Ways of the Hand: The Organization of Improvised Conduct

by David Sudnow

Book Overview

This is David Sudnow's classic account of how his hands learned to improvise jazz on the piano. David Sudnow is the author of Passing On and editor of Studies in Social Interaction. Since writing this book, he has developed a piano training method based on its insights.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 055312448X
• ISBN13: 9780553124484
• Release Date: January 1979
• Publisher: Bantam Books
• Weight: 0.30 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Did you wait to learn the parts of speech before talking?

Did you wait to discover the parts of speech before trying to talk? That's a crazy idea. It was when you were a kid and you just got frustrated and eventually learned to speak. You didn't think about learning and you weren't trying to 'transform yourself'. You just got started and got better. But today, when needing to do something you often are stopped because you feel like you don't have all the facts. You keep you from getting started because you aren't sure what's next. Maybe this doesn't describe you, but it is a common trap. David Sundow, author of Ways of the Hand, wrote albeit a bit cryptically about his experience with learning how to play jazz piano. He stared like any of us would get started. Learning the basics. Figuring out many small processes that he could get good at. But it didn't just tie together like he thought it would when he learned enough. He had to feel the music. Get in the flow and begin moving from his spirit in a jazzy way. He pulled it off and is an expert player. But I think that we can sound pretty jazzy and be novice at the same time. The point is to know where you want to be and get started doing that. Not the other way around. The book is hard to read, but I think it makes you a better observer to read it.

It's not about the music

Robert Epstein's review expresses my sentiments about Ways of the Hand. I would add that the book is not about the making of improvised music per se, but really about the bodily production of language. David Sudnow used to say to me that he was more interested in talk like his colleague Harvey Sacks, but since he couldn't see the vocal cords like he could see his fingers on the keyboard, he had to content himself instead with the music-making body as a means of peering into the bodily process of speaking a language, whether it was street-corner French or jazz. There is nothing convoluted in Sudnow's language if one approaches it from the perspective of Merleau-Ponty. David asked basic questions like: How is the music (read language) being made? Who or what is directing the next place to be going? What is limiting the places you can go in meaningful sound? What does the brain have to do with it? Is 'thinking' in the shaping of fingers (read vocal cords) and to what extent do the limitations of the hands determine the next possible notes (read words). Think shapes that make sound, think of gestalts, think of the mystery of intentionality. These are the issues addressed by Sudnow. This is a highly original work that has been largely misunderstood. David's observations and questions are as fresh today as when originally written in 1978.

Sudnow's Original Work is Challenging but an Important Contribution

Several of the reviewers here have expressed the opinion that Sudnow's prose is indecipherable. However, it is not true that it is meaningless. I was a former student of Sudnow's who worked closely with him on the book as a junior collaborator, and can tell of the struggle he engaged in to find a form of expression adequate to its subject. Sudnow attempted to create a language that would faithfully describe the real way in which improvised action takes place, and improvised knowledge exists as something that occurs in course rather than in stasis, a type of active understanding that had never been adequately described. Sudnow's work takes place in a tradition of phenomenological sociology known as Ethnomethodology, a fairly arcane academic discipline that attempts to describe the details of how interaction takes place from a descriptive and subjective standpoint, rather than an objective report from outside. The truth is that this book was not designed for a general audience, and probably couldn't be. Sudnow is a genuine philosopher, one who had spent years immersed in his meditations on the nature of reality from a philosophical and sociological perspective, and there is no way that he would have been able to return to ordinary language to engage with his subject. Those who want to go to the trouble of acquiring the necessary background to receive a vision of reality and the nature of action that is unique and piercing will find their efforts well rewarded. For the rest, it is like reading Finnegan's Wake. You can enjoy some of the music and poetry, meditate on the meaning of a sentence and find out what it involves through your own investigation, or leave it alone. But to declare it meaningless or pretentiously dense is only to declare one's own unfamiliarity with the genuine traditions it occurs within, and perhaps impatience with those who dare to present original thought and language to an unschooled public. For those desiring a background to really understand this work, I recommend Sudnow's own inspiration in Maurice Merleau-Ponty's "Phenomenology of Perception," Harold Garfinkel's "Ethnomethodology" and Erving Goffman's books on social psychology. Reading those works, followed by Ways of the Hand, will give you an altered perspective on action and interaction that will be well worth your time.

worth reading again

Having just finished rereading David Sudnow's "Ways of the Hand" I am reminded of just how much I love this book. I think it is one of the most original books and is quite possibly the finest and most detailed record of skill acquisition ever written. I doubt that there is anyone who describes the details of things that we do the way Sudnow does. Although this is a difficult book, requiring careful examination, the rewards are well worth the effort. The uniquely descriptive language he has created is fascinating to follow as it unfolds in the course of his story. It is truly a combination of poetry and narrative. Sudnow creates an excitement in the discovery of why and how the hand can be the agent that delivers the inventions of any artist. Anyone interested in creativity and seeing how an artist comes to let his body take over and do its art should read this book. I loved it- one of the best books I've ever read.