The "death" of the electric guitar..... BULL

[badpenguin]

An article from the Washington Post. While it makes a few good points, I think the overall tone of it, is quite clearly bovine excrement. Your thoughts?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2017/lifestyle/the-slow-secret-death-of-the-electric-guitar/?utm_term=.6648ea734279

 

[Grant Harding]

I actually agree with most of it, but it's not relevant to me. I don't make my living in that industry, so there's no risk.

 

This is a concept called the "S curve". Everything goes through a roughly S shaped maturity curve over time. Imagine a chart with Quality on the left axis and time along the bottom. At the beginning, guys like Buddy Holly were considered guitar-Gods because they knew how to drive them and knew a few chords. It stayed mostly this way until the late 60's, at which point the quality of playing increased quickly and steadily for decades. By 1990 it was normal to encounter guitarists with seemingly no technical limitations. Since then the top of the S curve has flattened out toward perfection and it's almost impossible to add anything new or better to the mix.

When this happens in any context the answer is always that a new S curve starts with something to replace it. Think tape decks vs CD players. The first CD players were crap and the last tape decks were almost as perfect as the technology allowed.

[1001gear]

Probably planned anyway. Quick fix top to bottom - applications, people, satisfaction, sell or move on.

[sammyreynolds01]

I actually agree with the article.

[WRGKMC]

You have to be a subscribe to that site in order to view the article and I have no desire to give that rag paper any personal information.

[Anderton]

It should have been called "The Death of People Who Have Enough Patience to Learn a Musical Instrument." The article conveniently forgets that sales of pretty much all traditional musical instruments are down, because they share the market with a new breed of musical instruments - DJ controllers, Ableton Live, FL Studio, SONAR's Matrix View, etc. FWIW, having worked with DJs since the late 90s, quite a few of them pick up a traditional instrument eventually.

 

The electric guitar will never have "the shock of the new" that it had when it became part of popular culture in the 50s and 60s. Cars don't have tailfins any more, either...and the article also seems to forget that newspapers, network television, cable, the postal service, and free maps at gas stations are "dying" as well.

 

But writers have to make a living, so they come up with provocative headlines instead of doing a more global analysis of the shifts that are occurring in popular culture (of which the electric guitar is just one element). And frankly, those kinds of articles are why newspapers are "dying," too.

[badpenguin]

Didn't have any issues on my end. Just opened it, and read.

[onelife]

It should have been called "The Death of People Who Have Enough Patience to Learn a Musical Instrument." The article conveniently forgets that sales of pretty much all traditional musical instruments are down' date=' because they share the market with a new breed of musical instruments - DJ controllers, Ableton Live, FL Studio, SONAR's Matrix View, etc. FWIW, having worked with DJs since the late 90s, quite a few of them pick up a traditional instrument eventually...[/quote']

 

I was recently hired to provide production for a duo so I did a little pre-production research. On their website they listed the instruments that they played. The list read "electric violin, guitar, keyboards and laptop."

 

The information was, of course, useful but, as an old school musician who spent a lot of time in the woodshed, I did see it as a sign of the times.

[Chordite]

Guitars are not cars, they do not rust away of fail emission checks (usually). Every million guitars sold is another million guitars in the used instrument pool. Only weak gibson headstock joints are working against that

Add to that the pervasive, almost Stradivarius belief that the old gear is the best and you no longer need to add new guitars at the rate you did decades back for every kid to have one.

There is simply no need to buy new with so many exciting guitars on the secondhand market (and at zero depreciation).

Guitar is always going to be popular for 100 good reasons but the market will now shrink to approximately replacement level unless it can open up expanding population turf like India and China and captivate it's youth

 

 

 

 

[Grant Harding]

I didn't have to.

[Grant Harding]

It should have been called "The Death of People Who Have Enough Patience to Learn a Musical Instrument." The article conveniently forgets that sales of pretty much all traditional musical instruments are down, because they share the market with a new breed of musical instruments - DJ controllers, Ableton Live, FL Studio, SONAR's Matrix View, etc. FWIW, having worked with DJs since the late 90s, quite a few of them pick up a traditional instrument eventually.

 

The electric guitar will never have "the shock of the new" that it had when it became part of popular culture in the 50s and 60s. Cars don't have tailfins any more, either...and the article also seems to forget that newspapers, network television, cable, the postal service, and free maps at gas stations are "dying" as well.

 

But writers have to make a living, so they come up with provocative headlines instead of doing a more global analysis of the shifts that are occurring in popular culture (of which the electric guitar is just one element). And frankly, those kinds of articles are why newspapers are "dying," too.

I have to disagree. My Dad was an opera singer, born in the 20's and his regular tirades about 'modern music" sounded eerily similar to your post but from a different S-curve.

He'd go on about how none of the modern "musicians" had the discipline to learn how to sing properly and that the guitar was like a cello with training wheels. He was comparing a fully mature genre with something new and raw and he was "right". Peggy Sue makes me cringe badly...

 

Now we have excellent guitarists everywhere and they say "DJs aren't musicians" and "that's what you do if you can't be a REAL musician".

 

What we have and love won't disappear, but it'll become a niche as the younger and non-musician fans move away as it becomes more and more uncool.

 

Getting old only sucks if you let it.

[Chordite]

Usually puts up a paywall after a fixed number of "free" articles.

The article looked to be like "Express a notion and backfill with google anecdotes." type of journalism.

[pekelnik]

The article has data, with which it's hard to argue. But what is the band in the last decade that has drawn the largest concert crowds? I'd be surprised if the answer wasn't Rolling Stones, and the tickets for them here start at almost 200$ and are sold out months in advance.

 

Bach isn't deprecated, Led Zeppelin isn't deprecated, and Rolling Stones aren't deprecated.

DJ Bobo? I'm afraid he is. It's just music that stands up to the test of time and music that doesn't.

[Grant Harding]

I would guess that most of these people have no clue who Jimmy Page is. Most of them will still be alive and well after we're dead.

 

Your DJ Bobo comment sounds like my Dad comparing Hendrix and Pavarotti. It's apples and oranges. Their passion doesn't dim ours unless we let it. There's also skill involved in doing it. I know most people think they could be in that place and do a decent job, but nah.

[Telecruiser]

I actually agree with the article.

 

The guitar isn't going anywhere. Yeah, it is an industry, both manufacturing and retail, that grew bigger than the market. It will shake out. The guitar is just too cool an instrument to just up and die. It is just a cycle.

[badpenguin]

I am not knocking "DJ Bobo", but musician...? No. Entertainer, yes. Artist...? Possibly. Musician, oh HELL no. They manipulate work already done, to please an audience. Is it creative? Some think so. But calling them musicians is like calling the kid on his iPhone a musician, because they can do beats and whatnot.

[Axisplayer]

I made many of these same comments on a local board this morning about the same issue but it was jazz being out. I talked about parents always complain about new music, and we are now them. I asked who would predicted in the 60's that a morbidly obese Italian opera singer would be a superstar known all around the world by almost every genre (Pavaratti of course.) I said all things are cyclical. Same thing here, it will return. Guitar rock was slowly fading until the 80's when a superstar named van Halen made it cool again. We are only one superstar away from the return of the guitar....it is just how it is. I don't give it much thought. (...and Gibson started their own death when they put corporate profits over quality. Their guitars were total crap for many years.)

[bluesmann]

Same here.

[pekelnik]

I would guess that most of these people have no clue who Jimmy Page is. Most of them will still be alive and well after we're dead.

 

Your DJ Bobo comment sounds like my Dad comparing Hendrix and Pavarotti. It's apples and oranges. Their passion doesn't dim ours unless we let it. There's also skill involved in doing it. I know most people think they could be in that place and do a decent job, but nah.

 

Sorry, maybe DJ Bobo wasn't the right example - I tried to pick something that was big 15 years ago but is gone now, in contrast with stuff that was big 30 years ago and is still pretty big now. Fads come and go.

[Grant Harding]

For the record we'll all still be rocking until we can't rock any more. We just won't be the largest musical genre anymore. My Dad sang awesome opera until he couldn't sing anymore.

[daddymack]

we've been discussing the same article over in Anderton's SSS forum: http://www.harmonycentral.com/forum/forum/Forums_General/acapella-50/32003578-why-is-the-electric-guitar-dying

[AJ6stringsting]

I made many of these same comments on a local board this morning about the same issue but it was jazz being out. I talked about parents always complain about new music' date=' and we are now them. I asked who would predicted in the 60's that a morbidly obese Italian opera singer would be a superstar known all around the world by almost every genre (Pavaratti of course.) I said all things are cyclical. Same thing here, it will return. Guitar rock was slowly fading until the 80's when a superstar named van Halen made it cool again. We are only one superstar away from the return of the guitar....it is just how it is. I don't give it much thought. (...and Gibson started their own death when they put corporate profits over quality. Their guitars were total crap for many years.)[/quote']

 

Fender is expensive, but Gibson is grossly over priced, a price of a Gibson is practically a down payment on a car.

Back in the late 70's / early 1980's, both Fender and Gibson were at the top of guitar manufacturing and offered so few options.

Suddenly, Kramer, Charvel, Washburn, Jackson offered better quality guitars with better wiring options, better wax potted pickups and a new break through, the Floyd Rose. Both Fender and Gibson sales numbers nose dived because they refused to change with the times and playing became more complicated from the Page, Hendrix and Clapton era.

Player's like Eddie Van Halen, Randy Rhoads, Steve Vai, Yngwie Malmsteen, Allan Holdsworth and Joe Satriani took the guitar to new heights that made guitarists pursue those new levels of playing and composition.

Then in 1993, Seattle's Alternative / Grunge / Lalapoloser music lowered the standard to almost an all time low, both playing and composition wise.

The guitar was reduced to only a prop to make you look cool, record sales dropped, concert attendance dropped, but guitar sales rose in the 1990's due to the fact that the bar was so low that anyone could be in a band with only a years experience.

It got so low that guys like Head and Monkey ( Korn), Kurt Cobain, Dave Navarro, Wes Borland ( Limp Bizkit ) and others, were dared to be called Guitar Gods.

Another reason, today's kids don't have patients to sit and learn an instrument, they are too into instant gratification / computers / cell phones and have no patients at all, in most cases.

[Bucksstudent]

Times change. However, these old fogies who think Rock or guitar music is dead don't know anything about modern music.

 

If we measure reality by what the media and Pop radio present us, we no longer understand reality. The age of Clapton and Hendrix is gone, and all these idiots believe that means the good players have come and gone.

 

Of course, most people aren't bright. They believe Led Zeppelin's fanbase was made up of like minded individuals with good taste. Ha. Zeppelin was a great band, but they were also a loud and popular band. EDM is no different in terms of appeal. Your parents hate it, it's too loud, and it's rebellious in nature while being pretty tame in actuality.

 

This is why I despise journalism and listening to people talk about the good ole days. Let's not forget that instruments like the cello and harpsichord were once hot instruments, and just because every kid on the block isn't learning them inside and out doesn't make them irrelevant to music.

[bluesmann]

speaking of modern, these guys smoke it!

 

 

 

[Chordite]

Sign of the surveillance times. A day after posting here on secondhand guitars I open my (British Telecom) phone company web page to check my bill and it is peppered with 3 or 4 picture ads for secondhand guitars. That is very specific, and no other product ads, so could not be general advertising.

Be careful out there!