Originally Posted By: Notes Norton
In my parents day the Trumpet and to a lesser extent the Trombone were the kings of pop music solos. Before that it was the violin.

The clarinet and accordion entered the scene.

Then the sax which during the early rock era, was the king of pop music solos.

With the invention of sustaining technology the guitar gradually took it's place, and the keyboard synth horned in too. Today the sax is rarely heard in pop, and usually for a repetitive figure if it is. (Fortunately I play for an older audience that still loves the sax).

Now the guitar seems to be fading out in the place of things like Ableton Live and other DJ looping machines. (Fortunately I play for an older audience that still loves the guitar).

Everything runs in cycles.

Like the trumpet, trombone, sax, the guitar isn't going to disappear, it just isn't the alpha dog anymore.

That's my opinion anyway.


Your opinion, but supported by history. I was going to write about the same thing in response to this article, but you wrote it well.

I started noticing the slow death when reviewing CDs starting about 15 years ago, even guitar-heavy bands were just using the electric guitar for rhythm, leaving out leads. There are TONS of growler vocalist, chugga-chugga bands these days playing not only 6 but also ye olde 7-string and 8-string electric guitars, but there seems to be less and less lead lines and solos. This isn't 100% true, but the guitar solo seemed to leave rock music as a 'must have' quite a long time ago. What I have enjoyed in pop-rock lately, however, is a return to some really catchy rhythm guitar work. This was missing for a couple decades in my opinion, with guitar slingers like Johnny Marr seeming to be missing. These days, you have bands like Colony House, which are bringing it with pop-tastic, clean-tone hooky chord work. Here's an example that's an example of what I'm talking about: https://youtu.be/IBTB54ty-tc?list=PLKXpG3IlfP1p2of_2C1735cFXewK-h00G

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