Ways of the Hand - the Organization of Improvised Conduct

Sudnow, D

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0674948335 ISBN 13: 9780674948334

Publisher: Harvard University Press, 1978

An ethnographer's account of his study of jazz-piano playing, which led to discoveries concerning the ways his hands learned about the keyboard and improvisation, sheds light on the nature and range of improvised conduct.

Review:

With astonishing descriptive precision, the author compels the reader to think and feet along with him as his fingers progress toward intimacy with the keyboard. This is at once a work of minutely detailed phenomenology and a virtuoso performance of language in action. Psychology Today A dazzling and deeply probing study of the relationship between human consciousness and behavior. -- Jack Kroll Newsweek

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.