The guitar apocalypse is real

[vurt]

yeah, but costco allow "members" to shop there too, you pay a membership fee for a card that allows you to shop, so you can feel all exclusive.

I see... interesting - and that... like... works?

not for me, but they seem to be successful.
like pekbro, i dont really do enough shopping to need the bulk products

[resynthesis]

CostCo don't just do bulk stuff. We bought our garden shed there and it was about £400 cheaper than getting it from B&Q or any of the other DIY suspects. It's often worth checking out if you're looking for electrical or DIY stuff (maybe other things too).

[Uncle E]

I see... interesting - and that... like... works?

They sell 50 pounds of flour for $15, 20 pounds of bacon for $45, and 60 eggs for $12. As you can imagine, those aren't for the normies, who are off buying frozen dinner entree du jour, although the $4.99 whole roasted chickens are for everyone.

[tapper mike]

yeah, but costco allow "members" to shop there too, you pay a membership fee for a card that allows you to shop, so you can feel all exclusive.

I see... interesting - and that... like... works?

It works for Costco and people think that buying the annual membership is saving them money. But the truth is Costco is very much aware of how much people are going to spend and add that into the price of the card. It looks like a good deal at check out but it's not.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BOHG-TGip3Q

[tapper mike]

I love this thread.


So Sam Ash has been having a liquidation sale. But they are only offering 10% off the regular prices. Bankruptcy usually works like this. The Lawyers get all the money, Suppliers usually only get money for stuff they ship after it sells. Or 180 days same as cash. Suppliers get screwed. Banks who usually loan out money to the stores and are caught holding the bag for bounced checks get nothing. Landlords get nothing. The last bit if any left over goes back to the big wigs who have already cashed out their golden parachutes.

After liquidation by store sales everything must go goes into auction by lot. If you are an online dealer or a former exec you can make big bucks buying the stuff before it hits the dumpster.

I've worked for a few places that have gone through the entire process. One of the former top brass did exactly that. He waited till the auction bought various items at deep deep discounts and sold them to resale shops for a killing.

[donkey tugger]

I've worked for a few places that have gone through the entire process. One of the former top brass did exactly that. He waited till the auction bought various items at deep deep discounts and sold them to resale shops for a killing.

Not sure if the law in the US is the same, but here in the UK a limited company can go into administration/liquidation, pay the creditors f**k all as you outline, then the same directors can set up another company doing exactly the same thing using personal funds or other investment, and have to pay nothing from this to former creditors.

'Limited liability'. Not f**king kidding.

[tapper mike]

Yeah mostly the same.

Limited Liability Corporation (LLC)
Limited to the amount invested at time of incorporation. That doesn't stop them from collecting golden parachutes awarding themselves huge bonuses on the way out.

[pekbro]

That's the beauty of the Corporation, shift liability onto the commercial entity, shift it away from yourself.

[Euphorion Music]

I don't think Guitarmageddon will happen but boring guitar bands might become less popular. Younger people need to get into it to keep it going and, for that to happen, it has to be cool. Some said that mainstream media doesn't favour guitar music but I reckon it still comes through in the UK. Sometimes, I wonder about the US though, having seen the 2024 Oscars. Does the media in the US think that guitar music means Slash? An old guy who was never cool in the first place and didn't reach any particular level of skill as a player imo.

There will be better and younger players coming up who will become heroes for the young folk, encouraging them to listen and play guitar. For example, St. Vincent. She is referred to as a guitar God by the BBC (a slight exaggeration). She recently dropped “Big Time Nothing”. It sounds like she's mashed up No Church in the Wild with Uptown Funk but, damn! that track is cool.

[Uncle E]

It’s the soft bigotry of low expectations.

[Ou_Tis]

Wonder how AI and wider availability of MPE or midi 2.0 pickups or guitars (or guitar-inspired instruments, that are perhaps much easier to play) may impact the popularity of guitars.

Traditional sample library guitars either don't sound realistic (with the exception of some limited playing styles) or are difficult and tedious to program so that they sound realistic. AI guitar still has some wonkiness and occasional artifacts to work out but it's getting good, already sounds shockingly emotional and expressive, and can apparently repeat melodies you input as audio.

OTOH the backlash to AI may already be making non-digital instruments more popular, at least in the short term. Some critics have attributed the resurgent popularity of country music (and country hybrids) to AI backlash, although it's been building for years (which could in part be a reaction to smartphones and digital technology more broadly...). (But once AI gets good enough to be indistinguishable from any human playing, even the most virtuosic and passionate, will the perceived value of being able to play the guitar decline among young people?... or the first generation to grow up with it as an established fact...)

New guitar-inspired MPE/midi 2.0 instruments could remove much of the discomfort (and, for many people, literal pain), tedium, and difficulty of learning guitar (partly by making it easier to learn as well as easier on the fingertips etc.). As well as obviously vastly expanding the range of possible tones and expressively playable parameters (bit ironic that this is referred to as "automation"---at least when recorded).

And AI should even be able to make your playing sound "better" by generating variations on it---I think Udio's audio input feature can already do this. And it will get even better, eventually offering more control....

[Uncle E]

Johnny Marr at the live performance of the Inception soundtrack is all we need to know. That guitar part could easily be done with a plugin, and certainly didn't need a guitarist of Johnny Marr's fame playing it. Yet there he was, front and center, with centuries worth of accomplished musicians behind him:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q4XxaWXsO78

[Magic Russ]

The pattern does sound quite similar to those available in the NI Session Guitar series.

[Ou_Tis]

The pattern does sound quite similar to those available in the NI Session Guitar series.

It would be pretty funny if Hans used a plugin for the actual soundtrack then hired a famous guitarist to play it for the live performance.

[tapper mike]

Mary Spender does a great take on the fascination with records and the drive of my/our generation to play guitar.
People really don't sit around and listen to entire album to the point that it becomes the focus of their personality like Dark Side of the Moon by Pink Floyd. A record that people would wear out by playing it so much that they would go out and buy another.

As for guitar playing in general I've been saying that since the 1980's and have been wrong for just as long. When punk rockers turned in their guitars for synths and became new wave players. And when the evolution of the gaming industry took interest away from dedicating a life you playing guitar. Guitar Hero and Rock Band didn't make any new guitar players or musicians but somehow new guitarists always show up around the corner even if we aren't willing to seek them out.

Korea has more than high production K-pop. There is now and has for a long time a movement around the guitar.

Sungha Jung is 28 now. Wildly popular not only in Korea but through most of asia He's had inroads to the US but he can't compete with the production values that PSY, BTS or Black Pink.

Here's a thing. 1 in 100 people who take up the guitar is still playing after six months. All those folks who said someday they will play and then tried to play guitar during covid quit. There are plenty of YT videos on how to play guitar. Many are great. When I think of the resources available to me back in the 70's to learn guitar for a few dollars or even a few hours of watching my peers play that was more than sufficient for me to go to a library pick out a book go home and study. I like many of you took the same journey even if we think it was a different road that led us here.

I see 20 somethings with actual jobs who complain about staying up late to work an extra hour. Not because they want to go out to a bar but because they want to go home and play video games or sleep. They do not have the connection to music that you or I do. So in that sense yeah less music fans and maybe less guitar posers. But behind all that there are still people who want to play guitar. Even if it's not on par with the 1960's through the 2010's