- Edited
When asked about the waning of guitar-based rock ’n’ roll, Townshend told Dallas News: “The guitar may be losing ground, but in part, that's because if you spend an hour on Instagram or YouTube, you will quickly discover unknown people playing the guitar the way a great orchestral violinist like Yehudi Menuhin once might have played his instrument.
The influential guitarist went on to describe how hip-hop has taken the place of guitar music as the soundtrack to rebellion.
“It is, as you so rightly call it, ‘guitar-based rock ’n’ roll’ that is losing ground, not rock itself. Hip-hop is rock to my ears: music for the neighborhood, the street, the disenfranchised, the downtrodden, the young, the ignored. That used to be what I focused on. Now, I try to write real operas, and want my stage work to be like art installations - and why not? Kanye West has been doing the same thing.”
A long time ago, I thought there was nothing one could do more with a 12 bar blues progression than what had already been done. All the metal riffs seemed already written and all the pop chord progressions were old and boring (actually this still seems the case to me ?)
The "but"? Welllll, I reckon it takes a immense amount of work to carve out something fresh and polish it to presentable - it always has and I think will continue to be so. It is easier to learn to use a daw and sample something than learning how to perform it on a instrument.
Vocal heavy genre's (Rap, Pop) are just that more accessible to the average listener who already has some kinda relationship with talking./singing - in a time when infinite entertainment is but a click away on youtube, why would you spend time learning a outdated relic like guitar? Let alone spend time endlessly jamming, experimenting and polishing idea's?
Using Metallica as a thought example - for me - they were great until Load - after that it just seemed forced and that magic around a Hetfield riff was mostly gone. Did they exhaust what metal could do or did they lose a little bit of that fire to keep innovating and spend that time and effort to produce a killer album?
tl;dr : Are all the riffs written and all the originals idea's exhausted?