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Originally Posted by Johnny_Rotter
Hard to say really, I defiantly think rock n roll's prominence has been in decline over the last few decades, in the light of the rise of R & B and other forms of manufactured music.
Hmmm I'm feeling philisophical so I'll argue four points for its decline, 1)technology, 2) Diminishing talent 3) the prominence of counter culture and 4) changing demographics. People can freely agree or disagree with me
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R&B? I wouldn't say that's more popular than rock music, a lot of stuff that's called R&B nowadays really shouldn't be called R&B.
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Next came new wave which pretty much dominated the 80's with the synthesizer, there was of course many new wave rock bands (the police, U2 ect) as well the general prominence of pop rock on the air waves.
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You do realise U2 and The Police are two guitar dominated bands who hardly ever used synthesizers right?
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The 80's also saw the rise of a musical genre that many would argue has surpassed rock in popularity. Hip Hop (Rap) and R & B. Hip Hop of course doesn't use guitars but rather relies on turntables, but more importantly samplers.
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Not all of it, some rap groups such as The Roots actually used live musicians, including a guitarist.
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Rap's popularity would of course decline, but its legacy of samplers and beats would be incorporated by R & B artists such as Britney Spears, Beyonce, Bobby Brown, Justin Timberlake ect. The era of manufactured music was in full swing.
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Rap's popularity has never declined.
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Diminishing Talent
Technology has also brought about rock n roll (the guitar's decline) by contributing to diminishing talent in the music industry.
One reason why we don't have any Jimi Hendrix's or Jimmy Pages today is because they are all to busy playing Nintendo in their parents basement.
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As a gamer I take offense from this statement.
The reason we don't have any Hendrix's or Page's is not because we have a decline of talented musicians but rather just about everything you can do with a guitar has been done already, in the 60s and 70s, rock music was still very young so naturally there were a lot of guys with fresh ideas, now the genre is old and wore out. There's so many f*cking rock bands today it's ridiculous, it's pretty much impossible to be completely original.
We have too many crappy generic rock bands, if video games like guitar hero is distracting more people from starting their own Nickelback cover band than I really don't see that as being much of a loss.
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Back in the 60's and 70's there were not as many entertainment distractions unless you liked to play hours of pinball. Today we live in an era of mass media technology, seductive video games, text messages and a million other distractions to divert your time away from learning the guitar. Afterall its much less time consuming to learn to use a sampler than a muscial instrument.
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It's also really ignorant to state that the only reason there are so many electronic musicians is because they are too lazy to take up guitar. The truth is there is just no reason why every other f*cking musician should be a guitarist when there's so many kinds of instruments to choose from.
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The advent of technology has also helped the onset of diminishing music talent in an other way. Back in the 70''s if you were in a popular disco or funk band you had to know how to sing and how to play. Donna Summer, Gloria ***nor, Kool & the Gang ect, could all very much sing and play.
You don't have to have musical talent today, you just have to have the look. Britney Spears can't sing and she doesn't need to. They can just run her vocals through pro tools, alter the pitch of her vocals and she sounds like gold. So there is no need to hide the real singer in the C & C music video, when you can make anyone sound good, run thier vocals through musical software, and have them do what Madonna does at live shows. Lip synch.
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I can't argue with any of these points.
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The prominence of counter culture
There is one thing that the guitar can do that no other instrument can. Not the synthesizer, and not the 808 beat. And that is make a very heavy aggressive sound which has resulted in the birth of heavy metal and punk.
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I don't agree with this at all, the synthesizer can indeed have a very aggressive sound. A lot of prog bands did things with synthesizers that if they done the same with guitar they could have easily been considered proto metal.
And a lot of electronic music can be very very intense.
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For better or worse alternative rock, punk and metal have really come to dominate most of rock music today. It tends to be either angry or melancholy music, which is not suited for top 40. In some respect I think punks popularity has to do with declining talent, but that's just a personal opinon. Unless thier is a revival of pop rock bands like Def Leppard, Forieghner, The Cars, Eddie Money ect. I can' t see a widespread rock revival.
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In that case I'm quite grateful there isn't one.
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Changing Demographics
I'm from Canada so things might be different in the States where there is a growing aspanic population that largely shares the same culture. Despite its roots in blues, rock has always been the cultural realm of cacuasions whose birthrates are largely in decline. As Europe and North America shift to more muti cultural societies, its natural that the market share of rock is going to decline, if its not equally embraced by those immigrating from non western countries. As rock declines than so to will the guitar.
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First off I want to know where you are getting these sources from, I find these comments to be rather xenophonic and insensitive, for one rock music is not only popular in America, it's popular in many countries from around the world.
I'm pretty sure rock music is popular among the latino community.
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For me personally I think the guitar will remain prominent if it remains a technologically driven instrument. (IE my prefernce these days is electronic music, but learning to play the synth (Piano) is a pain. I much rather have a guitar or bass that gives me the option of a thousand different synth sounds.
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Yeah guitar synthesizers are awesome, I don't know why they're not used more often.