State of the art analysis - Guitars

The guitar is one of the most popular instruments in the world, and is often seen all over the media in the hands of many a celebrity and amateur alike.

This section of research was fairly easy to gather information for, as there is a saturation of guitar-related media!

Events such as music festivals are held all over the world, with guitars the predominant instrument, especially for the modern genres of music.

A small selection of V-Festival guitarists - there are many more! - (Various sources)

Learning to platy the guitar is probably the most numerous instrument learning hobby. There are a wide range of books, websites and magazines (even a T.V style website channel!) dedicated to people learning how to play. The popularity of the guitar is staggering. I wonder what the next method of learning will be - interactive tutelage from a computer in a virtual reality environment perhaps?

One of the popular 'For Dummies' series of books, dedicated to the guitar - (Mark Phillips 2003)

(Total Guitar, 2011)

The Guitar Player TV site - (New Bay Media 2009)

Even if you choose not to learn how to play the guitar, or don't think you are very good, modern phenomenon in the games industry Guitar Hero can give people the feeling that they are playing like the guitar players they idolise, with similar games like Rockband branching out to the use of drums and bass guitar too. Though their popularity has dropped in recent times (shown by the removal of the games from Activision's funding list and agenda), the series could perhaps be rebooted at a later time (New instruments?).

(Activison, 2007)

(EA Distribution 2007)

Guitar Hero controllers - (Harmonix 2007-2008)

Looking further into playing the guitar without actually playing the guitar, I found the air-guitar championships, a competition that comprises entirely of people pretending to play the guitar and being judged on their performance. This could be counted as a dance act than a musical one, and as odd an event as it seems the event is growing in popularity every year! Perhaps other, similar events will try and adopt this, or maybe the event itself will follow the same pattern as the Guitar hero series, in the coming years we could see whole bands of air-guitarists, air-drummers and air-bassists!

Competitors in the air-guitar world championships - (Inertica 2011)

The 2011 air-guitar world champion - (Inertica 2011)

This quote is taken from the website, showing the light-hearted spirit of the competition:

The purpose of the Air Guitar World Championships is to promote world peace. According to the ideology of the Air Guitar, wars would end, climate change stop and all bad things disappear, if all the people in the world played the Air Guitar. This is why the whole universe is invited to play the Air Guitar for the world peace at the end of the competition.

- (airguitarworldchampionships.com 2011)

The air-guitar IP has also been developed into clothing that reacts to the user, such as the guitar hero belt buckle that picks up the users' movements and creates sound accordingly. Perhaps if this technology was developed, a new kind of electronic instrument that uses your body as an input could be developed - a mixture of dance and music working in tandem.

The Guitar Hero belt buckle - (Krunker.com 2008)

So far I have seen a pattern emerging of people actually having the skill to play the guitar becoming an imitation, up to the point that people are being rewarded for not playing the guitar at all! If this continued, would people be rewarded for just listening to music? It seems very counter productive to me that alot of the trends appearing seem to be about making things easier for the user to the point of not having to develop any kind of skill at all. Although fun, it isn't challenging the user to improve themselves.

The challenge here I see would be to create something that is both fun AND helps the user to improve their creative skill.

Movies featuring guitars such as School of Rock are in my opinion a positive influence, as they put a fun, positive spin on learning to play an instrument and becoming part of the music scene, and show a journey where the participants are not instantly rewarded, but work for their achievements - a realistic, respectable trait (Though the movies themselves do not have to be overly realistic).

(Paramount pictures, 2003)

Another positive find I came across is the website Guitar Getaways - A business devoted to teaching people how to use guitars with social interaction. The idea of the site is that you go on a holiday with a guitar teacher, basically having a controlled, relaxing environment chosen by you with someone there to teach you a new skill (or develop your current one). I think this is an excellent idea as it not only provides a solution to the potentially very slow pace of self tutoring, but allows the holiday goer to relax in a new environment. Perhaps an idea similar to this could be adapted for other areas of the creative industries?

The Guitar Getwaways site - (GuitarGetaways 2010)