The Slow Secret Death of the Electric Guitar

[Lurker13]

Yeah, they're right. The guitar's not the future...



...synthesizers are!

Oh boy oh boy more modular synth demos that all sound like they came from 1968..... So new, so fresh.. So... Mindfuckingly boring...

See, Trump doesn't need to waterboard anyone, all he has to do is force them to listen to these guys until they crack.

[jrfox92]

A lot of kids aren't into classic rock and grunge. Do the younglings have their own genre?

Shoegaze* and psych-rock, in my experience.
All the kids that are/were into grunge play shoegaze and doom.
All the kids whose parents were into classic rock play psych-rock.
Everyone else plays Line 6's and 8-string Ibanez's.

*Actually, I think the farts that grew up in the 80's are calling it "nu-gaze" now.

[Andrew]

I don't see how you save Rock and Roll by covering the same songs from the 60s and 70s over and over. I genuinely love The Beatles but I don't see the point of anything more than learning a song or two to play in front of friends.


Hell, I just picked up a used PodHD500 and am having fun tweaking settings, more of everything is better.

[rustywire]

Sticking with an instrument is sage advice in the early phase. When one lacks experience it's harder to focus and chart progress if changing guitar/bass every few months. Also I like to think I'm a fast learner but familiarity helps me play by feel, which is the approach I try to take as someone prone to overthinking things. Stuffy thinking? Not interested.

Other than the bit about sticking with an instrument...the tone of that merchant-lifer is stuffy af.
Stuffier than a vw beetle with rolled up windows parked in a greenhouse on the hottest day of the year.

NSFW: show

Electric guitar as we know it is now about 75 years old. The effects which expand its horizons, many decades old as well.
It's been reinvented through these technological innovations, several times throughout the years, and tastes are cyclical.
What that old merchant thinks of re: a cool image, is not shared by teenagers and young adults. Seems like he thinks little of new musicians and has narrow idea of the right way to do things. Boring.

Speaking of stuffy tudes, many venue owners dont want to spend money on live music, and when they do it aint to take risks.
CBGBs is RIP. 18 year old drinking age, too. Affordable days of entertainment are basically gone and young people do not have the same disposable income of the past 40 years as COL expenses have only gone up while wages have been stagnant.
It's observably true, the attitude toward music itself (guitar-driven and other) is no longer widely valued as it once was; now it's almost expected to be heard for free. Outside of the Nashville bubble, few remaining record companies devote resources to the type of music that merchant wants to hear.

But yeah, the blame is obv on millennials for not producing and emulating a weedily deedily figurehead who dresses like The Riddler.

[Jwar]

Here's my actual thoughts on this.

If the electric guitar is down in sales, I say good. The reason I say this is there is a serious lack of talent in artists in the last decade or more. Everything is lazy, rehashed bullshit for the most part. I speaking exclusively on the mainstream types of music but it could be said for a lot of fucking underground bands as well.

What I hear, people remaking music that has been remade to fucking death and remaking it badly. Or creating new music that sounds like their old music. Or bands trying to emulate 90's bands (this has been so fucking annoying I want to scream and throw up all at the same time). Then you have drone. One riff played at varying speeds or the exact speed for an extended period of time. That is lame. It's not cool. It's LAME. I do that when I so fucking bored and don't feel like putting effort into actually playing, so I can't imagine the guys who sell these albums that are drone actually are talented. LOL.

So in a way, I say fuck the guitar and I'm being serious. There are too many guitar players. It's gotten ridiculous over the years. It used to be a thing that you picked up and actually learned. Now it's all noodling. Which, I'm as guilty of as the next guy.

I want to see a massive return of classical instruments. I know that sounds a bit silly, but that would be amazing to me.

I lost my train of thought now...if I ever had one...soooooooooooo....yea....

[Strange Tales]

Yea but what are your thoughts on djent?

[Jwar]

Yea but what are your thoughts on djent?

Other than Meshuggah, it sucks ass.

[D.o.S.]

Meh no one plays the lyre anymore either.

[comesect2.0]

When I play guitar I never look at strings or what I'm doing, all noodles...it's all air guitar, station! The future of music is me farting on a snare drum...it will get even more tech, then fads of combining old with new methods, feeding computers data from some kinda data scanner pen which when fed into a program formulates a rythm organic and pure non gmo fresh music..like scan your lawn or your pubes and the topography of said area will become the musical score.....Need more horn woodwind players, Sound the horns!

[Lurker13]

The future of music is me farting on a snare drum...

Woof...I don't want to be in the room for that. I'm glad odors aren't transmitted sonically.

[tremolo3]

The future of music is farts...

It is happening with all the synth craze, no?

[repoman]

'Death of guitar' is too shortsighted. Its the death of music (and visual art/media available through the internet, "fine art" died many decades ago when it transformed into a method of tax avoidance/elite liquidity for the ultra rich).

The internet has ruined art in popular culture. I think there must be some degree of desirability, when everything is accessible, nothing is desirable.

You could say that electronic instruments are having increasing sales but thats a piss in the ocean compared to traditional pop instrument sales like electric guitar.
Comparatively, people don't buy music anymore, they don't go see bands any more, they don't value music. Same with movies which were kind of the art of the 20th century along with music. They go to a movie and sit and pretend they are enjoying it or connecting with whatever dumb shit some guy in a spandex suit is zipping around the sky fighting Lord Gorgol or something idiotic.
There is nothing to replace, the interest is gone. Its a mostly a very superficial aspect of peoples lives compared to the past.

[jrfox92]

Comparatively, people don't buy music anymore, they don't go see bands any more, they don't value music. Same with movies which were kind of the art of the 20th century along with music. They go to a movie and sit and pretend they are enjoying it or connecting with whatever dumb shit some guy in a spandex suit is zipping around the sky fighting Lord Gorgol or something idiotic.
There is nothing to replace, the interest is gone. Its a mostly a very superficial aspect of peoples lives compared to the past.

People can't afford to spend $25 on a record with only two songs you like every single week, anymore. Same with going to concerts (which are only getting more and more expensive, it seems).
Your argument about film (and your argument in general) is just the standard old-guy rant about how "they don't make 'em like they used to."
There's more to modern film than fantasy and sci-fi. Just because you don't enjoy or connect with it, doesn't mean everyone feels the same.
Just because kids aren't spending all their money on records and concerts doesn't mean they don't value music. It just means they're fucking poor.

[ritz]

"... This has been today's pessimistic thought for the day. Brought to you by: repoman."

[comesect2.0]

Actually...I cover the fart sounds from my noise synth's with fuzz...it's like you get to the end of a energetic session and your turning the knobs down to slow down/fade out, and the voltage starve ends up tooting and it ruins the whole feeling of mayhem...

art is not dead ...music, movies whatever...something truly amazing and "hott/fresh/new" is being done all time..just how far can it go.....your not going to get that old fashioned feeling from whats shown to you as new, what's old will recycle back in HD
...instead of one single show in the hot shit seat for all to praise as up and comming nirvana, you get 30,000 people all over the world and the 900 ways of promotion which leads to everyone seen without true work("shows") instant a rock stars
...instead of a collaborative new pixar company or mothers of invention...you get movies trying to be a B corman flick, like mocking ones own capabilities as a director...doing something so lame it will get noticed but leaves you with no promise of any career, "look I did it and can show people I did!"
Or
get a deep emotional stance pose going looking like your mother never fed you and your daddy didn't pay for all your gear and talk about love, partys, and some teenyboper train of thought masked by a studio engineer, pay some shmuk to set you up on the tonight show and bam, whole country sees just what music is and how it's done...and they sadly eat it up and cry clapping....
..sitting trying to have a burger yesterday at a joint and music blarring "party every day, party everyday, don't ya like it yeah don't you want it" some crap some plug in wack wannabe synth track..hah
Point is where does inspiration come from...gotta have models, teachers, spirit guides....if somthing was good, it is because someone took all peices from older models, teachers, & spirits of old and in combination with that individuals wittiness threw life experiences and collaborative effort and hard years of WORK, the ripple runs loose...now it's lame because everything has been taken from, how does one regain a sense of how important what your doing is? On movie sets people sit with cellphones, instead of being in the moment and that moment is all you know.