Re: [Harp-L] Sugar Blue on alternate tunings



On May 25, 2011, at 8:46 AM, Richard Hunter wrote:

> And when we call a non-standard tuning "cop out gear", where do we draw the line?  There are things you can do with an amp that you can't do without one, too.  Is it a cop out to use an amp?  I've heard misguided people say "Jimi Hendrix couldn't play without an amp".  It's a lie, of course, but what if it was true?  The point is to make the instrument do your bidding, not the other way around.  If the amp was Hendrix's instrument, what's the problem?  It wasn't a problem for the audience.

This reminds me of the perpetual (and, to me, foolish) argument in the photography world about trying to draw a line between "pure" photography and digitally manipulated images. To some, if the image is manipulated, it's no longer a photograph. Sounds a little like Sugar Blue's hard-line to me.

In photography, an absolute prohibition on image manipulation of any kind leaves out everyone who has ever printed a photograph, including the likes of Ansel Adams and Dorothea Lange, arguably among the best photographers of all time. Sugar Blue's hard line excludes a lot of great players, too.

Your post, especially your mention of how the simple matter of using an amp could, to an absolute purist, be considered a "cop out", reminded me of this excellent David Pogue piece on the continuum of "manipulation" that makes it impossible to draw a bright line that says "this is a photograph, but that is not":

    http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/25/photoshop-and-photography-when-is-it-real/

Dave






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