obsolete

I mentioned to a techno-loving colleague today that my son turns 6 years old tomorrow. He asked what I got my boy for presents, and I told him. He then suggested I buy him a sampler. I responsded that I would never buy such a thing for my son. (Being kind of a luddite in general, such devices generally threaten my worldview.) I then said if I was going to buy him something musical, I would buy a guitar WAAAAY before I ever considered a sampler. We then ended up in a big discussion where I was informed that instruments and bands are obsolete, that samplers and synthesizers are the only real instruments at this point in time, everything else having been made technologically obsolete, and that a guitar is just a quaint obsolete artifact that is only capable of sounding like a guitar, whereas a sampler and the proper software can turn anyone into a one-man conductor. I failed to put up a good rebuttal, and walked away feeling generally pissed and demoralized. Is there truth in this? Are us guitar-fetishizing, rock-n-roll-loving middle aged men walking dinosaurs? Am I obsolete?



Post Edited (10-22-09 23:21)

The musician in me switched to electronics in the '90s for the reasons your friend pointed out. It is liberating not to be trapped in typical verse/chorus/verse forms, same ol' chord progressions, standard tuning, etc. (Or have to rely on other musicians!)

The music fan/listener in me still loves to crank up some gee-tar noize every now and then. But artistically I just don't think there's much left you can do with guitars. From rockabilly to psych to metal to punk to all-hell-breaking-loose in the '80s (Sonic Youth, etc) there always seemed to be new directions to take guitar music. That's why I come here - to talk about the good ol' days. But since then? By the '90s it all seemed pretty exhausted. And Portishead and Public Enemy had that Thrill of the New.

But everyone also has synths nowadays. The wave of the future: accordians.

Everything is cyclical. In the late 70s Devo and the Human League were blowing on about the end of guitars, and that blather lasted until about 1983 when REM, Big Country, the Paisley Underground bands, etc., were hailed as the Second Coming of the guitar (although it had never gone away), then in the mid-90s electronica was going to be the wave of the future and guitar bands were going to go away and Radiohead, a three-guitar band ended up recording Kid A, an album notably short on guitars, and all that served to nicely set up the ascent of the Strokes and Interpol and all the guitar bands of the early part of the decade.

I don't think it matters what instrument you get a 6 year old. The most important thing is that the kid fall in love with music and with playing an instrument. At 6 the kid won't yet know where his talents are and which instrument best suits him, and neither will you. Many fine musicians switch instruments as they learn their talents, and some become multi-instrumentalists. The trick is to expose the child to different instruments so they can figure out what feels right to them, suits their abilities and allows them to express their musical thoughts best.

1. Happy birthday to your son. My oldest turns 6 on January 8th (the King's birthday).

2. Here is one example of why traditional rock instrumentation never goes out of style.

If guitar music is obsolete, then count me as a dinosaur.

Perhaps music made on a six-stringed instrument has ceased evolving. All I know is that when I listen to electronic music, I might think it's neat and cool and different for a year, or 6 months, or a few weeks, but then I grow bored or, worse, irritated with its own rather stulifying boundaries and go back to listening to artists who produce songs. Songs I can listen to multiple times over the course of years, if not decades. Maybe those artists aren't even remotely original or innovative, but that doesn't mean the work they produce is bad.

What your friend fails to note is that no matter what the instrument is, the imagination lies in the person, not the device - just because a person is using a sampler instead of a guitar doesn't mean he or she will break boundaries. Besides, doesn't a sampler take sounds made by other things, including musical instruments, and manipulate them? Why not buy the instruments and create your own original music, instead of futzing with someone else's?

But what do I know? My current favorite records are the self-titled album by Lions in the Street, which is firmly in the Stones/Faces tradition, and the new one by Ike Reilly, which is very much a traditional, Dylanesque singer/songwriter rock & roll record. I suspect both of those albums, as uninnovative and "obsolete" as they may be, will hold up long after the latest experimental electronic whosis championed by Pitchfork or Fader or whoever has retired to remix hell.

I'm not anti-sampler - I think they can be very useful tools and have created some interesting stuff (MrFab cites Public Enemy above, who have used samplers better than just about anybody, to my ears). But the idea that a sampler inherently makes music more interesting and that the kind of instrument you play instead of program is obsolete is just ludicrous.

I just go back to the fact that evolution in guitar music was proclaimed to be dead as far back as the late 70s, and since that time the Edge and Kevin Shields, to name just two, came along and showed that there were still some new tricks the old dog could learn in the hands of a player with vision and creativity. If anyone thinks the guitar is stagnant right now (I don't), it will only be so until the next individual with imagination and the willingness to whack at the strings, step on the pedals and twiddle the knobs until they hear something really different and cool comes along.

Hell, William Gibson still sees a place for guitar gods in the future and he probably foresaw the course of the last 20 years more clearly than any other writer. If he still thinks the future holds flesh and blood bands like Lo-Rez who revolutionize guitar music while managing to marry virtual sex symbols who only exist in cyberspace, I'm willing to take his word for it.

I've seen commentary on both sides for decades now — the obsolescence and the limitations of traditional instruments versus the sterility and "copying" methods of electronic ones. But the most creative, imaginative artists on both sides have proven that such arguments, in & of themselves, don't hold water.

It all depends on the individual, I suppose. Some kids will pick up a guitar and thrill to what they can wring out of it, whether it be power chords, jangle or wicked clangor. Others will get their hands on computerized instruments and get a kick out of the range they offer.

And some kids will stick to Guitar Hero and Rock Band and leave it at that.

Whatcha talkin' about? Samplers are great! See?

techno-loving
techno-loving
techno-loving colleague
techno-loving
techno-loving
techno-loving colleague
techno-loving
techno-loving
techno-loving colleague
techno-loving
techno-loving
techno-loving colleague

I haven't figured out the best b.p.m. setting yet ... or what random film dialogue to add ... but it's already catchy as hell. Catchy like ebola!

To quote Steve Martin: "Hey! I just wrote that! And I think it's gonna be a BIG, BIG hit!"

If I have to pay nosepail and his people a small royalty and drop his name into the liner notes ... so what? We'll all be rich, I tell you! Rich! Rich!! Rich!!!

And I guess it was coming to this sort of merger of the two outlooks ...

I just got back from a friend's house; he had a new guitar and amp to show me. The guitar was a Stratocaster, and the amp was a new, modern one that included presets to let him duplicate the sounds of about two dozen well-known guitarists, including Clapton, Hendrix, B.B. King et al.

I have a buddy who has one of those Fender cyber-amps that does that same thing. Of course, he takes the tone duplications and then runs them through other effects to warp them beyond their original sound.