Book Today! Light, smooth, jazz trombone duo or solo piano

Café, vineyard, restaurant, & events, add smooth, sliding sounds of contemporary jazz & bossa nova with trombonist & pianist, Matthew Giobbi. Available for solo, duo, or trio combinations.

LISTEN!

 

Book Review: Finding the Self Between the Keys

Title: Inner Harmony: Personal Exploration at the Piano

Author: Matthew Giobbi, Ph.D.

Publisher: Zürichsee Press / Createspace

Genre: Music Psychology / Existential-Phenomenology / Self-Help

Most piano guidebooks are rigidly focused on the mechanical: curl your fingers, keep your wrists loose, master your scales, and drill the metronome until your rhythm is flawless. But in Inner Harmony: Personal Exploration at the Piano, psychologist and musician Dr. Matthew Giobbi flips the script. He asks a much deeper question: What happens to your internal world when you sit down at the keys?

Clocking in at under 100 pages, this slim but dense guidebook acts less like a traditional music instructor and more like a psychological companion. Drawing deeply on existential-phenomenological psychology—a school of thought that focuses on the lived, subjective experience of human beings—Giobbi invites readers to view the piano not as an external object to be mastered, but as a mirror for the psychical self.

The Philosophy: Music as Existential Therapy

Giobbi’s unique background perfectly positions him to bridge this gap. As a professor of psychology at Rutgers University and a trained conservatory musician, he understands both the clinical mind and the creative soul.

Instead of treating piano practice as a chore or a performance to be judged, Inner Harmony frames it as a space for self-exploration and mindfulness. The book gently guides the reader through their own inner landscape, providing a methodology for pulling raw, authentic emotion out of the subconscious and translating it into sound.

Key themes explored in the text include:

• The Lived Experience of Sound: Moving away from the abstract theory of sheet music to focus on how playing actually feels in the moment.

• Improvisation as Self-Knowledge: Using the keys to discover deep-seated psychological spaces that words can't quite reach.

• Dismantling Performance Anxiety: Reframing the piano as a private sanctuary rather than a stage for perfectionism.

Tone and Accessibility

Despite the heavy academic roots in existentialism and phenomenology, Giobbi keeps the tone grounded and accessible. He writes with the patience of a teacher who specializes in helping adults play for pure pleasure. He doesn’t lecture; he accompanies.

The book is structured to lead the reader step-by-step through a journey of creative liberation. It functions well for two distinct audiences:

1. The Classical Lapsed Pianist: Those who walked away from the piano due to burnout or the stress of rigid training, helping them rediscover the instrument on their own emotional terms.

2. The Mindful Beginner: Intrepid adult learners who want to use the piano as a therapeutic, meditative practice rather than a competitive pursuit.

Verdict

Inner Harmony is a gentle, thoughtful antidote to the high-stress, perfection-driven world of traditional music pedagogy. Dr. Matthew Giobbi successfully argues that the goal of playing music shouldn't just be about creating a flawless external melody, but about achieving a resonant internal peace.

If you are looking for a book on advanced music theory or standard finger exercises, look elsewhere. But if you want to understand how the act of pushing down a piano key can become a profound act of self-discovery, Inner Harmony is an essential addition to your music stand.

Rating: 4.5 / 5 — A beautiful, brief, and deeply resonant guide to therapeutic music-making.

 

$50 registration fee.

*Not open to current or former Rutgers University Newark students.

drmatthewgiobbi@musepsyche.com to register.

 

On Thinking About Nothing

Franz Brentano

The foundation of Edmund Husserl’s phenomenology rests on three concepts: description, phenomenon, and intentionality. Rather than discussing awareness of the world as consciousness, he discusses intentionality. This means that consciousness is not a thing but an attention towards something. Intentionality reveals the paradox that we can think about the concept of nothing. When we think about nothing, “nothing” becomes an intentional concept. Intentionality is the directed awareness of a sensed stimulus (bottom-up processing in cognitive psychology terminology) or an imagined concept (top-down processing). Whereas early experimental psychology focused on the structure of consciousness as a measurable and observable object (Titchener’s structuralism), while Husserl’s phenomenology concentrated on awareness of some object or imagined concept.

Cave Art -Improvisational Trombone in a Pennsylvania Cave (2019)

 

Automatic Playing Project

 

A Phenomenological Exploration of a Bridge in Palmerton Pennsylvania

Matthew Giobbi, March 2024

Palmerton

Hardcover, Available at AMAZON

 I visited the neighborhood in Palmerton with my camera. Not far from the intersection the rail line cuts through the neighborhood, diagonally crossing the streets at roof level. Knowing Kline was captivated by the steel trestle of the railroad bridges, my eye too was captured by the lines and shapes. In fact, these railroad bridges are so characteristic that I would say they are a defining feature of the neighborhood in Palmerton and in nearby Weissport. Franz would have walked these bridges from Lehighton many times. 

Four Sketches from Historic Stories from "Die Wind Kaft" of Wind Gap, Pennsylvania for Solo Trombone

 Sheet Music & Notes

Psychology for Creative & Performing Artists Lectures

Ways of Thinking: From Art to Social Science

I entered into psychology as many of us do; through the life-theorists. I call them life-theorist because they are not merely clinicians who treat the psychologically disturbed, but also, they think about our common experiences of living, and how to go about those experiences most effectively. They can also be called life philosophers because their interest is often less on acquiring facts and more on effective living. Most of us enter into psychology via our interest in Freud, Maslow, Jung, and others that have come to be called psychotherapists. For me psychology was never wholly about therapy and patients; it was more about living, life, and thinking; the psychology of the practitioner.

On the Thought Experiment Method in Psychology

*This blog post was originally published in 2013.

Thought experiments are a standard practice in physics, as they are in philosophy, but are curiously absent in academic psychology. Albert Einstein relied on thought experiments in developing the theories of specific and general relativity. In fact, most of the "hard" sciences are comfortable with entertaining thought experiments. However, academic psychology has a tradition of undervaluing the method in favor of quantifiable research. One would be hard-pressed to find a contemporary research paper in academic psychology that utilizes the method of thought experiment.

One criticism of research psychology that has gained considerable support recently is: there has been a lot of data collecting in psychology, but not a great deal of thinking about that data.  We tend to spend more time training our psychology students to use statistical packages for analyzing data, rather than to engage in penetrating and inspired thinking.

Erich Fromm & Media Psychology: Towards a Humanized Technology

1. Where are we Now?18th and 19th century industrialism


 We find Fromm describing a picture of where Western society has come from, since
the first Industrial Revolution, and where we are at (in the second Industrial
Revolution). The first Industrial Revolution, Fromm describes as a transfer of
energy sources from organic, animal and man energy sources, to mechanical,
steam electric, oil, and atomic, energy.

An Introduction to Media Psychology

What is media psychology? What do media psychologists do and how do they do it? What is the intention of the media psychologist as an individual, and media psychology as a discipline? These are the five questions that I would like to explore with you in this essay.

A good place to begin is by defining the words media and psychology. You have learned, no doubt, that the definition of psychology is “the scientific study of behavior and mental processes”. This definition of psychology is not the first, not the last, and not the only definition. In fact, this definition reflects the system of knowledge (called a paradigm) of one of the seven, contemporary systems of knowledge, or schools of thought of psychology; the cognitive paradigm. The cognitive revolution in psychology took place in the early 1960s against the prevailing behaviorist paradigm. From the early 1930s through the 1960s, introduction to psychology textbooks defined psychology as “the scientific study of behavior”. When computer scientists, linguists, and artificial intelligence researchers began treating the brain as a piece of computer hardware and the mind and thinking as software, the definition changed to include mental processes, which means cognition or thinking. It was said at this time that psychology had “regained consciousness,” after a forty-year period of classical and operant conditioning theories of behaviorism.

A Chronology of Media Research

Research and discussion of the media has taken place long before the designation of media psychology as a field of study. The humanities and social sciences have discussed the implications of media since the written text overtook the oral tradition. Philosophers as early as Plato explored the implication of the switch from an oral to a written culture. The influence of mass media has been discussed since the entrance of the movable type printing press in the 15th century. Although thinking about media has taken place for 2,500 years, how we think about media has changed over time.

We will begin our investigation in Ancient Greece. Early philosophers discussed not only the use of persuasion and rhetoric in speaking and writing, they also considered the psychological effects of media including speaking, writing, visual arts, and music. The sophist explored how the way something is said affects how it is received. This research in rhetorical analysis continues in contemporary media studies. Plato (427-347 B.C.E.) discussed the influence of music and visual art on the individual and groups. He warned against the power of poetry and even advised on which music to avoid when sad, angry, or happy.

An Intellectual History of Media Psychology

Premodernity, Modernity, and Postmodernity

In intellectual history, the history of ideas and systems of knowing, we typically discuss three periods of historical contexts. To discuss the difference between premodernity, modernity, and postmodernity, it is most helpful to look at the transitional moments first. We begin with the transition from premodernity to modernity. 

The year 1650 is typically used as practical demarcation of the boundary between what we call premodernity and modernity. The First World War is typically used as the event (concern) to demarcate the boundary between modernity and postmodernity. Let us sketch the picture of these three worlds.

Buddhist Psychology: On The Development of The Ego

Qin Shu, Lotus flower with dragon fly the morning .

The Western psychologist who wishes to explore Eastern psychology may wonder where to begin their search. Buddhism is an ancient tradition that has many variants and thousands of years of texts to explore. In this essay I would like to introduce a few basic concepts about Buddhist psychology, and discuss a basic description of the development of the ego.

There are many books available for Western psychologists who wish to explore Eastern psychology. Some of these books are more friendly to the beginner than others. Two books which I have found to be very helpful in my exploration have been The Sanity we are Born With: A Buddhist Approach to Psychology by Chögyam Trungpa, and Psychotherapy East & West by Alan Watts. Both of these texts offer the Westerner basic theory as well as basic attitude of Eastern psychology.

A few Basic Attitudes

Alan Watts describes the basic attitude of the Eastern psychologist with the image of the lotus flower. The lotus flower remains uninjured from the most turbulent storms, both from the sometimes restless waters from which it arises, and from the winds, rains, and scorching heat that it will encounter during its life. The lotus flower is a part of the world but is not destroyed by it. Stormy rains and high waters "roll off" its petals. This is the image that many Buddhists use as a lesson for how to be in the world. The lotus flower is the example of the serenity that one can cultivate despite the most hostile environments.

Search not Research

Eastern psychology is distinctively personal. Whereas Western psychologists may be taught methods of "research" that are based on the Eighteenth-Century Enlightenment concept of objectivity, the Eastern psychologist engages psychology as something personal. In this way, we can think of Eastern psychology as searching, whereas Western positivistic psychology focuses on researching. The Western philosophical traditions of Existential-Phenomenology, Humanism, and some psychodynamic theories are exceptions to this distinction. It is acknowledged by even the most objective Western psychologists that "research is me-search." In Buddhist psychology this is the basic assumption. The "research" done by the Buddhist psychologist is a personal searching.

Enlightenment not The Enlightenment

 

A Theory of Depression: S. Freud's Mourning and Melancholia

Before describing and explaining Sigmund Freud's theoretical model for understanding depression, I would like to make some points about theory.

A theory is a working model; a way of conceptualizing a phenomenon that helps us to understand and effect change in ourselves or others. The American intellectual William James described how theoretical models can be useful for understanding while not being real. In this way, a theory can be true -meaning it works, while not being real. An example of this can be found in our everyday treatment of currency. What gives paper currency value is our belief in it, not the paper and ink itself, which is relatively worthless. It's value is symbolic and theoretical, not real. The value of the money is true in that it functions within our society in meaningful way. James shows us that theory can be true without being real. This being said, we can approach Freud's theory of depression as a model that can be useful in understanding the phenomenon, without becoming distracted by questions that have little bearing on its pragmatic functioning.

The Marketing Character

This blog originally appeared on October 23, 2011.

When Jean-Paul Sartre described a life lived etre de mauvaise foi he was not speaking so much of dishonesty or destructiveness to others, but rather, a dishonesty to oneself. The bad faith examined by Sartre is the life lived in what Heidegger called fallenness. Heidegger described the person who has become lost in culture, buried so deeply in the layers of the social that the authentic self is concealed. Heidegger does not isolate the self from culture; however, he does describe authenticity as a remembering or awareness of the identification with culture. This is the soul of Sartre’s bad faith -a life completely forgotten in the isolated spectacle of the manufactured desire.

Freud & The Cocaine Episode in Context

This essay was originally posted on January 5, 2015

Coca in Context: From The Andes to Paris & Atlanta

An early documentation of the use of the medicinal properties of the coca plant came from the Spanish friar, Vincente de Valverde, reporting on the importance of the coca tree to the Incas:

"...coca, which is the leaf of a small tree that resembles the sumac found in our own Castile, is one thing that the Indians are ne'er without in their mouths, that they say sustains them and gives them refreshment, so that, even under the sun they feel not the heat, and it is worth its weight in gold in these parts, accounting for the major portion of the tithes."¹

It was not long until quantities of the medicinal plant were being exported from South America to Europe and the United States, where Western "medicine men" began making coca infused beverages and tonics. Historian Howard Markel points to an 1817 article published Gentleman's Magazine to illustrate the European fascination with coca:

"[The Indians] masticate Coca and undergo the greatest fatigue without any injury to health or bodily vigor. They want neither butcher nor baker, nor brewer, no distiller, nor fuel, nor culinary utensils."²

According to Markel, the article called for immediate scientific research to uncover the wisdom of the power of Coca.

By the mid-nineteenth century, coca leaves were being analyzed for their chemical structure. In Germany, Albert Niemann earned his doctorate by developing a method for extracting the coca alkaloid from the leaf in 1860.³  As academics and pharmaceutical laboratories were investigating the chemical properties of coca, medicine men of a different sort were developing tonics and a variety of coca-infused beverages. One of the most popular and successful of these libations was Vin Mariani, a coca wine developed by the French chemist Angelo Mariani. By the turn of the century, Vin Mariani had become the choice intoxicant of many celebrities and artists. Mariani published a collection of celebrity endorsements for his wine in a book entitled Portraits from Album Mariani.⁴

In 1859 the influential Italian neurologist and fiction writer, Paolo Mantegazza, published an influential paper On the Hygenic and Medicinal Virtues of Coca.⁵  Sigmund Freud was an avid reader of Mantegazza's fiction.⁶