June #DoubleSpin complete! Which I might not have done if it wasn‘t for my IRL book club. This didn‘t work for me on several levels. I don‘t usually enjoy pseudo-fictional nonfiction, where the message is presented as a story. For me, this generally yields a gimmicky, sub-par story—I‘d rather you say what you want to say instead of shoehorning your points into the mouths of preachy/quirky characters. That‘s pretty much how I felt about this. ⤵️
I've read a lot of these books on meta-music. They're interesting but not always applicable. If you don't know Victor Wooten, he was the bass player for Bela Fleck and also has some solid solo releases. I think if I didn't know how good Wooten was, I'd've dropped it. There's a lot of new-agey ideas that I wouldn't have even tried if I didn't trust him. I'll need to re-read but what I've learned so far has simplified improvisation and enjoyment.
pickI wasn‘t sure what to expect. I‘d never heard of Victor Wooten before (his musical world and mine don‘t often intersect), but it sounded interesting.
It could all be made up, or it could‘ve really happened. It‘s a nice flight if fancy. Maybe just a little forced
Many of the lessons are familiar to me. But it was fun and interesting with great narration and music throughout.
Highly recommended, especially to anyone who enjoys making music.
I‘m really enjoying listening to this! As a musician it is quite meaningful to me. Most of it is not new to me (but very well might be to a lot of trained musicians), because I had a great teacher/mentor, but a reminder is never a bad thing. I‘m not sure how much non-musicians would get out of this, but even amateurs would take a lot away from it. #MountTBR
1. Walking or Housework/cooking
2. Audible (I've been a subscriber since 2006!)
3. x1.25 any faster and it sounds weird to me and takes me out of the story. But often I prefer it a little sped up.
4. Don't really have any faves, because I don't buy the book for the narrator. I've had some real duds though.
5. Some books work better in audio than other. Memoir is a genre that's great in audio if the author also reads it.
panMy husband knows me better than anyone else on earth. But he got this one wrong. I didn't enjoy it at all. It felt too Pollyanna and forced for me... ⭐️⭐️
The Music Lesson: A Spiritual Search for Growth Through Music | 
Add to this, threaded throughout is a bunch of woo-woo content where words like Life and Music are always capitalized. Characters heal injuries from a car accident by singing over the victim, the effects of noise pollution in a nature preserve are rebalanced through an idyllic song session where frogs and snakes come up and rest in the laps of the singers, and the characters ⤵️ 4w
I respect that Wooten didn‘t want to write a traditional instructional book about music, and that he wanted to weave in parallels to life as well as music. I respect that he advocated getting away from worrying about the right notes, and emphasized often-ignored elements ⤵️ (edited) 4w
I listened to half on audio, which would have been a great way to experience the book if I had liked it better! The audio includes musical themes throughout—within scenes & at the beginning of each chapter—which was wonderful. But I wanted to finish more quickly, so I switched to print. 4w