Acoustic Guitar Days Numbered?

[EdBega]

Still not convinced you are totally serious but if you are for your consideration ...

 

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[Phil O'Keefe]

IMO as long as guitar in general remains popular, acoustic guitars will too. Just because Joni Mitchell and James Taylor aren't on the charts these days doesn't mean there aren't still people out there who enjoy playing acoustic, or that acoustic guitars aren't still used regularly in many popular recordings. They're just no longer the focal point / main instrument in many of the currently popular genres like they were in the singer / songwriter days of the late 60s and early 70s.... but then again, turn on a Country radio station sometime - acoustics are still used there quite frequently and prominently, as well as by some artists in other genres, as seen in the Ed Sheeran video above.

 

[Idunno]

Country music counts? I don't know about that. I mean, I've never taken country music seriously, ever, and it hasn't given me a reason to start now. If anything, it's a reason why a majority won't take acoustic guitar seriously. Country folk are looked down upon by the more urbane main trend setters. Country acceptance of trends has always lagged by margins measured in years. Hell, they're still sporting mullets here and there. So, that notion is out.

 

The guitar as a musical instrument will survive. So has the hurdy-gurdy. Not talking survival. Talking about popular, as you point out that they no longer are, and propping up the general music scene. No big deal. Just because the piano and its poor-man's cousin (guitar) are drifting out to the peripheral and being supplanted by digitized stuff isn't a bad thing. It's more of a shameful thing, which is one notch lower than bad.

[EdBega]

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[EdBega]

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[EdBega]

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[EdBega]

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[EdBega]

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[EdBega]

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[EdBega]

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[EdBega]

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[Idunno]

Okay EdBega –

 

1. Dawes – Country Formulaic ad nauseum. Disqualified. Get a comb, dude.

2. Tegan and Sara – Irritating vocals at best. Pop-girls on steroids.

3. Young the Giant – Strummy-strummy, voice on beat – whoa-oh-oh-whoa-oh. An entourage to deliver what a decent duo brought in the day.

4. Phoenix – Combo of 2 and 3. The vocal word-ending trill – irritating. Couldn’t kill it quick enough.

5. Bittersweet – Strummy but brings a hint of 70s artisitic sophistication and interpretation missing in all the above. The guitar’s signal is a bit too digitized - Piezo.

6. Direct rip-off, listen for it, and about a minute too long for the little dynamic it has.

7. RHCP – Hated the song when it debuted and nothing has changed. Not the acoustic guitar we're talking about, either.

8. Always thought this song was lyrically and structurally good but the strumming dynamic, like an imbalanced load in the spin cycle, throws it off-kilter.

9 . Needful Hands – Great lyrical message, vocal harmony and structure but get that Piezo off the stage for the love of air. It almost hurts.

 

All of the above are perfect examples of where the playing of the acoustic guitar has dumbed down from chord melody picking and techniques that give us the beauty of its dynamics to Piezo twanging, strummy ear hurt. None of the music above took from the guitar what it can give. Think about an hour or more of that twanging Piezo strumming versus the same period of mic’d fingerstyle beneath the lyric lines. Which compells the audience to stay, which to leave? Moreover, where has the talent gone?

[EdBega]

Point being the torch has been passed whether you like where they run with it isn't.

 

Idunno but I think someone is just feeling nostalgic ...

[AJ6stringsting]

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?

 

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When I was a little kid, folks like Rick Wakeman and Keith Emerson were making the electric Keyboard king and acoustic pianos were taking a back seat ..... then again Elton John was out there proving the Acoustic Piano was still relevant.

Acoustic guitars will never go out of style, because they offer guitarists a different voice to use to compose or perform music.

You never know, maybe a new young , C,S.N and Y, James Taylor, Jim Croce, Cat Stevens, Simon and Garfunkel, Joni Mitchell or Gordon Lightfoot will come out and revive the acoustic guitar again.

Back in the 1980's, many thought the acoustic was dead, Randy Rhoads "Dee", made many (including myself) pick up a nylon string guitar. then in 1986, Bon Jovi's " Dead or Alive" stirred interest and then in 1988 , G and R's "Patients" made the acoustic more fashionable again.

Guitarists will never let the acoustic die out .... it's a unique voice that will never be silenced.

 

[Phil O'Keefe]

Great post AJ!

[Phil O'Keefe]

I like Phoenix a lot... good examples!

[guitarcapo]

I see acoustic guitars all over The Voice, American Idol...all those shows.

 

 

It still seems popular to play one in American music.

[Queequeg]

 

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.

I suspect most people would agree with you.

But, and I mean no disrespect, I am not one of them.

I would much prefer to listen to Tommy Emmanuel or Eric Skye or Larry Pattis who have honed their craft as solo or ensemble artists any day, rather than suffer yet one more singer/songwriter lamenting lost or unrequited love, banging out chords, sometimes not knowing what key they are playing in.

I won't defend instrumentalists here but I do not find them to be gimmicky or novelty acts any more than I do artists such as Ahmad Jamal, Victor Wooten, Yo-Yo Ma or Wynton Marsalis.

And yes, I do agree with you that they perform for an audience who, by and large, has a limited appreciation for what they are hearing. So be it.

The "market" such as it is, is hot for cute, late teens/early 20s singer/songwriters who have seen so little of life and have so little to say.

To each his/her own.

[Gary Blanchard]

As a singer/songwriter, may I take exception to this sentence?

"...rather than suffer yet one more singer/songwriter lamenting lost or unrequited love, banging out chords, sometimes not knowing what key they are playing in."

 

I understand that some of the excesses of the 70's sullied the reputation of some singer/songwriters, but I do not feel that we can make blanket statements about singer/songwriters, nor any other group or genre. I think we are better than that.

 

(Sorry, but there has abeen a lot of singer/songwriter bashing on several forums I visit, and it is starting to tick me off.)

[Idunno]

I suspect most people would agree with you.

But, and I mean no disrespect, I am not one of them.

I would much prefer to listen to Tommy Emmanuel or Eric Skye or Larry Pattis who have honed their craft as solo or ensemble artists any day, rather than suffer yet one more singer/songwriter lamenting lost or unrequited love, banging out chords, sometimes not knowing what key they are playing in.

I won't defend instrumentalists here but I do not find them to be gimmicky or novelty acts any more than I do artists such as Ahmad Jamal, Victor Wooten, Yo-Yo Ma or Wynton Marsalis.

And yes, I do agree with you that they perform for an audience who, by and large, has a limited appreciation for what they are hearing. So be it.

The "market" such as it is, is hot for cute, late teens/early 20s singer/songwriters who have seen so little of life and have so little to say.

To each his/her own.

 

Song is the predominant lure of the audience. That's how the acoustic guitar rose to fame, gained renewed respect and achieved popularity with huge audiences when played by the right hands, of which there were many. They were the Boomers playing and listening.

 

The Boomers are yesterday's news now and they can take their chosen instruments with them, thank you very much. At least in the way they were played. These days they're acceptable but don't go into them with too much artful purpose. We want them to be the white noise now and not a measure of personal skill and achievement because those two things are hard to attain and we don't want to have to measure up to that standard. Just.....strum.....frantically.

 

Cute. Agreed. Speed versus comfort. Fleeting versus stable. Disposable versus memorable. Launched versus nurtured. It's the opposite generation.

 

My novelty determination for instrumentalists is not meant to be a curb-side kick at all. It's meant fundamentally with respect to the greater audience. They are a curiosity to most and entertaining to few. I'm not one of the few. I like instrumental work more as a player than an audience simply because it's a bunch of fun to do. But, I don't listen to recordings of myself or others. By the 5th minute I'm chock full. Instrumentalists leave my listening anticipation unanswered. I consider voice the primary instrument that the guitar is subordinate to. The crazy thing is I prefer to play instrumentals.

 

All said, there's a place for the acoustic guitar in a much diminished role. If all you do is seek it out that will sound like a preposterous notion. Remember, though, that the heyday of that instrument raised our awareness of it without any effort on our parts. It was just there in the measures that proved it's worth. Now, that worth has to be sought out from a very few remaining players with no one of their caliber ushering them out.

[Queequeg]

As a singer/songwriter, may I take exception to this sentence?

"...rather than suffer yet one more singer/songwriter lamenting lost or unrequited love, banging out chords, sometimes not knowing what key they are playing in."

 

I understand that some of the excesses of the 70's sullied the reputation of some singer/songwriters, but I do not feel that we can make blanket statements about singer/songwriters, nor any other group or genre. I think we are better than that.

 

(Sorry, but there has been a lot of singer/songwriter bashing on several forums I visit, and it is starting to tick me off.)

A couple of points. I certainly meant no offense. I have never heard your music, so in no way was this intended to be taken personally.

Yet, it is how I feel, so not quite sure you can take exception to how I feel about it.

Indeed, I enjoy the music of James Taylor (who I consider to be an accomplished guitar player) and Joni Mitchell, CSN & others mentioned earlier. I consider them to be serious musicians.

I have not been subjected to any of the rantings regarding the singer/songwriter on any forums.

Apologies for having ticked you off.

As I say, I know that I am in the minority.

To sum up, (from one of the greatest singer/songwriters of the last 100 years) "You'd Think That People Would Have Had Enough Of Silly Love Songs. But I Look Around Me And I See It Isn't So."

But, and only speaking for myself, well, perhaps I have.

Kindest regards.

[Gary Blanchard]

As I say, I understand the dislike of some music, but not blanket statements. There is a lot of modern country that I dislike, but there are some great artists there as well. Same with pop, rap, etc. And again, this seems to be a "thing" right now to slag on singer/songwriters as though they are all the same. I think the problem is that many use "singer/songwriter" as a genre description rather than as a job description. Lennon and McCartney were singer/songwriters, after all.

[guitarist21]

I would much prefer to listen to Tommy Emmanuel or Eric Skye or Larry Pattis who have honed their craft as solo or ensemble artists any day, rather than suffer yet one more singer/songwriter lamenting lost or unrequited love, banging out chords, sometimes not knowing what key they are playing in.

 

Q! How the heck are you? I hope still making awesome music. Would love to hear anything you've been working on.

[kwakatak]

 

Song is the predominant lure of the audience. That's how the acoustic guitar rose to fame, gained renewed respect and achieved popularity with huge audiences when played by the right hands, of which there were many. They were the Boomers playing and listening.

 

The Boomers are yesterday's news now and they can take their chosen instruments with them, thank you very much. At least in the way they were played. These days they're acceptable but don't go into them with too much artful purpose. We want them to be the white noise now and not a measure of personal skill and achievement because those two things are hard to attain and we don't want to have to measure up to that standard. Just.....strum.....frantically.

 

Cute. Agreed. Speed versus comfort. Fleeting versus stable. Disposable versus memorable. Launched versus nurtured. It's the opposite generation.

 

My novelty determination for instrumentalists is not meant to be a curb-side kick at all. It's meant fundamentally with respect to the greater audience. They are a curiosity to most and entertaining to few. I'm not one of the few. I like instrumental work more as a player than an audience simply because it's a bunch of fun to do. But, I don't listen to recordings of myself or others. By the 5th minute I'm chock full. Instrumentalists leave my listening anticipation unanswered. I consider voice the primary instrument that the guitar is subordinate to. The crazy thing is I prefer to play instrumentals.

 

All said, there's a place for the acoustic guitar in a much diminished role. If all you do is seek it out that will sound like a preposterous notion. Remember, though, that the heyday of that instrument raised our awareness of it without any effort on our parts. It was just there in the measures that proved it's worth. Now, that worth has to be sought out from a very few remaining players with no one of their caliber ushering them out.

 

Ed Sheeran was mentioned earlier in this thread and I admit that when I first heard his latest song "Thinking Out Loud" I liked its "groove." As I listened to it more and more I began to notice its musical influences and it made me long for the Motown songs of old. Then I listened to the lyrics.

 

(*snip* I wasted time typing out the lyrics but decided I didn't need to bend over for RIAA)

 

The more I listened to it, the more trite it sounded. Then I realized that this kid is 23 years old and is writing his own stuff, in an age where Mouseketeers' souls are imploding on TMZ and "talents" like Taylor Swift are being applauded for doing what we used to call "selling out." If anything, the lyrics of this song could be seen as being as trite as Peter Frampton's "Ooh Baby I Love Your Way" - but that song still has a following 40 years later. My point is that these songs were dung (oops, Freudian slip; I meant "sung") by young people and are snapshots in time of an age when the respective singers were young. They're also both dippy love songs, but those kind of songs never seem to go away. They're aural chlamydia.

 

So today's "acoustic" music - or at least the less-overproduced stuff made with actual instruments and not cooked up on a computer - is sort of a gateway drug.

 

At least to me. I'm not QUITE a geezer yet. I can still pluck out the gray hairs.

[EdBega]

Speaking of lyrics yesterday I heard a cover of The Beatle's song I'm only sleeping. I was never really a fan and in fact this is the first Beatle's song I've attempted to learn. I actually liked some of Paul's music better.. The song not as bad as some of their other stuff *cough* - Yellow Submarine. I think sometimes the good ole days weren't quite as sweet as we remember ...

 

 

Im Only Sleeping chords

The Beatles

 

Em Am G C G B7

When I wake up early in the morning, lift my head I'm still yawning.

Em Am G C G C

When I'm in the middle of a dream, stay in bed float upstream.

G Am Bm Am

Please don't wake me no don't shake me leave me where I am

Cmaj7

I'm only sleeping

 

Em Am G C G B7

Everybody seems to think I'm lazy, I don't mind I think they're crazy

Em Am G C G C

Running everywhere at such a speed 'til they find there's no need

G Am Bm Am

Please don't spoil my day I'm miles away and after all

Cmaj7 Em

I'm only sleeping

 

D7 E7 Am Am7

Keeping an eye on the world going by my window,

Dm

Taking my time

 

Em Am G C G B7

Lying there and staring at the ceiling, waiting for a sleepy feeling

 

G Am Bm Am

Please don't spoil my day I'm miles away and after all

Cmaj7 Em

I'm only sleeping

 

D7 E7 Am Am7

Keeping an eye on the world going by my window,

Dm

Taking my time

 

Em Am G C G B7

When I wake up early in the morning, lift my head I'm still yawning.

Em Am G C G C

When I'm in the middle of a dream, stay in bed float upstream.

G Am Bm Am

Please don't wake me no don't shake me leave me where I am

Cmaj7

I'm only sleeping