Will there be an end for both instruments and music?
 

Last year I saw a video here on TB (published by Taylor Guitars), about the use of Ebony wood becoming a danger for the enviroment. There is now only one place in the world were this wood comes from. So it wouldn't surprise me if it would happen soon or late with other wood species, that they will become extremely hard to get since so many people play instruments nowadays .

Besides the wood that will be difficult to get, I noticed that more and more people have issues with others, since band names or music they made, look exacly like their music.

Is it possible that there will be a time that there is an end for getting woods to produce instruments and people can't make up new music anymore?

Just saying...
And though this still has what looks like a rosewood fingerboard, I'm pretty sure composite/aluminum/whatever necks have already been around for a pretty long time.
I'm sure 50 years ago people couldn't have even fathomed all the multiple directions music has gone leading to the vast musical expanses that we are at today. Trying to predict where its going to go in another 50 years (or even 25 years for that matter) is pointless. For better or worse, you never know what the next big thing is gonna be until it hits, and then what it will inspire in the next generation of musicians, and so on and so forth.



And finally I wanted to note, it's not like a large amount of musicians have ever had a problem with ripping off those that came before them anyway. As long as the music is good, who cares?

::EDIT:: Sorry for the ginormous pic.

We will run out of plastic to make acrylic long before we run out of wood.
There are dozens of local, quick growing species that provide perfect wood for electric instruments.
Even acoustic instruments can be made with nothing but local, renewable woods.
As for ebony, considering how long they take to grow, people should have planted acres of them 30 years ago so we'd star to get usable wood again.

We're already seeing the scarcity of wood. The pine that is used to build houses if fast grown and in no way resembles the quality of the old slow-grown woods the country was originally built on. (look at how far the rings are spaced apart!) This is because of the demand, the lack of time to grow a tree slowly, and because land available for such is becoming scarcer as the population increases and land is developed for housing. If you wanted to invest in something to leave your grandchildren that would be very valuable, wood would be a good choice.
That said, they are already trying to figure out ways to grow wood off shore and composite materials are already in bass guitars. (The Ebony substitute on some Fender fingerboards is really wonderful to play.) And we're already seeing bamboo flooring because it grows so fast. I expect you'll see a lot more of that in the future.

Hi.

IIRC what we consider man-made music predates written language by quite a few milleniums.
I'd assume that when we have de-evolved back to where we started from, we'll still have music.

We also have an ample supply of wood, by mass/volume I for example heat our home with more than a few instruments worth every day.
Not instrument or even furniture grade wood obviously, but still.

So I'll answer no, and no.

Regards
Sam

Psh, we always have Canada. How many people actually live up there, 2,3, maybe 4 hundred people tops?

Perhaps in 50 to 100 years all music will be electronic generated so wood will not be needed for instruments. Seems like we are already going in that direction.

Most of your softwood comes from up here.

lowsound

Especially true if one is of the conviction that body wood does not matter for the tone of solidbody instruments (there have been a few very interesting experiments in that regard)

I think wood is the least of our problems. New materials keep coming.

American hardwood conservation and replanting efforts have resulted in many species growing faster than the lumber industry harvests them.

As long as people are interrested in making music there will always be musical instruments. Certain kinds of wood may be getting more scarce but there are plenty of good alternates still around.

THis is the case in most developed countries, forests are healthier and bigger than they were a century ago.
Unfortunately it isn't true in 3rd world and developing countries where primal forests are destroyed at an alarming rate and leave room to bad soils for dispensious growing.

Maybe not all music will be electronic, but I think we will start using other materials and build even new kinds of instruments - the kinds we are not even imagining today.

Somebody will be playing my upright 100 years from now.

I think for some of us there is something very organic about playing the bass (or any other fretted or fretless instrument) so I think humans will always be inclined to play.

Dumb , just plain dumb

By that time it will be up to the cockroaches...and they'll be playing Peavey!

X8

When the human race goes extinct, there will be no more human music. There are probably other forms of music created by other species around the universe, so until that ends there will probably be some sort of music.

Nah. If we ever run out of wood for instruments, we've got bigger problems than making instruments.

+1

And to you saying we are moving towards electronic music, the pendulum shall swing back. Just give it time. Metal will rise from the cracks to dominate the music industry once more!

In all seriousness though, who even thought about an 11 string bass before y2k? Or half of the styles of music (not synthesized) that have developed over the past two decades? No, my friends. We will never evolve past the point of having instruments, the instruments themselves will evolve to suit the changing of times.

And custom luthiers will continue to hate the crazy ideas we come up with more and more and more :)