Let us assume for a second that we don't have a vested interest in any of the music companies, or in guitars, or even in music... the underlying question then becomes simply whether or not the youth of today still have passions that are sparked, and if they still follow them as fervently as we did in our youth, and pursue new skills as much as we did. Do they pick things up and drive their lives towards perfecting a craft? I know this might sound blasphemous to some, but... so what if it isn't guitars? As long as they do have passions to follow, and they produce creative works, its all good.
The slow death of the electric guitar
191–200 of 343 posts
Re: The slow death of the electric guitar
#192Yawn... after the 70s the guitar had a similar decline and in the mid eighties everyone and his dog wanted to be a keyboard or sax player, then came the nineties with grunge etc and guitars became hot sellers again. History repeats itself, so I expect the trend to change in a few years according to what the marketing droids will feed the the radio and TV stations with.
Re: The slow death of the electric guitar
#193There isn't much evidence that EDM is much more than a passing fad, either. Rock music has held fairly strong on over the past 60-70 years and has been able to accommodate and integrate fads, shed them, and then reincorporate them in throwback form.
70s glam rock gave way to 80s emo synths. Grunge brought things back into simple form, which gave way to the rap/rock craze that then gave in to the Stokes, White Stripes, etc.
We're now at a point where music incorportes a lot of ideas and those ideas don't fit into the molds we are used to seeing. A lot of those molds still have guitars as a key ingredient and live music is as popular as it's ever been.
Re: The slow death of the electric guitar
#194It's ironic that young people are losing interest in the guitar at a time when there is an amazingly enormous amount of resources freely available for learning it. When I started to learn guitar several decades ago, I would learn guitar solos off of records by slowing them down to 16 rpm (old turntables could do that) and moving the needle back repeatedly to listen to tricky phrases over and over again. It was frustr…
> It's ironic that young people are losing interest in the guitar at a time when there is an amazingly enormous amount of resources freely available for learning it.
That could be part of it. Demystifying something erodes some of the appeal.
Re: The slow death of the electric guitar
#195Earlier quoted context omitted.
The electric guitar is now what the saxophone was in the fifties: the iconic instrument of the hottest music of dad's generation.
Hold on, I am a not very young dad and the music of my youth was with two turntables and a mic. The 90s golden age of hip hop :) There was also electronic music like techno, drum and bass, ... Guitar music is I'd say evergreen, but hasn't been the hottest thing for much longer.
Nirvana, Smashing Pumpkins, Soundgarden, Metallica... 90s were still pretty hot on guitars.
(Maybe less so by the late 90s, so maybe I'm a few years old than you :)
Re: The slow death of the electric guitar
#196Dan Auerbach of the Black Keys is about as close to a modern guitar hero as I can think of.
Re: The slow death of the electric guitar
#197Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Sorry, but my 17 year old son was so inspired by Mayer about 5 years ago that he invested a LOT of time learning how to play guitar and sing like him, and other artists with similar styles. I'm sure we can find kids into Foxtrot too, but I don't think we'll see a Foxtrot revival. Emulating Clapton, or Hendrix, or Page, etc was a mass phenomenon, which is what the "bunch" alludes to. The last to inspire anything of…
As fragmented as the music world is now, there is still capacity for a groundswell movement I believe. In keeping with the 'guitar sales are dying' theme - back in the 80's Fender Jazzmasters, Jaguars and Mustangs were pariah guitars. They were nothing more than the oddly shaped relics from the 'surf music' craze of the 50's and 60's. Then Kurt Cobain played one on stage in the 90's. And not played like a guitar god…
And back in the late 80s when Les Paul sales were flagging, out stepped a young Slash. And Gibson sales took off for another two decades and a half.
Re: The slow death of the electric guitar
#198Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would also argue metal was never mainstream. The mainstream was always further takes on pop, which to an increasing degree draws from all the others innovating, if in a moderately expressed way. Listen to mainstream popular music now and you can often find some of the intensity extreme metal explored.
I have to agree that metal was never mainstream. I always looked at metal as an evolution of punk.
Metal shares with punk (unless you're talking about crossover genres like crust) a rejection of the established order and affirmation of the individual against the collective. They both also tend to be angry responses to alienation. The aesthetic of the two is radically different though. Metal is about creating a fantastic, otherworldly soundscape, while punk focuses on capturing the raw quality of life.
I think industrial music was the true successors to punk. They took the raw grit of punk and made it modern and danceable.
Re: The slow death of the electric guitar
#199Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It's not hard to see why. Playing music is hard. The ratio of effort to reward is just terrible. I totally understand why people quit. Several years ago I worked for Fender on their in-house web development team in the marketing department; it was hell during the holiday turnaround, but there were good times, too. I was one of the few people there who didn't play an instrument. For myself, while I have always wante…
I'm sorry I couldn't understand from your comment, are you saying an electric is harder on your fingers as compared to an acoustic? If that's what you meant, I must disagree, and please read the full comment. Else, it's my misunderstanding of your comment, and I shall delete my reply. Electric guitar's strings are far more easier on your fingers compared to a steel-stringed acoustic (not comparing classical guitars w…
I put .010 - .046 on acoustics. Problem solved.
Re: The slow death of the electric guitar
#200Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I don't listen to much electronic music, but I find no subtleties or sensitivity in what I hear. Probably because you don't listen much. There are subtleties in electronic music pieces that go several levels beyond jazz even -- in timbre, rhythm, harmony etc. Compared to something like 70s rock, there's no contest even. You wont find those in EDM charts though.
Send me names, I'd gladly feed my ears with beyond jazz subtleties. I'm all for the musical experience, as long as it's well done. But to the point, the thread is about mainstream guitar playing going away. So I was talking about mainstream electro. Surely there are deeply satisfying electronic music out there if you dig.
Simon Posford is the Jimi Hendrix of the psychedelic trance genre :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kn16TZ2H1Fw
(note, needs to be played as loud as you can get away with!)