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Why Is The Electric Guitar Dying?


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Seems like blaming the victims...the reason guitar sales are down is because guitar music that reaches young kids is pretty much non-existent. It is much easier to learn Ableton Live in a few weeks than master an actual instrument. What do kids listen to on the average day? Rock? There really isn't any. Hip-hop..produced with the least number of actual musicians possible. Where teh new guitar gods are is country music, which is typically not aimed at the old target [teenage boys]. Now country is inspiring teenage girls! [thanks, as noted in the article to the success of Taylor Swift].

 

The guitar companies want to sell guitars, but the MUSIC INDUSTRY is not there to sell guitars, it is there to sell whatever passes for music that sells in volume. Once it was Jazz and swing, then it was rock and roll, soul, folk...it isn't evolutionary, it is just how changes in the buying public work out. The music industry really doesn't care about music per se, either, all they care about is making money.

 

And if anything, I lay some of the blame for the rapid slowing of guitar sales on many of the guitar gods who moved the bar so high that it discouraged kids from sticking with the guitar. For every Yngwie/ Vai/ Satch/ Johnson wanna-be, a thousand kids gave up because they couldn't shred after a month. Most couldn't play a barre chord...and in this era of instant gratification and mediocrity is good enough, giving up has no stigma.

 

And being a musician isn't 'rebellious' [or lucrative] anymore. It became so common place that now no one under 30 cares that you play guitar...or piano, drums, flugel horn...

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^^^^ great post daddymack

 

The music industry really doesn't care about music per se, either, all they care about is making money.

 

A singer/songwriter friend of mine once said "the words music and business should not be use in the same sentence"

 

I lay some of the blame for the rapid slowing of guitar sales on many of the guitar gods who moved the bar so high that it discouraged kids from sticking with the guitar. For every Yngwie/ Vai/ Satch/ Johnson wanna-be, a thousand kids gave up because they couldn't shred after a month.

 

Randy Bachman said he wrote "Takin' Care of Business" with the idea of keeping it simple so it could played by garage bands and fledgeling guitarists as part of their musical development. (That being said, Lenny Breau was Bachman's neighbour and guitar teacher. It was the Breau influence on some of Bachman's hits with The Guess Who and BTO that sparked my interest in playing jazz guitar and bringing some jazz elements into rock music.)

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Seems like blaming the victims...the reason guitar sales are down is because guitar music that reaches young kids is pretty much non-existent. It is much easier to learn Ableton Live in a few weeks than master an actual instrument. What do kids listen to on the average day? Rock? There really isn't any. Hip-hop..produced with the least number of actual musicians possible. Where teh new guitar gods are is country music' date=' which is typically not aimed at the old target [teenage boys']. Now country is inspiring teenage girls! [thanks, as noted in the article to the success of Taylor Swift].

 

The guitar companies want to sell guitars, but the MUSIC INDUSTRY is not there to sell guitars, it is there to sell whatever passes for music that sells in volume. Once it was Jazz and swing, then it was rock and roll, soul, folk...it isn't evolutionary, it is just how changes in the buying public work out. The music industry really doesn't care about music per se, either, all they care about is making money.

 

And if anything, I lay some of the blame for the rapid slowing of guitar sales on many of the guitar gods who moved the bar so high that it discouraged kids from sticking with the guitar. For every Yngwie/ Vai/ Satch/ Johnson wanna-be, a thousand kids gave up because they couldn't shred after a month. Most couldn't play a barre chord...and in this era of instant gratification and mediocrity is good enough, giving up has no stigma.

 

And being a musician isn't 'rebellious' [or lucrative] anymore. It became so common place that now no one under 30 cares that you play guitar...or piano, drums, flugel horn...

 

This :philthumb:

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The guitar ain't goin' nowhere. It is here to stay. Just because the industry is seeing a decline just means they out grew the market. Are there less players coming up? Probably. Why is this? I think it's because we are in the age of instant gratification. If you can't master it in a week or ten days then the hell with it. This will change though.

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The guitar ain't goin' nowhere. It is here to stay. Just because the industry is seeing a decline just means they out grew the market. Are there less players coming up? Probably. Why is this? I think it's because we are in the age of instant gratification. If you can't master it in a week or ten days then the hell with it. This will change though.

 

How will this change? People are played by the advertising. When the appeal wears out - in this case the toy factor, people turn to other advertising in search of nourishment.

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How will this change? People are played by the advertising. When the appeal wears out - in this case the toy factor, people turn to other advertising in search of nourishment.

 

I didn't respond to advertising when I started because there wasn't any. I just the guy playing his guitar next door and that was it. I haven't stopped playing since. :)

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Most rock musicians in general never took the time to properly learn their instruments until a few decades ago. What do you think Wes Montgomery thought about the "guitar gods" of the 60's? They had nowhere near the grasp on music that he had, or the proper training.

I suspect he lamented the death of real music at the hands of kids seeking instant gratification.

 

You think The Ramones deserve to be called musicians? Get off my lawn! :)

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The guitar ain't goin' nowhere. It is here to stay. Just because the industry is seeing a decline just means they out grew the market. Are there less players coming up? Probably. Why is this? I think it's because we are in the age of instant gratification. If you can't master it in a week or ten days then the hell with it. This will change though.

 

I just got a press release today from Roland introducing two new keyboards, one synthesizer, one piano, designed to make it fast and easy for someone who doesn't know how to play to start making music quickly. The description reminded me of those organs from the 1950s that every shopping mall that had a music (read "piano and organ" ) store had someone outside playing songs like Blue Moon with one-finger accompaniment. I'm sure that Roland's new products are a lot more sophisticated than those, but the target audience is the same.

 

 

 

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I didn't respond to advertising when I started because there wasn't any. I just the guy playing his guitar next door and that was it. I haven't stopped playing since. :)

 

Neither did I. It was the Ventures. Oh wait; see? We're trapped. Fortunately (highly debatable) music had a strong appeal as well.

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Maybe it's just new guitar sales they are tracking. There are so many used ones for sale perhaps the cachet and price for new ones isn't as nearly as attractive as used ones.

 

You could say the same about microphones, except that microphones don't have as long history as guitars. In 50 years, there will still be people who will seek out U47s when all of the new mics are digital, and nobody but serious hobbyists and serious professionals will be interested in making recordings.

 

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It was just a few years ago that "Guitar Hero" was all the rage. Yes you can still get, but it is not nearly as popular as it once was. That's because real music is hard, and in today's society, music is only something that is done in the background and not worth thee effort.

 

Go back 100 years and there was no radio, no movies, no TV, no computers. You made your own entertainment, and that usually lead to folks to read prolifically, write letters and diaries, and making music as a family. This started to fade away when entertainment came packaged and delivered to your living room. First the record player, then radio, followed by movies, TV and computers. Folks used to get news by newspapers who had multiple issues each day, now it is available instantaneously at your fingers. Movies only used to be at the theater, now it is on demand. Music you either made yourself, or it was an activity you engaged in - now it is background noise. Even if you go to a modern 'pop' show, it is all about the show and not the music. 'Canned' music will be fine, as it provides the background 'noise' to the show (the dancing and other activities that are front and center)

 

There will always be a small segment of the population that still hangs on to the 'old ways' (think classic car collectors, folks who create their own movies, community theaters that put on stage shows, and folks like us who still play music the old fashion way - by hand). There are still a few of us who build airplane models the old fashion way (plastic and glue, balsa and tissue) while others simply buy the models ready made to fly.

 

Of course the good news is when folks like us show up, we are admired (even if we are not very good). Think about it. Every village used to have a blacksmith. Go somewhere today and see a blacksmith and they are a 'craftsman' even if they are not that good.

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I just got a press release today from Roland introducing two new keyboards, one synthesizer, one piano, designed to make it fast and easy for someone who doesn't know how to play to start making music quickly.

 

 

 

My business is about 4 mi. from Callaway Golf. I remember reading an article they were featured in lamenting the decline in people playing golf and courses closing down for lack of players. One of their ideas? Let's make the cup 10" - 12" in diameter so it will be easier for people to score quicker. Instant gratification.

 

 

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My business is about 4 mi. from Callaway Golf. I remember reading an article they were featured in lamenting the decline in people playing golf and courses closing down for lack of players. One of their ideas? Let's make the cup 10" - 12" in diameter so it will be easier for people to score quicker. Instant gratification.

 

I'm sure they never considered lowering their greens fees... :rolleyes:

the modern answer: lower the bar. Mediocrity today is the excellence of tomorrow. Like the Honda ad where they enlarged the basketball hoop to three feet in diameter. Like giving trophies to all the kids in the soccer league, regardless of standing. Reward effort, regardless how minimal. Lower expectations to reap lesser outcomes. Can't be bothered to spend time actually learning to play guitar? Here, buy this plastic guitar, put this game in your entertainment system and voila, you are a rock star just for pushing colored buttons!

:facepalm:

 

I remember back in the mid 70s, I was at a mall with my bass player buddy. We were walking by a Lowrey Organ store, and some 11 year old kid gets on an organ and starts wailing Oye Como Va...with percussion and bass line..and he's doing it by hitting the keys that light up on the console. I knew then that the end of the world was imminent...this is how they trained space monkeys, and now chickens play keyboards the same way.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vwbp3ZatrKc

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Geez.....everything's terrible? no one has any musical skills anymore??

 

I think that making easy music has become easier, yeah, via software and whatnot. But making good music is just as hard as it's ever been. Look around, the good musicians are still here, working hard as usual. Harder if anything.

 

nat

 

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Geez.....everything's terrible? no one has any musical skills anymore?

 

I'm sure there are as many good musicians today as there ever were, maybe even more. But there are so many more people making music than ever, and some of them don't realize that they're hobbyists, not musicians (at least not yet). But to go along with this, there's less discrimination in the music that we hear.

 

Today it's easy to hear a song, or half a song, and decide, no, I don't like that one, and move on to something else, never listening to it again. Owning and listening to a record was something special. Even if you joined the Columbia Record Club, you didn't get dozens of records dropped in your mailbox every day. And most of the records that you chose to own, you listened to reasonably often. And most records, if you liked the genre or the artist, were pretty good records, more worth owning than listening to once and rejecting. They were curated ("produced" in today's language) by someone who knew what made that music appealing, and a little special.

 

We didn't have 500 singers trying to do what Frank Sinatra or Tony Bennet did. We may have had a few thousand guitarists trying to do what Jimi Hendrix did, but only a few of them developed their skill and creativity into something that we'd like to listen to as much as we enjoyed the genuine article. And when you have a few thousand would-be-artists who decided that they weren't going to get any further with the guitar, they got on their computers, made booms, bloops, and bleeps, and once again, there was new music that was different and it attracted a new breed of listeners.

 

 

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Well if guitars aren't selling, there must be a very small group of people buying a helluva lot of guitars.

 

The article has some major flaws. First, there is no reference for the claim that guitar sales have dropped from 1.5 million a year to 1 million a year, nor is there any correlation of price to quantity, nor is there any differentiation among sales of electric guitars, acoustic guitars, and ukuleles (which have more or less replaced the "starter" guitars people used to buy, and sell in huge quantities). Also any discussion of sales is meaningful only if the trends are tracked for each year in a decade, because sales are cyclical. Second, the idea that there aren't guitar heroes is given as both cause and evidence that guitars are dying. Yet the music industry itself is so segmented that the day of universal musical "heroes" ended a long time ago. Third, fashions go in cycles. Guitars have been pronounced dead before, only to come back.

 

Sure, a lot of people are making music with beats. More power to 'em! But EDM remains a sliver in terms of the music that is consumed by listeners. So all those kids in their bedrooms are having fun, which is great, and yes there are DJ superstars...but no more so than, say, Katy Perry.

 

The irony of someone writing for a newspaper, which is a dying breed if there ever was one, saying guitars are dying based on walking around with George Gruhn and speculating that guitar heroes drive sales does not exactly represent a thorough study of the market. Oh, and yes, Gibson and Fender have debt. That's how they finance growth. After the company grows, they either pay off the debt, or refinance to generate more growth.

 

But hey, it got peoples' attention, and I guess that's what writing is all about these days :)

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Listening to pop music I hear a lot less guitar than I used to hear and I don't hear the name of a teen-age guitar hero bantered about.

 

So it might not be the "king" of pop music solos anymore. But things run in cycles.

 

When I started playing, the sax was the king of pop music solos, and it was replaced by the guitar putting the sax in a secondary role (that's one reason why I learned how to play guitar).

 

Before that Trumpet, Trombone, Clarinet, Accordion, Violin and others had their turns.

 

New generations of young people want to rebel against their parent's music, and so the guitar may just be losing some of its shine for that group.

 

But like the sax, it isn't going to die in our lifetimes. I still play the sax and people love it. In fact I get more compliments on the sax than on my guitar playing. Admittedly my sax playing is much better than my guitar chops -- partly because sax is uncommon and mostly I'm playing to an older generation who appreciated it in their youth.

 

When I started playing music, the oldsters used to say, 'The Big Bands are going to come back." They never did.

 

And if I never get to play EDM it's OK with me :D

 

Insights and incites by Notes.

 

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Big bands went out of season due to expenses of travel and having to pay everyone.

 

The organ replaced the big band for a short period of time but the organ was bulky and touring with it was difficult.

 

Along came the amplified guitar to replace the organ. The guitar was portable, loud enough, provided enough textures to make it interesting, and was sexy to hold.

 

The guitar enjoyed a long run. Almost a 75 year run.

 

The new instruments are controllers and keyboards... Ableton Push for instance... Push will eventually be replaced as well and I doubt it`ll have a run like the guitar.

 

I believe these fluctuations is generational and genre based. Right now, EDM is whats in. And EDM does not fancy guitars.

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=Ernest Buckley;n32012174]Right now, EDM is whats in. And EDM does not fancy guitars.

 

Not exactly...see the following from Neilsen for albums, downloads, streaming, and vinyl's combined final figures for 2015 in the US. If you take away streaming and downloads, where EDM is strongest, it drops down to 2%. The global EDM market (live performance, streaming, the whole enchilada) has increased by 3% or so in the past year, so maybe now it's at 4.5%. EDM may be "in" for people who want to make music, but it's "in" to only a small percentage of people listening to music.

 

 

fetch?filedataid=125441

 

Also considering only electric guitars is too narrow. There are stringed instruments, brass instruments, percussion instruments, and keyboard instruments. Each category remains vital in one way or another. Sure, the electric guitar has been around fro 75 years or whatever...but lutes were around long before that. Ukuleles are huge...they're the stringed instruments of today.

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The only thing that is constant is change.

 

And it's both a science and an art to make predictions. Even the best experts don't have a great record of predicting the future.

 

Those who do get the predictions right can be very successful, many of the others will just have to roll with the changes and those who cannot will be lost in the dust or get an extreme niche market.

 

I have a friend who is a monster trumpet player. His father adored Harry James and my friend ended up IMO playing even better than Harry James. He solos well, can play anything in any key, and has great instincts on stage - plus monster chops.

 

Now he works a day job and takes occasional Dixieland and Big Band gigs.

 

When saxes started losing demand, I bought a wind synthesizer and learned lead guitar (I practiced instead of watching TV - which I turned off in the late 1980s). I'm still making a living gigging and having a lot of fun with my sax, the wind synth and the guitar. I adapted.

 

When MIDI came around, I got into it, started making user styles for Band-in-a-Box, took out an ad in EM Magazine (I think Craig was the editor back then) and started selling them. My trumpet friend said that I was putting musicians out of work with the computer. I told him I was putting a musician to work, me. Now he buys software from me (I give him a very good deal because he's a friend). I've sold my styles to musicians in over 100 different countries and have had a lot of fun getting the computer to make music out of the snippets of music I input. In this case I was ahead of the curve, but it was more luck than prediction.

 

Insights and incites by Notes

 

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Next up...here's the story on the stringed instruments of TODAY, which apparently the Washington Post writer was too clueless to consider.

 

[ATTACH=CONFIG]n32012229[/ATTACH]

Yes, that's 1,400,000 ukuleles sold in the US alone in 2016. Add that to the electric guitar, and assuming Postboy got his facts straight, that's 2,400,000 stringed instruments. But wait...there are also acoustic guitars, and 1,360,000 were sold in the US in 2016. Now we're up to 2,360,000 guitars sold, and 3,760,000 guitars + ukuleles. I love Ableton Live, but I doubt Push has sold anywhere near that...

 

All these stats and more are available to anyone with access to a computer and the internet, which apparently Postboy didn't know. Nor did he actually touch on the one thing that really could impact new guitar sales. About 2.3 million guitars are sold in the US each year, and 750,000 in the UK alone. Sales continue to increase.

 

Bottom line - bogus article, poorly researched, looks in the wrong places, reaches the wrong conclusions, hinges a conclusion on a non-sequitur - that a lack of "guitar heroes" means the end of the guitar. No wonder newspapers are dying :)

 

P.S. - Newspapers overall have lost circulation for 28 years straight. Digital is helping a bit, but nowhere near enough to offset the conventional losses. People who live in glass houses...

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