In a message dated 6/3/98 3:30:11 PM Central Daylight Time, kam544@ionet.net writes: << Dear Bill, While I don't doubt your story, it is very difficult for me to conceive of a guitarist with the necessary abilities to perform with an opera company, and then, at the same time, be unable to tune his/her own high quality instrument to the point where a music director would have to say it was never in tune with the orchestra. I just don't have that kind of an imagination. There is something missing, what I don't know.>> None of the qualified guitarists in town wanted to put on a costume and do the role. Yes, the guy was really lame but he was the only one they could find. Its not the worst thing I've seen as far as stage productions go, not by a long shot. I'll skip replying in detail to the rest of your reply, Keith. You tried the figures on one guitar, heard what you wanted to hear and believed what you wanted to believe. You want to believe that there is only one way to tune the guitar, your way, the way you have always done it. I know you don't want to come right out and tell someone else that he is wrong, that would be too strong. It is far easier to simply believe in and agree with someone else who says that anything but ET would be wrong and without proving it, proclaim that it "wouldn't work". Apparently you did not try the alternative set of figures. You took only the most extreme set, claim that you tuned according to them (no one knows if you did it accurately or not or whether the right partial selection was used) and heard for yourself what you wanted to hear: Regular old out of tune ET was better than any of this nonsense that these HT kooks come up with. It's no different than the tuner who goes up to a piano tuned in an HT, bangs on some chords or intervals out of context and quite sure of himself proclaims, "See, I told you it just wouldn't work". I don't know how it could be that I would tune this guy's guitar for the production and for so many other people the same way and have them all say how well they liked it if it is as "wierd sounding" as you say. If I were to follow your opinion of the matter, it would have been better to let the guy tune his own guitar off pitch in some vaguely disorganized manner than to do what I actually did. So, there is something peculiar about your assesment. To use your own words, " I just don't have that kind of an imagination. There is something missing, what I don't know." When I go to Providence next month, I will participate in a morning long event where those who attend will largely be delighted by what they hear. There will be others who will not go because they already know that what they will hear, they will not like. It will not matter what it is that is presented. They might hear the same thing someplace else and not think anything negative at all but because the very idea does not fit their pre- conceived, hard-line notions, they will not like it. They will group together, perhaps in the Cyber Café, grumble about what they think is so wrong about it and shake their heads in disbelief that so many could get interested in an idea that just "won't work". So I really don't expect you to change your mind, Keith. But I am quite sure that if you had been in the audience of that production of the Man of La Mancha, you probably would have had no negative comment about the guy on stage playing the guitar. If I had left him to his own devices, what he really thought was ET, you most likely would have said what the director did, the guitar was out of tune. Bill Bremmer RPT Madison, Wisconsin
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