Deep Listening: A Composer's Sound Practice [Paperback]

Pauline Oliveros (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 8, 2005

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.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Pauline Oliveros (1932) is one of America’s most important composers. Deep Listening® is her lifetime practice. Currently she serves as Distinguished Research Professor of Music at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy NY, Darius Milhaud Artist-in-residence at Mills College, Oakland CA and president of Pauline Oliveros Foundation in Kingston NY.

http://www.deeplistening.org/pauline.

Product Details

• Paperback: 128 pages
• Publisher: iUniverse, Inc. (March 8, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0595343651
• ISBN-13: 978-0595343652
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.5 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #347,899 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Pauline Oliveros (1932) has influenced American music extensively in her career spanning more than 60 years as a composer, performer, author and philosopher. She pioneered the concept of Deep Listening, her practice based upon principles of improvisation, electronic music, ritual, teaching and meditation, designed to inspire both trained and untrained musicians to practice the art of listening and responding to environmental conditions in solo and ensemble situations. During the mid-'60s she served as the first director of the Tape Music Center at Mills College, aka Center for Contemporary Music followed by 14-years as Professor of Music and 3 years as Director of the Center for Music Experiment at the University of California at San Diego. Since 2001 she has served as Distinguished Research Professor of Music in the Arts department at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) where she is engaged in research on a National Science Foundation CreativeIT project. Her research interests include improvisation, special needs interfaces and telepresence teaching and performing. She also serves as Darius Milhaud Composer in Residence at Mills College doing telepresence teaching and she is executive director of Deep Listening Institute, Ltd. where she leads projects in Deep Listening, Adaptive Use Interface. She is the recipient of the 2009 William Schuman Award from Columbia University for lifetime achievement. A retrospective from 1960 to 2010 was performed at Miller Theater, Columbia University in New York March 27, 2010 in conjunction with the Schuman award. She received a third honorary degree from DeMontort University, Leicester, UK July 23, 2010. Recent recordings include Pauline Oliveros & Miya Masoka and Pauine Oliveros & Chris Brown on Deep Listening,
http://paulineoliveros.us, and http://www.deeplistening.org/, Then & Now & Now & Then: Celebrating Twenty Years, Deep Listening Band, double vinyl album, Taiga Records, 2008; Drifting Depths, vinyl release Important Records 2008, Timeless Pulse Trio, vinyl release Taiga Records 2010.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Essentials of Oliveros' Excellent Teachings, April 17, 2005

By 

Ramón Sender Barayón (http://www.raysender.com) (San Francisco, CA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Deep Listening: A Composer's Sound Practice (Paperback)

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.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A New Age text, January 10, 2010

By 

David Bennett (Austin, TX USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Deep Listening: A Composer's Sound Practice (Paperback)

Boy, is this not what I expected. Having heard some of Oliveros's music as well as that of other artists available at the Deep Listening web site, I had not realized how much of her approach to the practice of Deep Listening involved straight-up New Age notions. This book offers descriptions of Tai Chi or Yoga (or whatever) practice--eg, the Swimming Dolphin ("...Repeat the same motion opening the next chakra, then the third chakra...then the eyes, the third eye, and then extend the arms upward with palms open gathering energy from the universe."), or the Dragon Tail ("The floating palm is sensing and gathering energy as it passes each energy center"). There is emphasis on posture for meditation ("Imagine a golden thread shooting out of the crown of your head to a distant star"), practices like The Heart Chant ("Can you imagine that the heart energies are joining together for healing yourself and others?"), and so on. Though there are passages about mindful attention to music and the soundscape, they are, for me, overwhelmed by the material on yoga, meditation, and New Age practices. No criticism is intended--it may be for you or not, but I felt that a more explicit description was needed here of what sort of book this is.

10 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars A meditation on listening, January 15, 2006

By 

Linda O. Keeffe (Ireland) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Deep Listening: A Composer's Sound Practice (Paperback)

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.