. They only use the upright bass for the concert band. The marching band only uses an electric bass. Actually the concert band uses the upright bass and 2 electric basses.
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Guitar Center Gloom
- Thread starter txhawaii
- Start date
. They only use the upright bass for the concert band. The marching band only uses an electric bass. Actually the concert band uses the upright bass and 2 electric basses.
I really don't see the doom and gloom. People don't stick with things they start is common across pretty much all hobbies. At least you're selling starter guitars. Oh, and lessons. Maybe Guitar Center needs to up their lesson game?
"A lot of people are bringing up Led Zeppelin - did any of them know about Muddy Waters, Howlin Wolf, T-Model, Junior Kimbrough?"
Or Jeff Beck, or even Buddy Guy.
This always bugs me when someone says Page (or Clapton) was the greatest player ever. I ask them if they know any of the above.
They rarely do.
I wonder how much the sales on guitar centerās beginner instruments have slowed down. But letās stop and think. During the pandemic we know that guitar sales really increased. Wasnāt it inevitable that eventually things would return to sort of normal and guitar sales would go back to being what they were prior to the pandemic? Retail ALWAYS thinks sales have dropped from the previous years even though there may have been some act of God that caused the sales increase from the previous year whether guitars and the pandemic or groceries and ice storms or hurricanes. It stands to reason that the more guitars sold will naturally mean more guitars that will eventually be taken to pawnshops or back to guitar center a couple of years later. Maybe we are out of touch with the younger generation and they still play instruments like the guitar. Iām just saying guitar centerās data might be misguided
It is -
But then sometimes those same people put down Blues Artist. Also it's just kind of annoying that they borrow, I'm not saying they stole. Blues guys do it all the time and The Doors outright joked that they stole all the time of course they had variations but these guys made loads of money, didn't give credit now till the end of time people of all ages, backgrounds, are gonna think LZ wrote this, did that etc. Well it's annoying because they didn't... nobody's fault but my was written by Blind Willie Johnson who was blind, died in his burnt down house of malaria. His music was sent on the golden voyager so that's cool but imagine how many people think LZ made that song. How many people think a stereotypical rock band in sex, drugs, rock n roll wrote a very powerful religious song from East Texas... which outside of SRV is a rare place to have blues archive. I'm sorry I'm up on it, I'm not at all into the that whole typical Social Justice thing somewhat slightly opposite in fact, I have my views but when it comes to the Blues it deserves respect if you ask me. I'm probably just sensitive but that's all.
I bring this up because yesterday I shared a Kimbrough song with someone and they said "This sounds a lot like the doors, did they steal that riff?" huh...
Thanks for listening to my TedTalk.
What makes me happy is when people cross the streams:
For whatever reason the kids these days are latching onto Aphex Twin and MF DOOM numbers and doing jazz interpretations or playing them straight in other genres. There's a British band called OMA that specializes in covers of underground hip-hop beat tracks with rock instruments (guitar, bass, drums, keys).
There's always been a bit of mischief in music covers -- in the 60s it was playing Bach in jazz or rock styles, in the 90s it was doing lounge covers of grunge, and so on. This time around though, I think it's the positive result of a generation of kids who grew up with every possible style of music at their fingertips, picking up good melodies and rhythms and interpreting them the way earlier generations of jazz cats would pick up classic songbook numbers and turn them inside-out. Granted that pedal steel version of "Avril 14" is nine years old now but search youtube for "Avril 14" and you'll have an afternoon's worth of variations in a jaw-dropping range of musical styles.
In my band when they had pit they would use the EB in the pit. Same during basketball or when sitting on the stands. Usually the EB player would learn Sousa or Euphonium to help at least in my band if they wanted to march. Maybe carrying a giant generator and amp in a cart ain't bad...
A non-musician friend recently told me he read an article essentially stating that ācasual collectorsā like me were propping up the music instrument industry, and that without regular people having collections of dozens or hundreds of guitars/basses, the industry would collapse.
The real issue is not the number of new musicians who stick with it or not. The real issue is the longevity of an instrument. Guitars made in the 50ās and 60ās still work just as good as new ones (with some tlc). Of course value on those vintage instruments has grown to the point many people donāt play them daily. But if you look at how many new instruments are made each year, it far outweighs the number of new musicians who started playing that year.
Itās kinda a pyramid issue - itās never going to get better. More and more people need to become collectors just to absorb the number of instruments in circulation. Guitar shop inventory will climb higher and higher as the unsold instruments pile up.
āLuckilyā, there seems to be WAY fewer basses made each year - closer to a more sustainable amount - though much fewer bass players out there, and again, I bet many of us have become collectors. Gone are the days where you own just one bass or one guitar.
It will get worse in the future. Thereās no way to avoid it. Keep pumping new instruments in to circulation, eventually the whole system will collapse. There may be a day when our collections become worthless - like a collection of accordions - and no one wants to pay more than $100 for a 1960ās Jazz bass. If Iām still around, and in a financial position to act, I will buy a massive warehouse, and go around purchasing hundreds of thousands of vintage instruments to fill it with!
(but even spends $50M on a massive collection I could never even play each for 1 second, it would be a drop in the bucket for the instrument market.)
The real issue is not the number of new musicians who stick with it or not. The real issue is the longevity of an instrument. Guitars made in the 50ās and 60ās still work just as good as new ones (with some tlc). Of course value on those vintage instruments has grown to the point many people donāt play them daily. But if you look at how many new instruments are made each year, it far outweighs the number of new musicians who started playing that year.
Itās kinda a pyramid issue - itās never going to get better. More and more people need to become collectors just to absorb the number of instruments in circulation. Guitar shop inventory will climb higher and higher as the unsold instruments pile up.
āLuckilyā, there seems to be WAY fewer basses made each year - closer to a more sustainable amount - though much fewer bass players out there, and again, I bet many of us have become collectors. Gone are the days where you own just one bass or one guitar.
It will get worse in the future. Thereās no way to avoid it. Keep pumping new instruments in to circulation, eventually the whole system will collapse. There may be a day when our collections become worthless - like a collection of accordions - and no one wants to pay more than $100 for a 1960ās Jazz bass. If Iām still around, and in a financial position to act, I will buy a massive warehouse, and go around purchasing hundreds of thousands of vintage instruments to fill it with!
(but even spends $50M on a massive collection I could never even play each for 1 second, it would be a drop in the bucket for the instrument market.)
The only hope is for a resurgence of the Pete Townsend "Art Smash" encore... I wish I could find find the interview where Pete talks about playing encores in the Who's later years. "When we first started coming back on stage to do encores, my feelings were ***? Then I remembered that in the old days, it was never a question, since we destroyed the instruments..."A non-musician friend recently told me he read an article essentially stating that ācasual collectorsā like me were propping up the music instrument industry, and that without regular people having collections of dozens or hundreds of guitars/basses, the industry would collapse.
The real issue is not the number of new musicians who stick with it or not. The real issue is the longevity of an instrument. Guitars made in the 50ās and 60ās still work just as good as new ones (with some tlc). Of course value on those vintage instruments has grown to the point many people donāt play them daily. But if you look at how many new instruments are made each year, it far outweighs the number of new musicians who started playing that year.
Itās kinda a pyramid issue - itās never going to get better. More and more people need to become collectors just to absorb the number of instruments in circulation. Guitar shop inventory will climb higher and higher as the unsold instruments pile up.
āLuckilyā, there seems to be WAY fewer basses made each year - closer to a more sustainable amount - though much fewer bass players out there, and again, I bet many of us have become collectors. Gone are the days where you own just one bass or one guitar.
It will get worse in the future. Thereās no way to avoid it. Keep pumping new instruments in to circulation, eventually the whole system will collapse. There may be a day when our collections become worthless - like a collection of accordions - and no one wants to pay more than $100 for a 1960ās Jazz bass. If Iām still around, and in a financial position to act, I will buy a massive warehouse, and go around purchasing hundreds of thousands of vintage instruments to fill it with!
OK playa's, get with it...
a 12 yr old girl once asked me if I liked the Arctic Monkeys (2000s English rock band) and that she collected their vinyl. She wore a scarf, bangles on her wrists, bangs in her eyes. Rockers still exists.
There are some acceptably playable basses these days for $100. Smashable and easily replaceable. Its crazy.
My niece is 15 and super into Radiohead, Deftones, RATM, etc. I'm not real sure why so many younger people are into that period of music but it's cool to see. I get to be the cool uncle and pass down all my old band shirts to her haha
This isnāt exactly late breaking news.I'm not sure if this was posted as this story seems to be about a week.
Guitar Center CEO seems to fear lost sales as many young people just don't stick with music. One out of ten, he claims, stay with it after a year, nine drop out.
Is social media destroying the youth's attention span to concentrate?
The young might not want our vintage gear we spent so much on.
Hark! The dawn of AI music is upon us unless we can create more musicians!!
āFor every 10 people who start playing guitar, a year later, one person is playing, and nine are notā: Guitar Center is looking to create more ālong-termā musicians ā hereās how
Guitar Center is amping up new ways to nurture the futures of budding musicians within its stores.guitar.com
I donāt agree: I teach science at an urban NYC high school. There is a small but noticeable group of students absolutely drawn to rock and jazz music. And they play and want to play instruments. In fact, one of them invited me to one of their jam sessions after school in the band room, and they were infatuated the bass. I now have a group of kids begging me to teach them āhow to slapā and of course āhow to playā. I introduced one young lady to the playing of Rhonda Smith and MeāShellā¦ 
That was kind of true even back in the hallowed "good old days" - I remember seeing Buddy Guy with Jr. Wells in the 80s for $5 and there weren't more than 20 people in the audience. Same with John Lee Hooker. (Both had revivals releasing albums with more - then- contemporary artists not long after.)
The definition of Boomers is a very wide swath in age, and some have pointed out that it's too wide - many of us were born way after the end of WW2 - so far after it that we were born after the Korean War as well, and we don't share all that much in common with the older boomers. "Generation Jones" has been proposed to deal with that - from 1955 to 1964 birth dates.
