Gibson credit downgrade, selling Nashville property

At least Cakewalk was not mentioned as part of the situation.

Wanted me to answer question before I could read it so.......

Wookiee
Wanted me to answer question before I could read it so.......

See above post.

I was talking to a guy who worked for a major guitar/drum manufacturer (not Gibson) a few months ago.  We were sharing the same SuperShuttle en route to our NAMM accommodations.  He was telling me that the whole industry has been vastly constricted.  A generation ago, he said, at least one guy in ten wanted to be a guitarist or drummer.  These days, interest among the pre-teen/teenage generation has dramatically declined over the last couple of decades. 
 
I blame Obama! 

TL;DR

craigb
TL;DR

TL;DR.: Gibson is over-leveraged and some weirdo doesn't like Sonar or the forum users or both...
 
Dan
 
 

dmbaer
...  A generation ago, he said, at least one guy in ten wanted to be a guitarist or drummer.  These days, interest among the pre-teen/teenage generation has dramatically declined over the last couple of decades. 
 ...

I am not surprised ... specially when the music that kids are playing when you drive around is mostly thump thump thump thump rap and none of it has a guitar. Essentially, that takes a generation of kids out of music learning, because the old witches in high school are going to want you to sing stuff from "Sound of Music", and not anything from the stuff the kids like, and that turns kids off even more ... heck, even in 1968 and 1969 we told Mrs. McCormick (West High) that she was an oldie and did not know music, or appreciate music! She laughed because she was cool, but she admitted one day, that she wished she had a better ear for music, several months after I quit ... when she asked me why I left, as I was a good tenor. I told her ... the day you find a way to even do a Beatles song, I will return! She stared at me for a while before saying anything ... and you know damn well that the same thing is happening in the schools today, with a different set of music, but the old standards need to change and help the kids learn more about music and appreciation, and for crying out loud ... get rid of "Sound of Music"!
 
I've said before that instrument teaching and learning will die out quickly because there are not enough people giving back to the art. Besides, you can play the guitar on a nice tablet ... so why bother with a clanky old piece of wood, that is hard to tune properly ... and chords that are too difficult for the fingers to find! Fewer and fewer kids will get into it.
 
 

Ah, so President Bush was in charge of your school district's music program?  Hmm,  I thought he might have been busy running the federal side of things, but I see.  Perhaps you need to rethink your local school district's priorities and Federal involvement.  At the very least look sharply at free money - most of it goes to "support" staff and all the undersecretaries to the vice principal of this and that which has nothing to do w/ education.  Or training, which ain't teaching either.  And when people complain about lack of teachers and funds they should know schools don't hire more teachers until their non-teaching half of school is all caught up and fat and happy. Just look at the difference between support staff when you went to school and a school today and correct for the size differential. 
 
Teach music?  I made a living for a few years teaching remedial English at college for students who couldn't spell cat if you spotted them the c a t.  And some of them were teaching in training.  Of course, this was a decade and more ago.  Raise your hands if you think it has gotten better.
 
Back on topic - money is cheap.  As long as their is any residual value in Gibson they will get more funding so I hope they know what they are doing.  And they know at least a small recession happens every 8-10 years.  We are due if they check the calendar. 

dmbaer
I was talking to a guy who worked for a major guitar/drum manufacturer (not Gibson) a few months ago.  We were sharing the same SuperShuttle en route to our NAMM accommodations.  He was telling me that the whole industry has been vastly constricted.  A generation ago, he said, at least one guy in ten wanted to be a guitarist or drummer.  These days, interest among the pre-teen/teenage generation has dramatically declined over the last couple of decades. 
 
I blame Obama! 

I blame Cakewalk.
 
The kind of loop-based "composition" that is making contemporary music the hobby of choice for professional video gamers has rendered hours of working through the mastery of any musical instrument sound just plain silly/boring to young people. When a herd of rappers with a drum machine backup becomes a super-band, why would you want to practice a difficult to acquire skill in your spare time. Heck, why even learn to mutter in the background while walking around a stage, when you can become a DJ and not have to create anything from scratch except the occasional scratch that is. 

slartabartfast
 
 
The kind of loop-based "composition" that is making contemporary music the hobby of choice for professional video gamers has rendered hours of working through the mastery of any musical instrument sound just plain silly/boring to young people. When a herd of rappers with a drum machine backup becomes a super-band, why would you want to practice a difficult to acquire skill in your spare time.
...

 
My point exactly and the most important part of it, is teachers that do not know how to make teaching that instrument fun for the kid, and that would mean learning to do something with the instrument that fits what the kid likes, instead of chucking and forcing Chuck Berry down the kid's throat, or heaven forbid ... when the idiots march in.
 
Practice, I don't think, is an issue, and I had no issues with it in all my tutoring and teaching days, when I felt I spent more time teaching the kids how to study, rather than dealing with the actual subject itself ... and this would help music in general ... but all most teachers I have met could talk about is ... how much you have to know this and that ... and not pay attention to one's natural inclination for doing something else, and hope to blend that into the process to find a good link and not lose the kid's interest altogether. This is the biggest secret in teaching the arts and killing it ... too many teachers are making it look like you have to do Am better than anyone else out there in the world ... and that's crap!
 

slartabartfast
...
Heck, why even learn to mutter in the background while walking around a stage, when you can become a DJ and not have to create anything from scratch except the occasional scratch that is. 
...

I think that teaching things without the "star" quota in it is the issue ... but this is hard to do, and when the kids, for example, go to UCSB to study "acting", it's all (supposedly) a programme to teach you how to become a star ... and has nothing to do with who you are as a person, and actor, and your abilities at all ... and of course, at the end of the course, they even lie to you, telling the kids they get a "try out", and the folks in there are busy looking at People magazine, and Penthouse magazine, instead of seeing what you are doing ... the same as everyone else!
 
The same is with music ... the instructor I met from the local music store, even asked me right away, who would I like to be if I had a choice of bass players ... to which I told him ... none of them ... not a single one of them ... and it blew him up ... why? ... because I am me, and I have to find me in the instrument, not them! And you are not good enough to know the difference for an instructor!
 
Let's do this song, then.
 
No class next week with that moron!