Deep Listening. A Composer's Sound Practice :: Education by Design Store

Editorial Review
Deep Listening: A Composer's Sound Practice offers an exciting guide to ways of listening and sounding. This book provides unique insights and perspectives for artists, students, teachers, meditators and anyone interested in how consciousness may be effected by profound attention to the sonic environment .

Deep Listening® is a practice created by composer Pauline Oliveros in order to enhance her own as well as other's listening skills. She teaches this practice worldwide in workshops, retreats and in her ground breaking Deep Listening classes at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and Mills College. Deep Listening practice is accessible to anyone with an interest in listening. Undergraduates with no musical training benefit from the practices and successfully engage in creative sound projects. Many report life changing effects from participating in the Deep Listening classes and retreats.

Oliveros is recognized as a pioneer in electronic music and a leader in contemporary music as composer, performer, educator and author. Her works are performed internationally and her improvisational performances are documented extensively on recordings, in the literature and on the worldwide web.
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Customer Reviews

A meditation on listening

2006-01-15
Deep listening by Pauline Oliveros, is by far the most unusual book I have read concerning the art of listening. It is less a work on composition or methods of sound making, and more a holistic search for inner tranquility in order to hear the noise all around you. Although coming from the sound artist perspectice and probably less interested in reading a detailed work on sound practice, or a manual for producing art sound. I was a little disappointed at the lack of narrative in the book, it presents methods of meditation rather than methods of recording the sound around you. The most interesting article in the book, was the documenting of recording an outdoor experience by TJ Szewczak, this was fascinating and insightful, his description of recording the length of a river and the various changes in the sound space as he followed the course of its length is perhaps a result of being aware of the practice of deep listening. Perhaps her book highlights the possibilities of what one could learn if they attended the seminars or retreats on Deep Listening. Otherwise I think you have to be of a certain mindset to read a book on ways of meditation, which I feel this book is.

Essentials of Oliveros' Excellent Teachings

2005-04-17
Pauline Oliveros has devoted more time and effort to understanding how listening effects the life form than anyone else I have encountered. From the moment I met her some forty-plus years ago and we became both friends and colleagues, Pauline shared with me her profound interest in how environmental sounds affected both her musical performance, her composition, and her sense of self. This 'listening beyond hearing' led her to expand her understanding of how focused sound perception can function as a gateway into the moment, into the Now. Inasmuch as all sound occurs only in the present moment, it can function as a natural path to the meditative experience, taking us from focused listening (concentration and one-pointedness) to the wider, relaxed state of Deep Listening, as she has named it.

This book contains the summation of the author's Deep Listening experience in her research, composition, performance, workshops, retreats and classes. It includes as well some fascinating essays and quotes from her students. All in all, this compilation will serve as a valuable guide not only to musicians and composers, but also to anyone interested in a coming to a deeper understanding of themselves and their interaction with their sonic environment.