Members Idunno Posted January 18, 2015 Members Share Posted January 18, 2015 I think they're gone. The Bob Dylan, Jim Croce, Neil Young, James Taylor, Joni Mitchell, Paul Simon, Cat Stevens, etc, acoustic popularity acts are a thing of the past never to see the lights of the stage again. I think they will endure as icons of the past on internet video when they die off and sit there to remind us of what we don't have now, and won't have going forward. There's no more new demand. The Boomers of the 70's are stuck there and their prodigy don't want to go there. So, what's in it for the acoustic guitar? One poster put up a Taylor factory tour claiming 600 guitars per day production. I think the market has already reached saturation. Guild and Ovation going by the wayside is not a sign of demand. It's a sign of demise. Inventory is not moving like it did. The digital age is in full flourish and the kids don't want real musical instrument skills development getting in the way of the music they want to make. It's a very fast world these days. Snooze you lose. While it may be a home hobby, seriously engaged music industry types (artists and producers) won't be nourishing skills sets on actual instruments like they used to. They will be nourishing digital chops. On a side note, real life actors will be voicing over cheaply made CGI scripts. Hopefully, live theater will make a come back but the acting trade will seriously fall to the depths of our own acoustic guitar popularity. The Boomers initiated the huge demand on acoustic guitars but their prodigy aren't *quantifiably nor qualitatively following them. Watch this kid Owen Pallett. He plays a violin, keyboard and looper live. His music is quite *avant garde and he's popular with the new-gen. He is classically trained and uses it in a mash-up to market himself. Bright kid but he's a one-off. You may not care for his style and music but he is giving us something different and yet familiar enough to engage a cross-generation musical culture. Who else is out there like that? All I hear in passing are cheap repetitive lyrics bridged with yodeling. Nothing is acoustic in any of it and all of it is profoundly industry-scripted *bilgewater. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eXp4ZDJHO1s Acoustically speaking, wooly mammoths come to mind. Thoughts? * Words not recognized by this site. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members MePeel Posted January 18, 2015 Members Share Posted January 18, 2015 Bullshrimp ! Mel Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members MDMachiavelli Posted January 18, 2015 Members Share Posted January 18, 2015 I think acoustic guitars will survive the digital age. I'm sure some people said the same thing when the electric guitar was popularized. I will say this though, I believe that music as we know it is dying and I guess you could argue that several instruments may die along with it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Freeman Keller Posted January 18, 2015 Members Share Posted January 18, 2015 I also think the acoustic guitar will survive, but certainly will not be a part of the one lyric fist pumping "music" that seems to be the vogue. But when I listen to Eric Skye or Larry Pattis or any of the other great musicians playing beautiful music without anything artificial added I think that there is a chance. At least I hope there is a chance Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members recordingtrack1 Posted January 18, 2015 Members Share Posted January 18, 2015 I'm not sure I totally agree with the first premise of the thread but there is a lot of credibility to it. There are thousands of acoustic acts out there playing every night. I do agree that the Iconic stars that we all loved growing up are slowly slipping away. Such is life. To me it's the same with the great movie actors from my childhood. John Wayne, Henry Fonda, Stewart, etc... While it is painful to read an obit, there is somebody always there who takes their place and life goes on. They may or may not have the talent or charisma or other larger than life qualities of the previous generations but that opinion is personal for each of us. It is possibly the singer-songwriter image that may fade, but we fade too. Eventually, to us it won't matter, because we'll be gone too. Less acoustic guitarists in the future? probably.... The second part of the premise, if I read it right, is the over-saturation of the guitar market. Totally true. Added to the high quality American made instruments is the glut of the market by pac-rim guitars. 1.21 Jigawatts of them, LOL! Added to the high number of legal instruments is the growing phenomenon of illegal instruments. I played a Gibson Les Paul (yes, electric, I know) in a pawn shop recently and it was very nice. When I asked the guy about it, he told me he couldn't "legally" sell it to me because it was counterfeit. I began to look it over carefully and realized, it was a REAL fake. Really? Amazing, but fake. He told me they are coming into the states fast. He told me if I wanted one that I could buy it [illegally] online. At his urging, when I got home I looked them up. "Chibson" sure enough!! and PRS and Fender etc, etc. Check it out. It's creepy. Also, look up Chibson guitars on You tube. IT SUCKS to see this. What is happening to federal trade regulation and enforcement? The number of available guitars of any brand is massive. If there never was another guitar manufactured anywhere in the world, there'd be more than enough to go around, for a very long time. I look for the value of musical instruments, even the good ones, to go down. It's a basic principle....supply is quickly over-reaching demand. Especially when you consider Premise 1 of this thread. Not a good investment! The third premise of the op is the digital age. This is very true. I have a DAW on my computer. It has a couple of acoustic guitar programs for virtual Synth technology (VSTi) The best one is called Strum-Acoustic. While it still is not as natural sounding as it could be, it is very good overall. Of course, my tech skills are a lot of the problem in using it, but when acoustic parts are added to a heavy mix of other instruments, it carries more weight that you might think. As technology improves, these types of programs will only improve both in sound quality and in programming ease. This could give producers the ability to insert acoustic parts, along with other parts without the high cost of paid musicians. Robot technology is quickly taking over the musical age and doing it cheaply enough that most anybody can afford it.!!! Sorry for the long rant.. It didn't mean for it to go this far. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Samilyn Posted January 18, 2015 Members Share Posted January 18, 2015 That's a tough call. I honestly don't think they'll totally fall by the wayside in favor of electronic jimcrackery, but I do agree that given the ease of making music with a computer, a lot of people won't bother to take the time to learn and develop skill. Same can be said for piano and almost any acoustic instrument. There will always be those who want to play real music on real instruments. At some point, acoustic music might see a resurgence when someone somewhere rediscovers it, brings it to the attention of the masses, and those whose senses are numb to electronic music will take notice. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members garthman Posted January 18, 2015 Members Share Posted January 18, 2015 . . . . . There will always be those who want to play real music on real instruments. . . . .. Yes. And there will always be people who want to listen to them. At least I hope so. . . . . . . . We think back on the days of our youth and all the music seemed wonderful then. However, BBC4 is showing episodes of "Top Of The Pops" over the years and a very great deal of the music that was around then was utter crap. Good old brains, huh? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Idunno Posted January 18, 2015 Author Members Share Posted January 18, 2015 I also think the acoustic guitar will survive, but certainly will not be a part of the one lyric fist pumping "music" that seems to be the vogue. But when I listen to Eric Skye or Larry Pattis or any of the other great musicians playing beautiful music without anything artificial added I think that there is a chance. At least I hope there is a chance This is a kind of axe for me to both wield and grind. While I agree there are plenty of folk who can get my ear, most don't play songs. I'm a song kinda audience and I write to it as well. The drone-string culture club of open tunings has eclipsed my saturation point. Let's not even talk about tapping. That's not playing guitar, that's Morse Code. The guitar is an accompaniment instrument that was wrangled into something more by a very few for people who have a correspondingly limited appreciation for it. Mason Williams dusted the classical culture and that freed the souls of thousands of like-thinking players. But, it's songs that make the money. Tommy Emmanuel would be huge if he lofted stories onto his audience. Short of that, it's a novelty act and hardly generative of a resurgence for the instrument itself. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members garthman Posted January 18, 2015 Members Share Posted January 18, 2015 . . . . . . The guitar is an accompaniment instrument . . . . . . . .. Well that's certainly what it is for me (and that is what it always was historically) that was wrangled into something more by a very few for people who have a correspondingly limited appreciation for it. . . . Yeah Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Idunno Posted January 18, 2015 Author Members Share Posted January 18, 2015 We're still on the vine, make no mistake, but we're the last of the vintage. Get yourselves recorded for your progeny, time capsules or ocean send-offs in a bottle (jump drive). In the meantime, try to spread it around and share it. Both of my sons are 70's music fans. They arrived there without my influence or outright direction. That's either the genome at work or telling of the state of current pop music. I like to think it's the latter. I take each of them out each week on separate occasions to reconnect with them. We talk music because we all play. They tell me they feel there's little art form in the music of today and no appreciation for the instruments themselves. That's what got me thinking. If a person isn't familiar with the actual musical instrument's contribution as a limited tool, then the appreciation for it will never be gained to interpret correctly in the music. Every note will be perfected digitally without nuanced or pronounced emphasis, string squeak, hammers, pulls, bends or even simple coloring of tone. The very limits of the actual instruments are the basis for the art form that are digitally cleansed, dried, dragged and dropped. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members recordingtrack1 Posted January 18, 2015 Members Share Posted January 18, 2015 I still enjoy and play some of the music my parents loved. I also know several twenty-somethings who love some of the artists mentioned in the OP. More than a few of them play well and regularly sing songs by the Beatles or Paul Simon. I think it's too bad that the internet is the only venue for young performers' date=' but whether the net has a suppressing effect on creativity remains to be seen. It still isn't an argument I'd want to make. Interesting post, you! . .[/quote'] True story. I was teaching an in-service class recently where I work. I had a group of about 10 young student/employees who were aged 18 - 20. Most were African American. During the socialization part of the course, popular music came up. These kids were batting around names that I didn't know. I did pick up on Kanye and P-did, Beyoncé and one or two others. In order to try to stay in the conversation I made this statement: "I always liked The Beatles..." The room suddenly fell quiet and with God as my witness, one of them asked..."what are the Beatles?" Of course my mouth fell open and I was speechless. They did not have a clue. I asked if they knew who Elvis Presley was. All of them admitted knowing who he was. I felt really out of touch for a few minutes..... Folks, the times they are a-changin'. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members EdBega Posted January 18, 2015 Members Share Posted January 18, 2015 I'm sure Taylor Swift has inspired a few also John Mayer. Lots of young youtubers. Granted not as center stage as it once was seems the bass is becoming more popular lately ... [YOUTUBE]smnkjXMPmOc[/YOUTUBE] Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Gary Blanchard Posted January 18, 2015 Members Share Posted January 18, 2015 I had to laugh at Samilyn's "real music on real instruments" statement, as that argument is as old as the hills. Back in the 80's I put aside guitar and banjo and spent a decade doing music on synthesizer. I did a lot of avant garde stuff, and did one program called Natural State. Part of the premise of the show was that "natural" varies from person to person. For a boy raised in the city, concrete and steel is natural. One of the stories that preceded a piece of music went like this: "As a synthesizer player, I often get asked why I don't play a real instrument. One night I had a dream, and in that dream I was transported back to the days of the cave dwellers. A group of people were playing music by hitting one stone with another. Early rock music, you might say. I saw a person take a hollow log, and watched as he stretched an animal skin across the end. He picked up a bone and started hitting the skin with the bone. The stone players stopped, looked at him, and said "Why don't you play a real instrument?" I love my acoustic guitar, but I also know that things change. I let people do what they like, and I do what I like. It is all good. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Idunno Posted January 19, 2015 Author Members Share Posted January 19, 2015 The point is that the acoustic guitar, among other traditional instruments - traditional meaning relative to human time immemorial as opposed to a spin into time primordial - is being way-laid by the big easy sponsored by the big lazy. Have you read any of the product reviews by Anderton and others here? If you buy into all that stuff you'll make an argument for supplanting traditional instruments altogether with signal processors. Voices are already okay to pitch correct, according to them, which means we're evolving away from singers who can sing on pitch. Considering Bob Dylan built an empire on that is a false argument for pitch correction because we love old Bob for that. He loves himself for it, too, so pitch correction is not wanted and wholly unholy. He defines acoustic. But, like RT1 points out, in a mix all the digitized stuff flies in the mp3 desensitized neo-earbones our good buddy and PONO proponent Neal Young currently takes issue with. He says it's all crap. I'm swayed more by a man who sat in the studios and steered the tracks of all his albums more than I am by current industry knob turners looking for artistic credence/recognition. Who will wage that argument when Neal, et al, have passed? I see a dim and dank barroom smelling of addicted vape-head knobsters mumbling to themselves about snobbish artists, lingering legacies and their own internet-spawned demise. Let the good times roll. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members kwakatak Posted January 19, 2015 Members Share Posted January 19, 2015 Sorry, Joe. The acoustic guitar in pop music is doing just fine. It's just buried under layers of crappy samplings and autotuned backing vocals. Still, there are a few current and fairly recent "pop" acts that have used acoustic instruments. Mumford and Sons was going along well until the front man pulled the plug. Oddly enough, the banjo player blamed the band's demise on using too much banjo. He may have been right. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members kwakatak Posted January 19, 2015 Members Share Posted January 19, 2015 Then you might recall this little Hobbit looking guy named Ed Sheeran: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Idunno Posted January 19, 2015 Author Members Share Posted January 19, 2015 Still, where are they in the larger scheme of things? I'm not so far removed that I wouldn't hear them raising even small roofs. They are big in small circles and fields of view, to searchers only and certainly not box-topping. Let's go back to that nostalgic millisecond and ask how I knew of it. It was because it dominated the air waves, that's how. It wasn't because I was looking for it. It came to me and drew me in. That's what I'm talking about. But now it's grazing alongside what's left of the plains buffalo and enjoyed by special interests persons. No doubt there's relevance wanting for a home but the plains are just miles and miles of miles if no inhabitants. That word relevance is powerful in context but otherwise homeless in this case. You may be right about a resurgence, though. That is wholly unpredictable. I want to think current pop goo is just a hiccup but observation says otherwise. Techno-purges are voiding the skills landscape and exiling them to the dim periphery of center stage and beyond where you have to look for them. You like to look. I don't. Which of us represents a majority? Which of us was originally gifted our influences only to later distance them for the sake of creativity in isolation? Me. I am that person and I remain that way. You are still on the search for something. I'm not looking, you are. My nostalgia tells me both of us would now be reached regardless of searching or shunning just by weight of presence via demand. It isn't that way though, acoustically speaking, and I don't think it will be any time soon. Techno-possibilities are just too contagiously luring, new, and yet to prove their worth to an eager generation of musical knobsters preferring buttons and dials to strings and tuners. We are digital outcasts by our own hands and our progeny are ensuring it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Emory Posted January 19, 2015 Members Share Posted January 19, 2015 Didn't Decca records not sign Beatles because some genius decided "guitar bands are on the way out"? Perhaps in a fashion similar to when punk was reaction to overproduced pretentious "arena rock", folk will get fed up with auto tuned, tweaked, canned stuff passes as music in wider audience. But I won't hold my breath..... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members pathofspirit Posted January 19, 2015 Members Share Posted January 19, 2015 There will always be those who want to play real music on real instruments. I remember back in the mid to late 80s one of my friends was working in a recording studio in NY. This was when rap was really starting to take off/over. One day he said that he realized that the the engineer had become the most important person in music making. That's pretty much where things had gone. Not too long after those daysMTV started their "Unplugged" series. I love a strat but there's nothing like the acoustic. Heck; I even bought a mandolin this year. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members guitarist21 Posted January 19, 2015 Members Share Posted January 19, 2015 Also, people still largely start playing on acoustic guitars, if my experience working at a guitar store is any indication. The convenience and cost-effectiveness of being able to pick up an instrument and make noise without any amps/cables/doodads is probably not going to go out of style. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members poppytater Posted January 19, 2015 Members Share Posted January 19, 2015 Curmudgeonly thread Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members EdBega Posted January 19, 2015 Members Share Posted January 19, 2015 [YOUTUBE]c9mLx-JVn0I[/YOUTUBE] Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members bigald18 Posted January 19, 2015 Members Share Posted January 19, 2015 I agree with Ellen, most people learn with acoustic guitars, nylon stringed because it's easier on their fingertips or steel. Electronic or electric involves too much of an up front investment for most not knowing whether they will continue. The acoustic guitar is an old, old instrument that's been around for hundreds of years. It's popularity will come and go but it will always be there. The demise of companies does not mean the demise of the guitar. Guild has also been a mismanaged company and since Fender bought it probably more so. Ovation has always been an odd ball of a guitar. I liken it's popularity to the popularity of the hula hoop. BigAl Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Etienne Rambert Posted January 20, 2015 Members Share Posted January 20, 2015 I think they're gone. The Bob Dylan, Jim Croce, Neil Young, James Taylor, Joni Mitchell, Paul Simon, Cat Stevens, etc, acoustic popularity acts are a thing of the past never to see the lights of the stage again. I think they will endure as icons of the past on internet video when they die off and sit there to remind us of what we don't have now, and won't have going forward. There's no more new demand. The Boomers of the 70's are stuck there and their prodigy don't want to go there. So, what's in it for the acoustic guitar? One poster put up a Taylor factory tour claiming 600 guitars per day production. I think the market has already reached saturation. Guild and Ovation going by the wayside is not a sign of demand. It's a sign of demise. Inventory is not moving like it did. The digital age is in full flourish and the kids don't want real musical instrument skills development getting in the way of the music they want to make. It's a very fast world these days. Snooze you lose. While it may be a home hobby, seriously engaged music industry types (artists and producers) won't be nourishing skills sets on actual instruments like they used to. They will be nourishing digital chops. On a side note, real life actors will be voicing over cheaply made CGI scripts. Hopefully, live theater will make a come back but the acting trade will seriously fall to the depths of our own acoustic guitar popularity. The Boomers initiated the huge demand on acoustic guitars but their prodigy aren't *quantifiably nor qualitatively following them. Watch this kid Owen Pallett. He plays a violin, keyboard and looper live. His music is quite *avant garde and he's popular with the new-gen. He is classically trained and uses it in a mash-up to market himself. Bright kid but he's a one-off. You may not care for his style and music but he is giving us something different and yet familiar enough to engage a cross-generation musical culture. Who else is out there like that? All I hear in passing are cheap repetitive lyrics bridged with yodeling. Nothing is acoustic in any of it and all of it is profoundly industry-scripted *bilgewater. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eXp4ZDJHO1s Acoustically speaking, wooly mammoths come to mind. Thoughts? * Words not recognized by this site. I dunno, I dunno. I'd advise young'uns to buy synths though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members EdBega Posted January 20, 2015 Members Share Posted January 20, 2015 On a serious note if I never hear a banjo or a harmonica again I'd be good with that. I don't think Idunno even believes the acoustic guitar is on it's way out. Did make for some interesting posts though so I give him credit for that ... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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