Most people reading this probably know that Victor Wooten is a bass player best known for his supernaturally fast and technical slap-style chops: he plays complex passages faster than most people can even think or hear them, with a kind of contrapuntal rhythmic intensity, that creates a sort of polyrhythmic, polyphonic impression of music moving faster than the speed of thought, while still sounding like funky, danceable grooves that anyone can get down to.
If that's all you know of Victor Wooten, you might be expecting his book on music to be a compendium of speed-building exercises, licks and tricks, and practice regimens... a kind of manual for would-be bass guitar virtuosos.
This book is absolutely not that. It will not teach you double-thumbing, or pinky-hammers, or claw-hammer picking, or anything like that. In fact, if you read this book without knowing anything about Victor Wooten, you might think you were reading something written by a rank beginner still learning to play quarter-note blues-progressions, because that is how he regards himself. It is impossible to overstate how accessible this book is, even for complete non-musicians.
If anything, Wooten takes a blase, almost dismissive attitude towards practice, technical exercises, and so on. Instead, "The Music Lesson" is a story told as a series of parables, musical life-lessons taught to the narrator by a sequence of semi-mystical characters whose reality is left ambiguous... It is written as an autobiography of sorts, but the main character is not Victor Wooten, it is instead the almost supernatural figures who pop in and out of the life of a young bass-player struggling to "make it", and who answer questions he never even thought to ask. Reading this book, one gets the impression that Victor Wooten is some sort of clumsy beginner, rather than the premier virtuoso of his instrument.
The book is structured as a sort of "Pilgrim's Progress", with Victor Wooten as a kind of vanishing everyman, struggling to learn the ways of music, led by a series of semi-mystical teachers through vast, philosophical (and often dubious) concepts of math, physics, etymology, nature, morality, and science. This "music lesson" sometimes seems to be a lesson in everything BUT music, but it all turns back to music, and every chapter will make you a better player, even if you disagree with it or find fault with the science.
The book is written as a factual narrative, but it is hard to know what to believe, in a historical sense. Wooten weaves myth and magic together with practical life-lessons in a way that makes it difficult to untangle dreams from reality. New-age-y and mystical concepts are freely interwoven with practical tips, but this is not a "flaky" book. It is emphatically a music lesson, as the title suggests.
It is remarkable how much an absolute technical master and virtuoso is able to teach, without a single fingering exercise, practice-regimen, or anything of the sort. Aside from the chapter-headings, there is not a single note of printed music in the book, it's all purely conceptual. It is also remarkable how little ego there is in this book: it's not a book about Vic Wooten, best bass-player alive, it's a book about Vic Wooten, student and beginner, trying to make progress.
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Musician Quick Review: The Music Lesson by Victor Wooten
Cash G
Reviews with images
opened title page surprise signed by Victor
Surprised to find this copy was autographed by Victor Wooten, wow what a bonus! Started reading my son’s copy now I can finish it.
Top reviews from other countries
Luciano Marcondes de Oliveira
Ótimo livro para quem está aprendendo e ensinando música
Reviewed in Brazil on September 1, 2019
