Sweet Sounds Of An Acoustic Blues Guitar

Sweet Sounds Of An Acoustic Blues Guitar
One day many years ago Bob Dylan walked on stage and played
an electric guitar for the first time ever live to an
audience. It made the front page of all of the big papers
and it wound up being quite a story. So what was the big
deal? Bob Dylan used to play an acoustic guitar and many
folk music fans felt that the electric guitar was a tool of
loud and obnoxious rock music. But Dylan didn't care and
went on to revolutionize the world of music by simply
plugging in and playing an electric guitar.

Blues music is a little different. Blues music got started
with acoustic blues guitar but once the old blues musicians
got a listen to that electric guitar the acoustic blues
guitar was left in the dust. It is kind of a shame because
some of the best blues music is the early stuff played on
acoustic blues guitar.

Back in Chicago in the 1930's or so there was a movement
that was growing. Many of the blues musicians that had
played their time in the Mississippi delta area were now
bringing their brand of acoustic blues guitar music to
Chicago and it was met with enthusiasm. Muddy Waters and
Son House were huge stars in Chicago and they would play
that acoustic blues guitar until people were just going
wild.

Then along came musicians like Howling Wolf who put aside
the acoustic blues guitar and picked up the electric guitar
and soon the days of the acoustic blues guitar were
numbered. Wolf and other artists started recording classic
acoustic blues guitar hits on electric guitars and that was
the music that got out to the people. Soon Son House and
the others were relics and Robert Johnson and that famous
picture of him and his acoustic blues guitar became
treasured pieces of the past.

Jimi Brought It Back For A Little While

For many years the electric guitar ruled the blues world
and then Jimi Hendrix decided to record a short movie of
himself playing an acoustic blues guitar and for just a
little while we got to hear as close to the modern
equivalent of those old classics that we will hear. As Jimi
fired through Here My Train A Comin' it was just like being
on the delta near the turn of the century when Robert
Johnson would travel from small bar to small bar just to
make a living playing his guitar. It was a great time that
is lost forever.

The acoustic guitar gets its due once in a while on blues
and rock records but it will never be a main instrument
like it used to be all of those years ago. The sound can
never be mistaken and the music played on it was right from
the heart and we will never hear music played like that
ever again.

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Don't Be A Digital Dummy

Don't Be A Digital Dummy
Digital technology has taken over the photography world.
The benefits are enormous, and advances in cameras and
software have quickly overcome the weaknesses of early
digital photography. But are modern photographers living up
to the potential of their new digital cameras?

As the owner of a gallery, I have many conversations with
digital photographers, and I am beginning to see problems,
not with digital photography, but with the mindset it seems
to have created. And I fear that photography as an art form
may be the poorer for it.

One of the benefits that make digital cameras so attractive
is the ability to see your results immediately, and delete
a photo if you are not happy with it, at zero cost. Gone
are the days of waiting until you finish a roll of film,
then facing the expense of developing and printing before
you get to see your results. With digital photography, you
can take a shot without fear: if it doesn't work, just
delete it and try again.

Therein lies my biggest worry about digital photography.
The ease with which a photographer can erase a mistake has
taken away the need to think about what they are doing.
Let's face it, if you take enough shots of the same
subject, eventually you will get it right accidentally.

When film was king, the delay in seeing your results, and
the expense connected to each exposure, made it important
to get it right, or at least try to do so. When a
photographer had to wait until days later to view their
results, the opportunity to try again had usually passed.
Consequently, it was essential to really learn how to use
your camera, and to put creative thought into every
exposure.

Of course there was no such thing as a 100% success rate,
and plenty of film was wasted, but with concentration and
self-discipline, a good film photographer had a right to
expect more hits than misses from each roll of film.

These days I meet digital photographers who are immensely
proud of a good image, even if they had to delete 50 failed
attempts from their memory card along the way. In these
cases, the question needs to be asked: was the digital
photographer's eventual success due to good photography or
good luck? Moreover, had they learned anything in the
process? Presented with the same situation again, would
they need to take another 50 photos to get it right the
next time?

There are many situations where that approach is simply not
good enough. In my field of nature photography, many
opportunities last no more than a few seconds. Birds fly
away, clouds cover the sun, the colours of a sunset change.
Fleeting moments are not rare in photography, in fact for
some artists they are what photography is all about.

So how does the random snapper cope in these situations? I
suspect in many cases the tendency is to blame the bird for
flying away, or blame the digital camera for not doing its
job properly. The notion that the photo should be easy for
someone who knows what they are doing would not compute.
Why? Because the sheer convenience of digital photography,
with its automatic features and ease of deletion, does not
encourage us to actually learn how to use the camera.

Imaging software is part and parcel of the photography
industry; I accept that. In fact, to get a truly
high-quality print, even the best digital photographer has
to do a little 'work' on an image from time to time. But
computer wizardry should never replace skill with a camera.
Sadly, these days many people are relying on software to
fix their mistakes, instead of learning to take better
photos.

I look at it this way: time spent fixing up a mistake using
software ' minutes or hours. Time spent getting it right in
the first place ' about 1/500 second.

If you have a good digital camera, I urge you switch it to
manual and learn how to use it. Not much has changed since
the old days. The main things you need to learn are still
aperture, shutter speed, light and composition. Practice
has never been cheaper, and learning from your mistakes has
never been easier. All it takes is patience and
self-discipline.

Go on ' make your camera proud!

----------------------------------------------------
Andrew Goodall has made his living from nature photography
for over 20 years. See his images at
http://www.naturesimage.com.au Andrew's ebooks "Photography
in Plain English" and "Every Picture Tells A Story" have
helped thousands of beginners learn the art and skills of
nature photography. Find them at
http://www.naturesimage.com.au/page/25/default.asp

14 Shakespeare Quotes to Celebrate The Birth of A Literary Genius

14 Shakespeare Quotes to Celebrate The Birth of A Literary Genius
Shakespeare's birthday is right around the corner and what
better way to celebrate the birth of this literary genius
than with some thought-provoking and soul-stirring
Shakespeare quotes? For all of you Shakespeare fans out
there, these 14 quotes from some of his most famous works
go out to you...

1. "What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any
other name would smell as sweet."

2. "All the world's a stage, and all the men and women
merely players. They have their exits and their entrances,
and one man in his time plays many parts, his acts being
seven ages."

3. "To be, or not to be, that is the question. Whether 'tis
nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of
outrageous fortune,or to take arms against a sea of
troubles."

4. "What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason, how
infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and
admirable. In action, how like an angel, in apprehension
how like a god!"

5. "Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio, a fellow of
infinite jest, of most excellent fancy. He hath bore me on
his back a thousand times, and now how abhorr'd in my
imagination it is! My gorge rises at it."

6. "Cowards die many times before their deaths. The valiant
never taste of death but once."

7. "My words fly up, my thoughts remain below. Words
without thoughts never to heaven go."

8. "Why then the world's mine oyster, which I with sword
will open."

9. "All that glisters is not gold, often have you heard
that told. Many a man his life hath sold, but my outside to
behold gilded tombs do worms enfold."

10. "The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in
ourselves, that we are underlings."

11. "The course of true love never did run smooth."

12. "Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears! I come
to bury Caesar, not to praise him. The evil that men do
lives after them, the good is oft interred with their bones
-- so let it be with Caesar."

13. "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
than are dreamt of in your philosophy."

14. "Oft expectation fails, and most oft there where most
it promises; and oft it hits here hope is coldest, and
despair most fits."

It takes a cultured and educated individual to appreciate
the works of Shakespeare. As we celebrate the anniversary
of his birth this month, let these 14 Shakespeare quotes
serve as a remembrance of how brilliant his works and his
imagination really were.

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For more famous Shakespeare quotes, check out the popular
famous quotes section of Famous-Quotes-And-Quotations.com,
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in dozens of categories.
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es.html