Quest For Tone

[Robb Bingham <robbingham@xxxxxxxxx>]

<I can't think of a _single_ "master" of the
<instrument that doesn't have
<good (or GREAT) tone. Can you?

John Mayall has, IMHO, lousy tone [but your point is
still valid].

And then there are the guys who have, IMO, almost only
~Tone~: Slim Harpo, Carey Bell and George Butler come
to mind. But I feel the same way about a few of the
early cats that are pretty highly revered [so they'll
remain nameless :->].

Qualifier: In the above statement I'm talking about
once we're PAST a certain level of expertise- which
all mentioned surely are.

The only reason this thread interests me [besides for
having pretty lousy tone when I'm nervous- my Studio
stuff has great tone :->] is that I have been thinking
a lot about the psychological factors that can
determine tone. I don't know about anyone else but I
find myself having a little resitance to several
things that would give me better tone. The number ~2
draw hole~ is a good example of a note that almost
everyone- as they work on their tone- can milk. It's
quite often the tonic and it lends itself to sticking
the harp deep in your mouth and adding a little
vibrato. But I feel pretentious doing that with many
other notes and I find myself gliding right past
opportunities to produce better tone.

I'll leave it at that until I see if anyone knows what
I mean, but there are many examples of having to
master ~resistence~ or ~reluctance~ rather than
mastering actual tone-improving technioque [though I
admit, it's tough to separate].

Robb
http://mp3.com/robbingham

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