Is guitar dead in popular music ?

A good friend of mine remarked to me a few weeks ago, "Sometimes I wish I were musical like you". I asked him what he would do. He had no idea. He's a highly intelligent, coldly analytical person - a perfect business guy, but recognized through observing me throughout the 17 years of our friendship that there was a significant part of human existence that he was missing out on an essential component of human existence. It's a shame, too, because on those rare instances I've caught him singing along to something he's right on pitch.

I say this because in the grand scheme of things I don't think it matters if it's guitar or accordion or recorder or banging on spackle buckets in Penn Station, just as long as you're making music, that's a good thing (even if it sucks). The roughly 7 billion people on this planet will make sure that music in its' various forms stays alive. We can't help it. It's part of our genetic coding.
 
luke said:
these new kids are pussies.
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What do you expect, their entire life content is in their smartphone, take that away and you’ve committed an act of exorcism (watch out they tend to bite, spit and snarl whenever you do this!).
 
Solarfire said:
What do you expect, their entire life content is in their smartphone, take that away and you’ve committed an act of exorcism (watch out they tend to bite, spit and snarl whenever you do this!).
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I work in a large college, nearly 27 years. I used to enjoy walking the halls and saying hello to student's. These days, I spend my time trying to make sure I don't run any of them over as they walk around the halls with their faces in their damn phones. No one even makes eye contact anymore...it's sad. Don't even get me started about the a$$holes I have to try and avoid on the road as they drive toward me, in my lane, with their faces in their phone, sitting in their hands on top of the steering wheel.
 
Toopy14 said:
I work in a large college, nearly 27 years. I used to enjoy walking the halls and saying hello to student's. These days, I spend my time trying to make sure I don't run any of them over as they walk around the halls with their faces in their damn phones. No one even makes eye contact anymore...it's sad. Don't even get me started about the a$$holes I have to try and avoid on the road as they drive toward me, in my lane, with their faces in their phone, sitting in their hands on top of the steering wheel.
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Indeed a very disturbing development. Ever seen the film “ The body snatchers”? I think it’s an analogy to the generation today and their smartphones.
 
Toopy14 said:
Most people today don't care about music and what it stood for and they don't understand what true musical talent and artistic creativity is.
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On that score the blame lies squarely in the camp of the record companies. The minute that music became solely about making money it was doomed. They rely on standard progressions and don't deviate from the same homogenous meter, and guitarists are guilty of this also. Not many could throw in a diminished 7th chord and make it work in a progression for example. Sure, there are a lot who can and do, but they are in the minority of gigging guitarists.

Worse, this became the norm, and the simplification of music let people who would otherwise be consigned to the evolutionary scrapheap of music make millions.
 
Yeah it's like there's some kind of 'music business' that tries to make money from music.. wonder when that started..



..'back in my day', 'kids today', 'get off my lawn' etc..
 
Toopy14 said:
Most people today don't care about music and what it stood for and they don't understand what true musical talent and artistic creativity is. Case in point...Justin Bieber! Oh well, guess I'm just getting too old.
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There was so much rubbish back then too. You have to remember that post Hendrix and post EVH guitar music was repackaged and became new again. So many genres came after. I guess to an extent we've run out of ways to repackage it so it's always a throw back to some other time. Popular culture almost by definition is about what's new and exciting.

I was driving a few months back past one of the local schools and it sounded like some kids were doing band practice. They were playing a song by the Kinks. I don't think the Top 40 is an indication of a decline of the guitar in the general population.
 
The only reason guitar is "on the way out", is the masses aren't putting in the time to learn it,

I don't buy in to the life style thing , or generation shift or anything else

Its just guitar is hard, it takes forever to master, and it doesn't fit in with the twitter facebook ipad world of here and now

music isnt an instrument, but instruments take forever to learn and master, "garage band tm", and music apps can make music in seconds

why spend 20 years playing guitar or mastering the flugal horn, when you can make popular sounds with a music machine

So there will and continue to be hit songs with guitar in them, make good music people will listen
 
I predict that guitar will come back in a big way 8-10 years from now. A LOT of kids were made aware of guitar music in the past 4-5 years. Some of them unfortunately through Guitar Hero, some through much more realistic alternatives, such as Rock Smith. It will take some time for their skills to develop, and 99% of kids won't even play at all, but at least they will understand the draw. And if the whole thing yields even a dozen world class players, it'll be HUGE.
 
Depends on where you look.

The indie scene is full of guitar-music. And considering indie gets more and more popular every year, I don't think guitar-music will ever die out.
 
I don't know. My stepson is building songs using virtual lego blocks in a program that used to be called fruity loops. He does know how to play piano. A bit. But doesn't with that program. He actually makes nice tunes within the limits of his chosen style of dance (there are like hundreds of styles all with their own rules). His tunes usually consist of a beat, four chords and a couple of melodies that get repeated and interchanged in several synthy sounds and octaves. To me the lack of chordal complexity gets hugely boring after a couple of bars (when is there ever going to be a different chord? Where is the bridge?). He just says my music all sounds the same. It all uses the same sounds, less diverse. He can do nice and soft and hugely hard tones when he wants.


So, to use fruity loops you don't need any training. Some blatantly and purposefully out of key melodies have already proven very commercially successful so music theory is not a requirement. A dj is usually alone, usually cheaper than a full band with instruments and easier to amplify. It's danceable. Pop a pill and go all night...


When I go to rock concerts I usually see more grey hair than coloured and quite a number leave during the encore to beat the traffic... I sort of can see why kids are not going for that. Probably the harder rock scene has some more youth but I don't go there.


I wonder what will happen in 15 years when the dance generation has kids that need to do their own thing and rebel against their parents...
 
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