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from the while-my-guitar-gently-weeps dept.
Each holiday season, thousands of teenagers tear gift wrap off shiny, new guitars. They giddily pluck at the detuned strings, thinking how cool they'll be once they're rock stars—even if almost all will give up before they ever get to jam out to "Sweet Child o' Mine."
For them, it's no big deal to relegate the guitar to the back of the closet forever in favor of the Playstation controller. But it is a big deal for Fender Musical Instruments Corp., the 70-year-old maker of rock 'n' roll's most iconic electric guitars. Every quitter hurts.
[...]The $6 billion U.S. retail market for musical instruments has been stagnant for five years, according to data compiled by research firm IBISWorld, and would-be guitar buyers have more to distract them than ever. So how do you convince someone to put down the iPhone, pick up a Stratocaster, and keep playing?
Seems Fender didn't get the memo: the music of the future is hip-hop and autotuners.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by blackhawk on Wednesday November 23 2016, @03:35PM
I love music, but I can't read it for shit. I don't understand all the modes, can't really sing, and don't know theory worth a damn...but...
bless you Rocksmith, you take all that away and let me just groove away on my bass and play songs I love without having to learn some arcane lettering / numbering / music system.
I never wanted anything more from music than being able to play some songs I loved. Music demanded I learn a massive amount of skills that don't come that easy to people who were skipped over initially. My earliest memories of music were being canned for not singing in tune, despite not being told what tune was or how to sing in it.
It's hard to recover from being canned several times for not understanding music well enough, despite never receiving any education in it (I moved a lot as a child).
Rocksmith allows me to bypass all that and just take a swipe at playing songs I love. It's fucking awesome. It's how music should have been from the start. I can learn all the modes now if I want, now I have a love for music.