The slow death of the electric guitar
It&#x27;s ironic that young people are losing interest in the guitar at a time when there is an amazingly enormous amount of resources freely available for learning it.<p>When I started to learn guitar several decades ago, I would learn guitar solos off of records by slowing them down to 16 rpm (old turntables could do that) and moving the needle back repeatedly to listen to tricky phrases over and over again. It was frustrating, time consuming, and hell on on the records.<p>Today, for just about any popular and many obscure guitar-oriented songs, you can find a Youtube video where someone breaks it down note by note and chord by chord. There are all kinds of resources online for learning scales and theory and online communities where an aspiring guitarist can connect with thousands of other like-minded people.<p>I would like to see guitar-oriented rock and roll make a comeback. The heavy metal subculture is thriving without any mainstream radio airplay to speak of, but aside from that, there&#x27;s just not that much going on.<p>If I see a local rock band play in a bar these days, about  80% of the time it will be all middle-aged men who have been playing for decades. Some of them are even retirement age.