PG Music Home Forums General Discussion Off-Topic The slow, secret death of the six-string electric

Careful. You posted an awful lot about that new cabin of yours. I would hate to see anything happen to it. Those piano players can get pretty crazy from what I hear.

-A drummer

well.... Herb is in the home security business. You don't think he'd live in a house that wasn't protected by wall to wall video surveillance, do ya? And what fun is it to live in the country if you don't set one or two booby traps for intruders? Even without video cameras, in the country you can tell somebody is coming by the unmistakable sound of car tires on gravel. If the driveway is long enough, you have plenty of time to prepare your greeting (whatever form it might take)

Just sayin'. ;-)

Rumor has it that Herb's personal home security also includes the insurance company of Smith and Wesson and Remington and Uzi!

Proceed with caution..............plenty of caution!

Agreed, but the singer is the reason the guitar is having a slow, secret death.....

The way I see it is this:

It's a child's duty to rebel. This brings progress to the world. Children rebel with clothing, language, music and other ways.

So the child doesn't want to like his/her parent's music. Today the guitar is the instrument of the last generation and is as corny as the accordion was when I was growing up.

Notes

The guitar is corny according to who, you? Because I'm not seeing any evidence that young people think that.

There are three music stores in the city close to where I live, one just sells guitars, the other two sell a variety of instruments, but their guitar sections are the largest.

When I go to those stores, especially the guitar store, I am typically the oldest guy in the store, mostly it is young people checking them out.

"So the child doesn't want to like his/her parent's music"

Not wanting to like their parents music has nothing to do with not liking or wanting to play guitar.
Nice thing about guitar is it is not limited to one genre, you can play classical, country, rock, jazz, ... anything! .... so maybe a young person might not like his parents music, but he can invent his own guitar based music, something that has happened many times over the 80 years or so that the electric guitar has been around, that is a few generations of guitarists playing music different from what their parents played.

How many kids do you see drooling over a guitar player? Not many, most are going gaga for singers and DJs like Deadmau5.

No the guitar isn't going to die, but it has become the instrument of the older generation as far as pop music is concerned, and the sales numbers at Gibson, Fender, Ibanez and others show that.

Even country music doesn't have the guitar solos that it used to have.

So instead of being "king of the heap" in pop music like the sax, clarinet, trumpet, trombone, accordion and violin before that, the guitarist will just blend in.

I love playing guitar, but I can see it's popularity is on the decline and I'm not going to fool myself.

BTW, for the guys who thing guitar is sexier than drums, think again. I was in large bands for decades, and the drummer always got more girls than the guitar player.

Notes

But that's not because the guitar has become yesterday's accordion. And again, that point that there are no good solos in country music could be argued as I can easily point out a bunch, and I mean a bunch, of really good country guitar solos on songs.

Nashville execs are responsible for starting the whole thing about "no one wants to hear guitar solos anymore" because time is money and time is limited on radio. So as a result, solo's, the good solo's got cut down to a simple 4 bar solo/turnaround. But go and check out those bands and artists in concert where radio rules don't apply, and be prepared to have your jaw dropped. Some of the hottest guitar players are working in country music bands.

In general, the traditional approach to music, learning an instrument, is being replaced by computerized, mechanical methods. The producers have come to regard the music track, not countuing the vocals, as one of many production values -- lights, dancers, video effects, on and on.

(I was told that hip hop backing tracks come from three or four production studios. Most digital work stations supply loops that can launch the budding hip hopper into immediate stardom.)

That's only one factor. Electric guitar is a flexible instrument, and we are told that the musician actually plays the amp. I see it developing in that way -- triggers, controlled voltages, effects, etc. Kind of the Moog concept.

Now then will the system of tones and harmonies disappear?

The electric guitarist definitely plays the amp, along with the guitar and pedals.

And when you come to see me live you hear me playing a lot of guitar and sax solos, but you don't hear as much sax and guitar on pop records anymore. It took 50 years for the sax to completely disappear from the Billboard Top 40, and it might take that long for the guitar to do the same. But then again, like most of us who play the guitar, we hope that doesn't happen.

Insights and incites by Notes

So this was from the Today show 20 minutes ago...seems like a legit guitar solo (and band) overall. Not to mention the artist himself is fairly young.

There's A Guitar Solo In There!

What's old is new.

The fiddle seems to be going strong, not just in bluegrass, but in country. George Strait was a fiddle fan.
Listen to the intro of this "Closer Walk."
Mr. Travis is good with vocal slides, too.
https://youtu.be/sIfqa_741s0

The same article popped up on the Larrivée guitar forum, and I finally had a chance to read the article.

Oh good grief, what a click-bait title they gave it. This time, reading it made me angry with how many incorrect assumptions the author makes.

Here's what I wrote about the assumptions he made which I find to be fundamentally flawed: ( I might have gone a little hard on him for his Rush comment)

---------------


Assumption 1 not backed up by facts: Guitar solo heros - since there aren't as many now as the music styles drove in the 70's and 80's = death of electric guitar.

Wrong. Author is right that the guitar solo is no longer a standard feature in pop music;

However, name one Beatles killer guitar solo or the Beatle's guitar hero worship song. The Beatles had great riffs, but very little in the way of blistering solos. The Beatles were hugely responsible for the surge in guitar sales at the time. Epiphone was sure glad for the Beatles. The lack of pop-culture worship of soloist wizardry does not equal a death of the electric guitar. Here's the actual reality; there are thousands of guitar wizards across the planet today that only YouTube users know about. Guitar solo wizardry has become somewhat of a commodity. Long ago, that wasn't the case. There are under 10 year old kids that can play anything that the guitar heros of olde were know for - they didn't invent it, but they can play it. Pick any killer solo, with the words '10 year old' on a Youtube search, and you are almost assured some kid has a video posted of him or her blazing through an Eddie Van Halen solo and doing an insanely good job of it. You'll also find all the tablature and notation you need, the signal chain, etc. We used to have to pay for all of that in sheet music, magazines, etc. Ability to record a video of a kid doing a burning solo - that's in your pocket.

Assumption 2: Financial trouble at Gibson, Guitar Center, Fender = slow death of the electric guitar. Again wrong. Bad business decisions, among other things, drive Gibson's problems. Not a lack of interest in guitars. Gibson and Fender both (Gibson more guilty of this) have such a fear of moving away from their 4 core models and marketing them. If it isn't a Strat or LP, or Tele, or SG - then it's not worthy of investment; just figure out ways to make them cheaper overseas. Gibson and Fender both equipped the world's low cost country's abilities to make decent quality instruments for next to no money; which that is what enabled the millions to afford cheap guitars not branded Fender or Gibson.

Assumption 3: Gruhn's sales down = slow death of the electric guitar. Again wrong. I've been to Gruhn Guitars new location in Nashville. One of those Mecca experiences like shopping at Elderly Instruments in East Lansing, MI. Elderly has some affordable stuff, Gruhn does not. By affordable, I mean something that a kid can buy and learn on. I loved being at Gruhn, but that was as a 40+ year old man. They have a great selection of expensive instruments. They cater to the professional musician at his store, and he can afford to do that being in Nashville with all the pros and the wannabe pros. If it wasn't for Gruhn, I wouldn't know about the 8 string baritone that Taylor has on the market and on my 'to purchase someday' list.

Assumption 4: Kids learning 30-50 year old songs at Schools of Rock instead of newer songs = death of electric guitar. There are loads more resources for learning older songs than brand new ones. Lot's more lessons, lots more YouTube videos on how to play the older songs, etc. You learned classical music before modern keyboard music if you took lessons, that's just the way that it is.

Not an assumption, but shows the author's lack of understanding of Rush and perhaps his past-pop-culture only view of guitar in general: "Rush’s prog-metal is not for beginners, with its time shifts and reggae twist."

It's clear that the author has listened to exactly one Rush song in his lifetime: "Spirit of the Radio", and he heard it at his visit to a School of Rock. Name another Rush song that has a 'reggae twist'. Would you EVER characterize Rush, in a single sentence opportunity, as stating it has a 'reggae twist'? Did he mistakenly mix up Rush with The Police? There's hardly more than 20 seconds total of reggae in that 5+ minute long song, and quite possibly the only famous 20 seconds of anything reggae in all of Rush's decades long discography. For that matter, 'metal'?

There is no death of electric guitar - I would guess it's more popular than ever, it's just not controlled by a select few companies; same as music in general. Same as GM, Ford and Chrysler learning the hard lessons of having to compete with global competition.

Album Oriented Rock is not as popular since the early 80's; AOR lends itself to longer songs and therefore room for a guitar solo - well, that's probably not coming back. But neither are video arcades, shopping malls, the Big 3 dominance of the auto industry, etc. But do people still play video games, buy stuff, drive cars? Absolutely, more than ever. The types of things that are in these categories has spread out with less dominant character, but by no means are any of them going away. This is what happens with more and more individual choice.

An absolutely Excellent response. Thanks for the great effort.

An excellent and very true response Rockstar_Not.

rockstar_not,

Enjoyed reading your response. You made some excellent points. One item minimized or overlooked is the rise of the synth as a lead instrument, essentially replacing the guitar solo in recorded music.

The synth is being use to make crappy looped rifts in pop music. A real synth player is someone who is a real keyboardist, not some thriteen year old DJ wanna be who just want to creat music for clubs. Oh and the worst part, most of DJs don't own a real synth oor a midi keyboard for their virtual synth or even know any music theory. You want proof, listen to every edm song and hear the four on the floor kick drum and the same sanre roll.

Also, if you want to keep your instrument alive, you have to be to do so. You have to be the to showcase the use of the instrument in solos, melodies etc.

I don't know, I think that instrumental solos of any kind are pretty much non-existent in today's pop music. The last time I can think of popular keyboard solos in pop music goes back into the 80s with songs like Toto's Rosanna, Al Jarreau's Mornin, etc. I can't think of a single pop tune from the last 25 years with a keyboard solo. Maybe Bruce Hornsby's first hit but again that was the 80's or early 90's. Maybe a topic for a different thread?

Electric guitar and associated gear/gadgets seem to be growing in popularity in the Houses of Worship. Though, I don't have statistics.
Guitar solos usually don't fit well in church services but the variety of color tones, fills, transitions, and ambient effects is certainly taking it's place.