Ways of the Hand: A Rewritten Account - Hardcover

Sudnow, David; Dreyfus, Hubert L.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0262194678 ISBN 13: 9780262194679

Publisher: Mit Pr, 2001

Synopsis

A detailed account of the experience of learning to improvise on the piano.

Ways of the Hand tells the story of how David Sudnow learned to improvise jazz on the piano. Because he had been trained as an ethnographer and social psychologist, Sudnow was attentive to what he experienced in ways that other novice pianists are not. The result, first published in 1978 and now considered by many to be a classic, was arguably the finest and most detailed account of skill development ever published. Looking back after more than twenty years, Sudnow was struck by the extent to which he had allowed his academic background to shape the book's language. He realized that he could now do a much better job of describing his experiences in a way that would not require facility with formal social science and philosophical discourse. The result is a revised version of the book that carries the same intellectual energy as the original but is accessible to a much wider audience.

About this title

About the Author:

David Sudnow is the author of Passing On, on the sociology of medical care; Talk's Body, on language and music; and Pilgrim in the Micro World, on the nature of the body-computer interface. Over the past two decades, he has developed a widely used piano teaching method on the basis of experiences first described in this book.

Hubert L. Dreyfus is Professor of Philosophy at the University of California at Berkeley.

From Library Journal:

Sudnow is a trained ethnographer and social psychologist who gave up teaching in his fields to study piano and write exclusively about music. In 1978, he published the first edition of this work, a skill-development classic that documents how he taught himself to play jazz piano. The premise of that edition, as well as this update, is that the author's hands, apart from his conscious direction, learned to improvise jazz: "I sing with my fingers, so to speak, and only so to speak, for there's a new being, my body, and it is this being (here too, so to speak) that sings." This new version represents Sudnow's attempt to reach a broader, less academic audience with his findings. Although it features less scholarly diction, the text is still painstakingly detailed, which will limit the book's appeal. For academic and larger public libraries. Cleo Pappas, Lisle Lib. Dist., IL
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Mit Pr
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0262194678
• ISBN 13: 9780262194679
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 139