Re: Re: [Harp-L] Barrett Soloing Workshop, Harp Learning

["Jonathan Metts" <jonathan@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Maintaining a healthy weight is your body's natural, equilibrium condition. 
Playing harmonica well is not.  The only way to achieve the latter is 
through hard work and some combination of self-discovery and external 
influences.  I really don't think most people on this list are looking for 
easy, quick fixes to anything.  Many of them have been playing for decades. 
I've been playing for three years, and I've reached a point at which most of 
the "easy" improvements have already been made, so now I'm faced with 
gargantuan tasks like learning to solo, understanding chord theory, 
mastering scales, and finding a great tone.  If I were the kind of guy who 
could learn things from textbooks, I would go straight for the ones that are 
available.

The Dave Barrett book being reviewed, which you ridiculed, was described by 
the original poster as long, deep, complex, and challenging.  How can you 
compare that kind of instruction, and the obvious devotion required to make 
use of it, to a fad diet?  It's ridiculous.

Yes, some people (including myself at times) can become fixated on 
techniques and lose sight of what those techniques are used for, to play 
great music.  But you aren't going to help those people by telling them to 
stop learning technique.  Help them by showing them how those techniques can 
be applied.  Saying that you don't need overbends to play like Sonny Boy 
means nothing if I don't care two bits about ever playing like Sonny Boy.

Jonathan Metts


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "akc" <meadow.sweet@xxxxxxxxxx>
To: <jonathan@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>; <harp-l@xxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Wednesday, October 05, 2005 5:45 PM
Subject: Re: Re: [Harp-L] Barrett Soloing Workshop, Harp Learning


Jonathan... ever look at those diet-fad books? People buy them because they
want to be told that if they eat 'this' for breakfast, 'that' for lunch and
two bowls of peanuts in between... they will lose weight like magic. Tell
them, for nothing, that they could eat less and take exercise and get slim
and you'd get a reply like the one of yours, below. But the only way to
Carnegie Hall, they say.. is practice, practice, practice.

I'm sorry if I didn't make myself clearer before ... advanced techniques and
equipment are fine things - once you've reached a certain level of
competence. They don't, in themselves, make you a great player. Too many
people - yes, including some on this list - seem to admire them for their
own sakes. Not the public at large, though... they just seem to like good
music. Funny, that.

A.