I knew a young aspiring (and penniless) artist in Cincinnati. She took gorgeous photos. Her method? She got to know lots of gorgeous young women, made friends with them and put them at ease, waited for just the right time of the day on a suitably sunny day, called up her friends and snapped them with a disposable camera.
She had photos hanging in galleries and cafes taken with a disposable camera.
I don't think the analogy makes sense. Tone, with a guitar, definitely comes from the gear you use. Tone is precisely where there is so much gear and why there are so many knobs over all of it. You may recognize the style of eddie van halen playing out of crap gear, but you will not recognize the tone as anything other than crap.
Edit: If you downmod me, please explain why. I've played guitar for many years and know what I said is a fact.
In the interest of educating everyone: Tone is more like turning the bass and treble up or down on an equalizer. Contrast this with hearing an original version of a song and then someone else covering it and you'll have a good idea of how style is different from tone.
Equipment is precisely how you change tone, though there are possibilities for tone changes with existing equipment.
I think you made your point already. The author may have used the wrong scientific term in the article.
That does not, in the slightest bit, make it any less true. Whatever you want to call it, a persons personal ability has a very real impact on how they performa a specific task, independent of any equipment they use.
The point is to find the thing you are passionate about and DO THAT. Don't get caught up in trying to figure out the specifics of it. If you are good at it, none of that matters.
This seems to go back to the saying "a bad programmer can write COBOL in any language"; no matter how good your tools, it doesn't prevent you from shooting yourself in the foot.
I have seen such horrors firsthand. A Smalltalk subsystem where all methods were class-side methods, only referred to local variables, and had variations of the same long list of arguments. All of these methods were copy and paste variants of each other and involved nested loops, multiple incrementing indexed array references, and conditional logic 4 or 5 levels deep. The coder who wrote these: a PhD in math who insisted she had a great understanding of Objects.
What's more, she's outlasted everyone in the group and is now in charge of the entire application!
In her case, it was an adeptness at gaming the corporate management system. After she wrote that code, she managed to put herself in a nebulous position between two groups where she was thought to be invaluable, yet all she did was to tell other people when they were doing something wrong, but never actually had to fix anything. You could often see her at the coffee shop reading a novel in the middle of the day.
Say what you like about COBOL but don't knock COBOL programmers. How much of your code will still be running in 40 years? COBOL programmers are the perfect example of what good people can do with "bad" tools.
I found this post interesting, given that I heard a similar rant in the speaker lounge at a conference a while back—a designer was complaining loudly about people who asked her what tools she used to produce her oft-admired products (obviously, I'm anonymizing here). "MY BRAIN," she said snarkily.
My reaction (which I suppressed at the the time, since I was rehearsing my talk yet again) was that not everyone is out to get you when they ask about this. Not everyone expects to be able to do what you do just by picking up the same tools. Many people may just be asking out of interest, looking for alternatives to the applications they currently use, trying to improve processes.
Personally, I'm happy to evangelize the tools I use. I think they improve my productivity, and in general the more people using something, the better the community around and support for it.
Here is an example some people on here might be able to relate to. Have you ever tried coding on a computer that isn't your own (the library, a computer lab, a friends house, etc)? You know how difficult it is, not having your own development environment and keyboard? Wouldn't you still be able to produce some really high quality code if you needed/wanted to? Now imagine if someone who was unskilled in programming sat at your computer. Would they know what to do?
I find that the quality that makes tools in general good is their ability to get out of your way and become an intuitive extension of yourself. Anything less than that, you end up fighting with and tricking it into doing what you want it to do.
A good camera, guitar, text editor, IDE, sports car, etc won't make someone with little skill better, but it will let someone who is excellent at what they do express themselves without fighting it.
Tools do help a lot although. Sometimes using a debugger is the quickest way to fix a bug, and not being able to use one (because of a lack of a remote debugger) can make a 10 minute bug into a 30 minute bug.
Lack of proper tools can severely hamper your ability to excel in many fields. As a web designer, I rely heavily on my vector graphics software that can't be replaced easily by something else. The tools in this software allow me to create designs that would be impossible with other less sophisticated applications.
The point of this article is only valid in a fantasy world where one doesn't look too hard at the details.
You'd think as geeks we'd understand better the importance of killer-apps/killer-features and technical innovations for the world of the creative.
Plenty - I mean, the guy wrote his own tools, and he's not shy about promoting them. I wouldn't call him a zealot, but he's manifestly picky about tools.
Not that there's any contradiction here. It is true that your skill transcends any particular tool, but it is also true that skilled people often become quite picky about tools. I doubt that Eddie Van Halen owns only one guitar.
The mistake is not caring about the tools, or taking trouble to find - or build - the tool that suits you. The mistake is attributing too much power to the tool and not enough to the user.
There are two kinds of seekers of good instruments. One kind pushes him/herself so hard that they run up against the limitations of their instruments and so are driven to find better ones. Another kind doesn't push themselves so hard, but gravitates towards the advantages of better a better instrument even though they still have even more scope for improving their own playing through technique.
Good tools also give you room to grow into them, so you can concentrate on learning without having to worry too much about housekeeping or maintenance tasks.
As a personal example, I became a better photographer when I bought a good (but used) Nikon, because I know it's built to take some abuse (people photograph wars with these) so I happily take photos in wild places and never worry that it's going to get damaged.
I suspect, however, that there are hackers involved in (or doing) start-ups not for the sake of creating anything - but for the sake of playing with genuinely interesting technology (be it in infrastructure, multi-tiered architecture, cool programming languages that they may not get a chance to use otherwise).
The article doesn't say that good tools don't help - the article says that you will not become a good "insert anything here" if all you have are great tools and no innate ability or vision. In other words - if I am not a good runner, then having expensive orthopedic sneakers while I am running will not do me much good. If I am a good runner, then having those sneakers will make me better.
you will not become a good "insert anything here" if all you have are great tools and no innate ability or vision.
Yeah.
I know.
But that's pretty well-understood. I don't think anyone ever thought that. No one really thinks, "Good tools==success". And so we are again faced with the typical 37signals blog entry, the shtick of which is to state humdrum truisms to a galley of fawning fanboys, who litter the comment section with love unlimited. But, as usual, they somehow still manage to deviate from more strongly stated opinions,
What do hackers want? Like all craftsmen, hackers like good tools. In fact, that's an understatement. Good hackers find it unbearable to use bad tools. They'll simply refuse to work on projects with the wrong infrastructure.
True, yes? All craftsmen demand the best tools, and there's no harm in having them, or refining them, or arguing over their merits.
They wouldn't let a monkey into a fully stocked OR unless it was the one being operated on. By the time you reach the level of competence to be allowed to operate an OR, the tools probably end up mattering more than individual variance in ability.
It is on unamplified guitar. The guitar itself (including the strings) is also a factor, but varying plucking position and method (pick, nail, flesh etc.) gives huge variations in tone. These things also affect tone on amplified guitar, though less so as more excessive processing (distortion etc.) is added.
She had photos hanging in galleries and cafes taken with a disposable camera.