Re: TONE

["IronMan Mike Curtis" <ironman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

There's a big difference between intolerance and ignorance.

The facts are that tone can indeed be defined and quantified, and it's very
much to our benefit to define and quantify it.  Otherwise we can never
achieve good tone.  For example, how does one master resonance without
defining it first?  There is NOTHING that is done on harmonica that cannot
be defined.  The fact that some folks can't define it in no way means that
it cannot be done.  Only that it HASN'T been.

The problem with saying that tone cannot be defined is that you can't LEARN
something that is not defined.

Sure some of us want our own sound (and others want Little Walters - which
is a good goal, too).  No one is arguing against this.  The question is,
though, do we want our sound to be a GOOD sound?  Do we want to be the
master of our instrument, or do we want to be the slave of something we
don't understand?

Once we accept the necessity of defining the components of good tone, we can
go about learning them.

 -- mike