, with impunity. No value is placed on how the pitches relate up and down, that is to say, their melodic content. Yet, after being filled with one tone, the desire for a lower one, or a higher one, or a much lower or higher one, or even the same one, arises. It arises not through the intention of carving out a melody but through the pleasure of filling up the whole space with sound, much like filling a canvas with paint as opposed to painting a picture. If you find yourself trying to make a melody, stop. Go back to being filled up with individual tones. Let the melody make itself, let the sounds choose the sounds. Don’t worry, you’ll be part of the choice. But the part of you that is in the mix is not your mind; it is your response to total absorption in tone."
- "When you are dialing the number of the baby-sitter you can say to yourself, “I’m doing music now.”"
- "Africa has cross rhythms down. India is the one for melodic line."
- "Dance music wants to have a wedding with your body."
- "People walk approximately two steps per second, about 120 steps per minute. Music played at this “walking tempo” makes you feel as though you are walking even if you are sitting down."
- "It resonates with the shape and function of your body. A little faster tempo, a few more beats per minute—say, 130—feels like a brisk walk, pushing it, maybe. Slightly fewer beats per minute—say, 108—feels like a lazy amble, maybe too slow. We are so sensitive to the precise center of this range that conductors use it as a reference point in memorizing various tempi. Everyone knows the feeling of this center; when you know you know it, magic happens."
- "Try, for instance, asking for a glass of water in gibberish. Listen to the strange, unpremeditated language that has leapt from you. Now explain why you are late. Now lie about your finances. Now define love."
- "Sa is the beginning note of the musical scale. It comes from Sanskrit and is used in Indian music. The note that has its name is intended to be the foundation of something. When sung it makes an open sound, and wins hands down over the do of do re mi. It is a world and it implies a world. Both sa and om are meant to bring you into the present, into the act of making the sounds themselves, with their boundless intricacy, as well as into the simplicity of the gesture."
- "“Listening to a String,” which means, in this case, striking a key and holding it down. Any key will do, though the ones more or less in the middle of the keyboard are best to begin with. As you hold the key down, listen intently to the note thus produced. Immerse yourself in the ray of sound as though it were the light of a landscape. Get lost in it. Although it begins as a concentration on individual notes, a connection between notes gradually emerges. The nature of the connection deserves our attention. When the game is well played, you do not consciously choose the new note; there is no right or wrong. The unconscious does it, with impunity. No value is placed on how the pitches relate up and down, that is to say, their melodic content. Yet, after being filled with one tone, the desire for a lower one, or a higher one, or a much lower or higher one, or even the same one, arises. It arises not through the intention of carving out a melody but through the pleasure of filling up the whole space with sound, much like filling a canvas with paint as opposed to painting a picture. If you find yourself trying to make a melody, stop. Go back to being filled up with individual tones. Let the melody make itself, let the sounds choose the sounds. Don’t worry, you’ll be part of the choice. But the part of you that is in the mix is not your mind; it is your response to total absorption in tone."
- "When you are dialing the number of the baby-sitter you can say to yourself, “I’m doing music now.”"
- "Africa has cross rhythms down. India is the one for melodic line."
April 23, 2019
The best chapter in this book is "practices" which is at the end of the book. It offers GREAT ideas for self practice and for teaching music to others--including, but not limited to teaching both music practice and theory to young children, and to people with a lot of musical experience or none at all. These exercises are somewhat helpful for making the fundamentals of music theory useful without the learner needing to understand them in depth. The exercises also help create strategies for improvisation and music composition. I like that the basic premise here is that making music is as fundamental of a part of learning music as reading music, or as learning to play someone else's songs. I think this is what's missing in most music instruction in the U.S. The rest of the book is similar in spirit to Rollo May's The Courage to Create or Steven Nachmanovitch's Free Play. The idea being to free the performer from the constraints of perfectionism and conventional definitions of good music, in order to develop a playfulness and intuitiveness that makes music accessible, also to reorient oneself to all sound with mindfulness and playfulness --not to dumb down the quality of musical performance, but to bring people into it with confidence, or to help a person to overcome creative blockages. Having said that, there are useful qualities to the book but most of it was fluff as far as my needs are concerned. I appreciate the author's thoughtful reflections and they have value, but they are mostly a variation of the same idea and there is just a lot of the same to get to before getting to the meat of anything really practically applicable--which is the chapter "Practices." I would have marked it 2-stars if not for that chapter. Some will appreciate it more than I did. The part I think is good I liked a lot. It's a quick read regardless.
January 22, 2018
I'm not sure what I was expecting to get out of this book when I picked it up, but I'm pretty sure staring at a wall in a dark room would've been quicker & just as revealing.
The book is a series of disjointed, rhythm-less stories relating in some way to sound. Some do provide some fairly straightforward advice (for example on how to practice an instrument), and there are a few unusual tidbits I found interesting to try (like writing a 'sound symphony') but these are far to few in what otherwise feels like a very long book pretentiously waffling on the 'magic' of sound.
Not for me, something more practical with a smidge less 'just feel the waves' style meditational-driven waffling I'd look for instead, in hindsight.
The book is a series of disjointed, rhythm-less stories relating in some way to sound. Some do provide some fairly straightforward advice (for example on how to practice an instrument), and there are a few unusual tidbits I found interesting to try (like writing a 'sound symphony') but these are far to few in what otherwise feels like a very long book pretentiously waffling on the 'magic' of sound.
Not for me, something more practical with a smidge less 'just feel the waves' style meditational-driven waffling I'd look for instead, in hindsight.
January 8, 2025
The first part of the book, actually about 2/3 of the book, was not that interesting to me as they were like personal journal entries that didn't have much applicability to me. The last 1/3 of the book is on the mechanics and building blocks of music and singing and very interesting as he builds step by step from the beginning.
March 30, 2021
W.A. Mathieu has some really cool insights into music and listening, but I'm not really a fan of his super flowery poetic writing. I'm sure others would be able to appreciate his style much more than I do.
January 22, 2022
The chapters on “listening” and the meditative pleasures thereof were very enjoyable and I put a lot of the ideas therein into practice. The later chapters on musical practice were less relevant to me and I was more apt to skim them.
March 10, 2022
A quick little read. Part philosophy. Part memoir. Part introspection. Part instruction manual.
If you have trouble opening your ears to the variety of sounds around you, and really want to learn to listen, get this book and do the exercises in them.
If you have trouble opening your ears to the variety of sounds around you, and really want to learn to listen, get this book and do the exercises in them.
December 6, 2020
I loved this book!
June 2, 2024
So creative, I wish I wrote this book
September 6, 2025
Lovely musical meditations.
November 26, 2025
Great book which is just a set of essays related to creative process of music making. I find it pretty entertaining and inspirational.
August 28, 2007
I read this book when I was in high school. I remember that it gave me some ideas on music that I had not thought about before. It is a good book for any one who lacks confidence in their musicianship or wants to come to know music on their own terms, but experienced musicians could find some ideas that would shake up their accepted views if they flipped through it. It's an easy read, a simple book and the basic theme of it is freedom.
January 30, 2008
I would say that this book is essential for anyone who wants to teach music to the layperson. It is also a great refresher for those who have already dedicated their lives to music. It is about hearing the beauty in the sounds of our world. An easy read.
April 6, 2010
Short, 1-2 page essays on aspects of music applicable to arts in general, discipline (as in approaching practicing), imagination (anyone can improvise - start on 1 note), the simplicity of music, and verifies some of the way I teach piano. Plus new ideas, breaks down barriers and preconceptions.
January 9, 2012
Brief vignettes about the benefits of becoming a good listener, many of which are related to music. Sounds a bit like a preppie New Englander who embraces the hippie life in San Francisco. Not terrible, but no real meat to it.
February 6, 2008
good ideas for opening up your ears.
April 19, 2009
poetic & mind-altering
intellectually & spiritually nurturing
thanks mr mathieu
intellectually & spiritually nurturing
thanks mr mathieu
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January 29, 2018Pages with quotes to remember (I’ll write a for-real review later on my blog): 36, 52, 60, 88, 92, 94, 101, 113, 125, 127, 129, 132, 142, 143, 147, 149, 155, and 166
Displaying 1 - 28 of 28 reviews