[Harp-L] The Ashby Method of Aggravation

["Brendan Power" <bren@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I’ve been reading the posts on the so-called “Ashby Method of
Overbending” with wry amusement and a sense of Déjà vu.

This guy has form. Here he is claiming to copyright a technique for doing
something that has been well established by the original pioneer of
conscious overbending for chromatic playing on the diatonic, Will Scarlett
(back in the late sixties/early seventies), and subsequently taken to
extreme levels of finesse by Howard Levy, Jason Ricci, Carlo del Junco, Todd
Parrot, and a host of others around the world. 

Michelle, Bob and Doug are dead on the money to ask for a practical example
of Neil Ashby demonstrating his copyrighted so-called ‘technique’.  But he
can’t offer a sound clip or video of him using it, or even any online clip
of him playing the harmonica at all! Without such a demonstration his claims
are worthless.

The Déjà vu? That comes from February this year, when Mr. Ashby decided to
take it upon himself to rename my Paddy Richter tuning to Richter+; not just
for himself, but demanding my endorsement to make it public and
‘official’. I demurred. Though others may possibly have experimented with
it before, I was the first person to record with that tuning (on ‘New Irish
Harmonica’ 1994). The album subsequently made it well known in the
harmonica scene, to the extent that Seydel offer Paddy Richter as a standard
option in their Configurator. I named it thus with affectionate humour for a
music and people I love, know well and am descended from. The name seems to
have stuck and no one aside from Mr. Ashby has ever objected to it, let
alone tried to change it.

Now Neil Ashby trying to own (with a Copyright no less!) another even more
significant part of harmonica culture which he had no part in inventing or
developing, and apparently can’t even demonstrate! 

If he’s intentionally trying to aggravate genuine harmonica players then
he’s doing a great job. Aside from that I really can’t see the point of
his strange behaviour.

Brendan Power
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