-
The Washington Post article today on the death of the electric guitar didn't contain the word jazz, or archtop, I don't think. Anyway, It quotes Juszkiewicz, Gibson's owner, quite a bit. He says Gibson is a music company, not a guitar company. Crazy.
-
06-26-2017 11:44 AM
-
It's not dead it just smells funny
-
They like to blame anything except themselves. Yes, the music business has changed, what people listen to has changed, young people's attention spans have changed. But big box stores have not helped and like to place the blame on everything else rather than look at their bad management and business practices. The interview with Guitar Center saying that they would not talk about certain things is an easy way to make it sound like their dire financial situation is not their fault. The Guitar Center near me is a total mess. The guitars there are almost universally bad and picking up most of them would not make me want to play either.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro
-
Let's face it, the music market is over saturated.
Besides playing that there moosic on a geetar hurts yer fingers. Better to do that on an app!
-
WWKD
(what would Kanye do?)
-
Too bad the author of that article doesn't get royalties because it keeps popping up here and other site over and over. It is was a song he might of made fifty, seventy-five cents by now.
-
I'd say the majority of performances on "The Voice" feature guitar related tunes.
Originally Posted by jazzbow
-
Demographics! It's not just that musical tastes have shifted. It's not just that political enthusiasm for funding school programs like music has waned. The fact is: the people just aren't there. There are almost a half-million fewer 15 year-old boys in the United States these days than there are 25 year-old men. We just haven't been replacing ourselves at the rates that we once did. There is a group of people in their 20s that is an "echo" of the Baby Boom. Below that, however, the numbers of both boys and girls attenuates. (See chart below.)
Gibson is staring at the fact that there are going to be fewer people to sell guitars to, regardless of musical tastes.
-
Reports of its death have been greatly exaggerated.
-
I agree with Hammertone, but the combination of (1) changes in music, (2) fewer young people means that the folks building and selling musical instruments in the US _to_ the US market are facing a challenge akin to what was on tap in 1965 when the folk/acoustic boom collapsed at a time that coincided with the end of the Baby Boom. Fender sold, Gibson sold, etc.
-
Originally Posted by Greentone
That market is where it probably headed guitar is back to, guitar is one of the cheapest and simplest first instruments for people to get into music. Today's youth they are looking at trigger devices, loops, samples, and keyboards for their music outlet more than guitars and drums. They can "write" songs easily with like playing with Legos. The days of the Guitar Hero are over and now same type person wants to sit with a laptop and assemble a tune like Kaye or whatever producer, songwriter, star, they download.
-
and 3) even if young people want to learn to play guitar, there are millions of used, and hand-me down instruments available for people to use at little or no cost without having to buy a "new" guitar. Originally Posted by Greentone
-
I don't think it's the Death of Guitar, as much as the death of sales of millions of guitars to part time hobbyists. Maybe we'll actually get some musicians again, and people who actually want to learn more than the first 3 frets of their instrument.
I never cared for most rock guitar riff inspired music, except for the rare one that actually contained a song (Layla i.e.) I did like the 1950's Blues and R&B guitar music that preceeded it!
-
Yeah, jads57. I still perform blues and R&B. As a jazz guitarist, I _can_ play long lines with LOTS of notes...more than most rock guys, truth be told. BUT, in an authentic blues context, this would not be appropriate. There are moving lines in blues that are pure economy of notes, but delivered with considerable emotion/feeling.
-
These things go in cycles - guitar based music will be in the backburner for a while and then come back to the front. How long it will take, that I don't know.
-
Ahem, I started the conversation on this article the day it came out...
The death of guitar?
Anyway, it is what it is, and 50% fewer guitars sold over the last decade can't be argued with. It's not just poor business decisions, it's a lifestyle change.
I agree the guitar won't go away and probably will come back into the forefront at some point. But, I'll just point out when I was a youngster ALL the groups were guitar groups. Every kid I knew wanted to be in a band like the Beatles. Imagine every baby boomer out there flooding into guitar shops, which were all over the place at the time, buying cheap Japanese guitars and signing up for lessons to play like the Beatles and the Ventures.
My own 4 kids came of age in the 90's-00's, when synths, sampling and all other kinds of non-guitar stuff were the rage. They learned piano, cello, viola, sax and percussion, but no one wanted to play guitar. (Though subsequently all of them have gotten ukes and 2 of them have gotten guitars, because as we all know you can't accompany yourself while singing with a viola or sax.)
It's like baseball. Every kid in my day wanted to be Hank Aaron or Pete Rose. Many kids today have never even seen a complete baseball game from first to last out. The times, they are a-changing...
-
Let me know when L-5's are selling for a grand. I will be buying as many as I can.
-
Stringswinger,
I remember when a grand would get you an L-5 all-day, any day. It's really only after about 1980 that they started to cost more than that.
-
Back in 1980, the US Population looked like this:
The biggest component of the population was the Baby Boom generation, which was in its 20s, at that point. The Boomers were in bands, going to concerts, etc. Guitars--which the Boomers had grown up with--were the rage.
By 2000, the Boomers were in their peak purchasing years, in terms of buying power and willingness to purchase things.
This really put a premium on the Les Pauls, Strats, L-5s, ES-175s, etc., that Boomers wanted as youngsters, but could now afford.
The Boomers can now afford those purchases, but largely (1) have the guitars they want, and (2) are weighing those purchases against putting more money in their 401(k) accounts. Some Boomers are even divesting their guitar collections and putting the proceeds into 401(k)s.
Add this to the changing tastes among youth and you have a big puzzle for the folks at Gibson, Fender, Martin, etc., to figure out.
-
The market is what it is. It was clearly saturated, with many more guitars than people who could play them. I would be more worried if there were no longer any interesting guitar players in our times, but look at what people like Julian Lage and Chris Eldridge are doing, and they're what, 30 years old? Those are just two examples among many. Simply amazing, and unprecedented in popular music given their young age. There may be a decline of the guitar's audience, yes, but the level has never been higher. Combine that with an unprecedented ease of access to quality instruction, and the guitar's future looks pretty safe - I think.
-
No offense I love Julian Lage like nobody's business, but how many guitars has he sold vs (back in the day) Luther Perkins, Scotty Moore, George and John of the Beatles, Dave Davies, Pete Townsend, Jimi Hendrix, etc.?
It's the broadly popular artists that generate interest and sales. Only about 10% of current pop music even includes something that sounds vaguely like a guitar, and a lot of these songs are by Taylor Swift. There's your problem.
Personally I think that extreme virtuosity turns off many people. When I was a kid, I wanted to play like Luther Perkins (Folsom Prison Blues) or George Harrison (Ticket to Ride). I did not want to play like Jimi, because I thought he was too out there, and I would never be able to play like that. That's still the case, btw.
-
On the subject of new guitar playing pop stars you do have these guys with their signature instruments...
You must take into account all the proceeding guitaristic stars and how easy it is to find their back catalogue through digital media and be inspired. If i had access to limitless music back in time I would have been so very excited. I remember trying to hunt down obscure music and how difficult it was. Getting Beefheart and Pere Ubu stuff was a challenge let alone any images to see what instruments they played. Now all I have to do is double click and I'm there!
Just for good measure here's how easy it is......
And......
(the most obscurest supergroup ever)
-
-
Pretty oblivious to all this, personally. I happen to play the guitar, whether electric or otherwise, because it's the instrument I became skilled on as a teenager: if guitars didn't exist I'd be playing piano, I suppose. Don't like blowing into brass tubes ...
As I write, my daughter is running through some basic guitar chords so she can sit under a pine tree this summer and jam with a friend of hers who also strums a bit. Here, the (acoustic) guitar comes into its own as a super-portable, dynamically versatile polyphonic instrument, nothing to do with trends or Taylor Swift. Anyway, it's better than gazing into the screen of a iPad for hours on end.
The days of "hey, I got 3 power chords and some pentatonic noodling down, so let's start checking out that youtube review of 23 different OD pedals" are maybe over? I'm sort of hoping so. Here's a thought: in my town when I was 14 and let rip with some Led Zep riff in front of a group of friends, they would sit there in awe (not that I was seeking that) because they simply didn't know anyone else who did that. Now, at the click of a mouse you can see literally hundreds of (10 year old) kids doing it on the net, and shredding to boot, so maybe that kills some teen motivation right there.
-
"Nobody knew guitar could be so complicated." ;-) Originally Posted by Peter C
Reply With Quote
“Shearing style”
Today, 05:26 PM in Comping, Chords & Chord Progressions