Acoustics abound: The campus guitar craze

Seth Forster has been playing guitar for eight years and has been musically addicted for his entire life. He plays in a local band and teaches lessons at Smith-Holden. Here he unveils the inevitable question: why does everyone on campus have a guitar?\nDuring my first semester here, way back in '98, it was practically impossible to walk through the woods behind Ballantine without tripping over some hippy or wanna-be folk-rocker strumming his six-string. It seems as though the guitar started gaining in popularity in the '60s and the trend never stopped. In fact, it almost seems like a requirement when picking up class supplies at the bookstore. \n"Let's see, history, calculus, business… and here's your free calendar and guitar."\nThe recent trend toward American roots music definitely plays into the guitar's popularity. Over the past few years, there has been a shift to include more raw and acoustic-based music in radio as a counter to the ever-expanding realm of manufactured and electronic music. \n"I've definitely seen an increase in the popularity of guitar, particularly the steel-string acoustic," says Billy Ryder, a sophomore. "It also seems that recently more Top 40 stuff is softening up a bit with acoustic sounds and I think there is a correlation between the popular sounds of the day and the kinds of things people want to learn musically." \nThough Bloomington is heavily rooted in folk music, there is still a lot of diversity in musical styles. Senior Dustin Podgorski, an amateur guitarist, says that every branch of music seems to have some focus on acoustic guitar, from contemporary Christian to country to rock. \n"Maybe a few people are getting tired of the folk thing lately," Podgorski says, "but there's still a lot of Phish and Grateful Dead fans. If you have a tie-dye shirt, you're supposed to own an acoustic guitar. There's always going to be some kind of 'head.' Phish-head, Dead-head, whatever's big on campus." \nThanks to an early-'90s revival, the popularity of the three-chord, acoustic-guitar-based song reached its highest peak since the singer-songwriters of the 1970s. With musicians like Tom Petty, Eric Clapton and Nirvana going acoustic and MTV's "Unplugged" series, acoustic guitars could be heard more often than electric for the first time in over a decade.\nMore recently, artists like John Mayer, The Goo Goo Dolls, Paul Westerberg, Days of the New, Dave Matthews and even Radiohead rely heavily on acoustics for the foundation of many of their songs. These groups, along with a handful of roots rockers, keep the acoustics in the hands of so many and pave new roads for the acoustic guitar.\n"I definitely feel that the range of styles is quite limited here on campus," Ryder says. "You see people playing a lot of Dave Matthews-type stuff with open position triads, etc. And that's fine -- but I think that if people explored more different styles, they would enjoy and appreciate them as well."\nCharles Bragg, who has been playing since the age of four, says it's more about fashion now than in the past. "Probably 70 percent of the people wear it as an accessory, a college security blanket," he says.\nThe idea that a guitar attracts attention has more to it than just being part of a look. It's the image of being a musician or a sort of modern-day poet.\n"Everybody wants to be Bob Dylan," Bragg says. "Everybody at one time in their lives wants to be a rock star, but it's just easier to carry than to work on it."\nBragg says he likes to perform in the open for people he doesn't know.\n"Playing guitar in front of people you don't know is the ultimate test," he says. "If somebody stops, you know you have a good lick. It's sort of similar to the days back when blues players would be out cuttin' heads. It's a lot of fun that way, but there aren't so many serious players who will play like that, but that's good too, to have all the kids carrying guitars. There's a lot of expression there."\nSophomore Dave Hawkins, a guitarist who prefers the residence halls to the between-class spotlights of IU's campus, parallels Bragg's assessment.\n"It's definitely a chick magnet," he says. "Anytime you're playing acoustic guitar, girls just gather around, even if you're the most awful person in the world, and they usually can't play more than two or three chords anyway."\nSince the '70s, guitar makers like Samick, Yamaha and Squier have made guitars accessible to almost everyone with their cheaper and often-adequate counterparts. With so many players out there and all the classes available, it's easier than ever to get lessons.\nChristina Connelly, a sophomore who has played bass guitar for just a year and a half, learned from several of her friends. Connelly says she sees bass guitar as an easier way to get into music or a band but without the pressure of being in the spotlight. \n"Rock influence and alternative culture have become popular," she says. "The reason it's such a trend is that rock culture is so big."\nSo no matter how many people get into guitar, it doesn't seem that there's any chance of it going out of style soon. Rock music -- and virtually every style that was blended to form it -- continues to focus more and more on this diverse instrument, fortifying music's dependence on the guitar.\n-Seth Forster