Why is the guitar the primary instrument in rock music?

Cafe Society
21

Guitarists, I think.

Leo Fender intended his guitar to be for country musicians, Les Paul intended his to be for jazz players but they were overwhelming adopted by rock musicians.

And from Buddy Holly and Scotty Moore onward guitarists kept finding their own different sounds. Many of these proved really influential and dictated the course that rock music took rather than just being another instrument.

As Kent Clark points out, all the infrastructure associated with music influences the type of music played. David Byrne did a TED talk on How architecture helped music evolve.

22

Well being a guitar player, I feel I should answer this.
I’d say the one big thing about the guitar being the predominant rock and roll instrument was Elvis Presley.
Yes, the story of rock and roll did not begin with him, but he pretty much brought rock and roll to the mainstream. He made rock and roll the new, popular music and what instrument did he play? (It wasn’t the glockenspiel!!)
Almost overnight, the guitar was the “hip” instrument to play. And yes, there were some early piano-playing “rockers” but guitar predominated since 1955.
Then I’d say with the Beatles’ huge success, the guitar was etched firmly into place.
I don’t know the source for this statistic but I once read that Elvis Presley and the Beatles were responsible for the sale of millions of guitars.

23

This, exactly. Guitars are easily portable, easy to learn, cheap to buy if you want them to be, and allow the lead to sing at the same time.

My ex took years of formal lessons on classical violin, and I took years of formal lessons on classical flute as well as piano. Both of us learned how to read music, and we were each able to read notes on a page like we were reading a book. But my buddy plays guitar beautifully, without any lessons, and without being able to read music. He’s amazed that I can read music, and can play it on flute and piano; and I’m amazed that he can simply pick up a guitar and play what he hears.

It seems to me that guitar is much easier than violin or flute to pick up and play.

24

Counterpoint : you can be shit at guitar and still have it sound kind of awesome - rock proverbially runs on four chords after all. And having a bad or dirty guitar sound isn’t bad, it can even be a plus (see: Nirvana, early AC/DC, any punk band whatsoever…)

But if you’re shit at violin, it’ll always sound like you’re violently raping cats with their claws on a blackboard.

25

Ha! I used to live next door to a kid learning violin. My cat would cower in fear. Your description is spot-on.

It’s worth noting that guitar isn’t just the instrument of choice for rock music, and that reason probably applies elsewhere, too. You may need 4 chords for rock, but like the fella says, country music is just 3 chords and the truth.

26

It can’t be just the chords, though? Anyone can probably pick those same 3 chords out on a piano.

The piano is bulkier and more expensive than a guitar, as pointed out. And if someone is too cheap for music lessons and is going to rely on massive distortion/harmonics/fatness to cover up bad technique, electric guitars used to be cheaper than electric pianos. And if you’re a wannabe, why not imitate what you have seen working? All that seems at least plausible. Sitting in front of a grand piano has always looked cool, though. Also cello.

27

I think a mention should also be made of the popularity of skiffle during the 1950’s which put hand held instruments to the fore, quite a lot of UK artists from the '60’s cut their teeth on skiffle and in the US skiffle was the voice of Woody Guthrie and the folk scene - so from that point of view home made sounds had a lot more authenticity, add this to the blues sound and it doesn’t take much to add in a little bit of rhythm to get rock and roll.

28

I wanted to add, it may be easier to perform highly polyphonic music on a guitar than on a bowed instrument. That does not affect a piano, of course.

29

Some credit needs to be given to the vast array of sounds that an electric guitar can produce. Pianos have a huge range, but they always sound like a piano.
Guitars can make sounds that mimic other instruments, or sound like nothing else.

30

Prepared piano :slight_smile:

Also note the list of extended piano technique. It’s not like most of these were unknown during the heyday of rock and roll.

31

I’d say in addition the qualities of being cheap, portable, loud, and easy to get the skill necessary to do a decent accompaniment; the guitar allows you to be expressive in a way a lot of other instruments don’t. Even before you start messing with the electronic portions of an electric guitar’s sound, playing a stringed instrument, it just gives you more methods to make sounds. A piano can’t make the sounds a guitar makes with bends, or when playing with a slide or a whammy bar.

32

Guitar also has the advantage over the piano in that you can add expressive qualities to the notes like bends, vibrato, harmonics, etc. Now, granted, a lot of that may not have been being used in early rock and roll, but certainly in blues music, those note articulations were especially important. Blues on the piano sounds fine (and I’m speaking as somebody whose primary instrument is the piano/keyboards), but you can’t make a piano wail out those nice bent notes (especially the “blue” notes, which, while often described as a flatted third, a flatted fifth, and a flatted seventh, really don’t lie quite exactly there. And that emotional wail you can get from bend to or from those notes aren’t quite duplicated on the piano, and those sorts of figures from the blues were important in the sound of rock music.)

33

Oops: scabpicker basically ninjaed me there as I was thinking up my reply.

34

Yeah, I can attest to the fact that tuba players don’t score high on the* “panties thrown onstage”* scale.

I learned to play piano by ear at an early age. My older sister was a gifted concert and jazz pianist, and I guess some of that rubbed off on me. I don’t play much any more, but I can still crank out some boogie woogie when asked.

I joined school band late, in middle school. I wanted to play a cool instrument like keyboards, or guitar (I got an electric guitar from the Sears catalog the year before and taught myself to play reasonably well), or even trumpet (Louie Armstrong was still a cool cat in the 60’s).

But, nooo, the school band teacher said he only had only one instrument left for me to play—the tuba!

*Dagnabbit, I don’t want to play that frickin’ lame instrument! *

But the teacher sweetened the deal and told me I could play electric bass in jazz band if I played sousaphone in marching band and tuba in concert band.

Well, ok, I’ll take the bad in order to get the good. I loved bass guitar. Not quite as awesome as lead guitar, but Sir Paul attracted plenty of girls playing bass, so, what the heck.

Now, don’t get me wrong, the tuba is a fine instrument. But, for a pubescent middle school twit hoping to up his ante in the chick-magnet sphere of things, “tuba” is about the last instrument you can choose to accomplish that goal. It scores below cow-bell and glockenspiel.

I hated marching band! Lugging around that sousaphone was a pain in the ass and I got no respect. Yeah, I got panties thrown at me—dude’s dirty tighty-whities along with other garbage thrown into the bell of my sousaphone by idiots while I marched (usually out of step) in the pre-game parades.

I endured concert band on the tuba, but it didn’t go well. First song of the first concert was Thus Spake Zarathustra. I had the opening bars playing solo and I started on the wrong note. I knew it was the wrong note, but I was too frozen by embarrassment to change it. The conductor/band leader’s face turned red with anger. That sucked.

But, at least I had jazz band playing electric bass to look forward to. Jazz band started in Spring. Except the band leader left in winter for a better gig and was replaced by a guy with horn-rimmed glasses and a crew cut. I knew that was trouble. And, sure enough, the new guy told me he didn’t want an electric bass in jazz band, I had to play upright bass!

Fuck me, another giant instrument with zero chic-magnet appeal!

I did get to play the Hammond B3 organ with Leslie speaker later in high school jazz band, so that was ok. I got some “cool” redemption playing Santana’s Black Magic Woman.

And I later played electric piano and synth in a college band for chump change. I even got to play electric bass in another group (I played a mean Come Together). Never got to play lead guitar, though. No panties were ever thrown my way.

As far as I can tell, the original long-hair “rock star” was Franz Liszt. Lisztomania was over a century before Beatlemania. I would not be surprised to learn ol’ Franz got a fair share of Victorian era pantaloons thrown on his stage to his mesmerizing cadenzas, octaves and “flying trapeze” style of piano playing.

Liszt was the ultimate cool cat, man! And, he never played lead guitar.

35

Since I mentioned Paganini, he also said, “Non sono bello, ma quando mi ascoltano, le donne cadono tutte ai miei piedi”. Plus ça change…

36

Standard classic-tuned guitar (EAdgbe’) is very easy to play badly and very hard to play well. After 55 years of practice, I’m sort-of okay as long as I avoid exotic chords. Basic guitar fingering carries over to ‘ukuleles, banjitars, and guitar-like synths. Basic banjo fingering fits tenor guitars and mandolas (Gdae’).

Banjitar: guitar neck on banjo body. During the late-1800’s banjo craze, guitar and 'uke and mandolin necks were so attached, so players needn’t learn a new instrument. And dulcimers do TOO rock! When electrified. But my dulcimer-banjo needs no power.

Guitars and their portable ancestors and variants have been popular for a LONG time. Such lutes CAN be cheap, and are easily restrung and/or retuned for easier (or harder) playing and cute effects. And my Martin Backpacker guitar doubles as a canoe paddle. But I digress. Guitars are IMHO the most protean of instruments, ranging from 0 to 100+ strings, zero to many necks, tiny to huge to virtual bodies, with any skill levels.

Why do git-fiddles (as Grandpa called them) abound in many musics? Along with reasons already given, because they’re convenient and flexible. Even without Charlie Christian, Les Paul, and Elvis; even without electricity; they’d still be everywhere, as they are around the world.

But why rock? Electricity, for sure. Blame Lee DeForest.

37

Another reason for the popularity of guitar and piano is that you can play chords. How many times have you been at a family gathering or party and someone starts playing a guitar and piano - and everyone starts singing along. That would be very difficult to do with a violin or a trumpet. Chords allow the guitar or piano to have a full, rich kind of sound.

Getting back to the “electric guitar in rock music” topic, the electric guitar can be very expressive. I’m rather old but for those of you that might remember songs like “Gloria” (G-L-O-R-I-A) by the Shadows of Knight or “Hey Little Girl” by the Syndicate of Sound, those songs had a guitar that was adjusted to produce an incredible amount of treble. Certainly not the kind of sound you’d want for every song, but then you can easily turn a knob to adjust the guitar to have less treble and then you can have a guitar for a subtler song such as “Yesterday”. (Again, can you produce that much of a tone change with a trumpet or violin?)

38

Many chords are fairly easy on guitar, whether tuned standard, modal, or open. Piano is a bit tougher. Chords are also straightforward on mandola, tenor guitar and banjo, cuatro, bouzouki, cittern, tiple (TEE-play), Cümbüş 'oud, and other lutes.

One side of my family would whip out guitar and fiddle; the other side, a harmonium and fat-belly mandolin. Neighbors produced cuatro and a small marimba. Various families, various traditions.

As can most any electric instrument, given effects pedals. Most of the instruments I mentioned above have appeared on rock recordings, often to great effect.

If they’re wired and processed, yes. I’ve heard unbelievable sounds from horns, reeds, bowed strings, and body percussion.

39

Lots of good answers, notably in this post. I can’t stress the bolded part enough, though.

I’ve never played the violin but I tried my hand at the cello for about 5 years (close enough for the purpose of this thread) and I played the guitar for over 30 years.

Bowed instruments such as the former are incomparabily more difficult to play. Not only is bowhold really awkward and the “wave” motion necessary to produce sound very unnatural (watch a video analysing bowings and try to think of another everyday activity that requires such a weird move) but producing a note that’s in tune reliably (keyword) takes years and years and years and years of daily practice. On the guitar, producing sound is very natural. And as far as intonation is concerned, just put your finger at the right spot and you’re golden, provided your instrument is tuned, but that’s a given for all string instruments. No contest really.

As for that Paganini quote, it’s cute but I’m not even sure he was referring the relative difficulty of both instruments.

40

The guitar is the primary instrument of rock because it was the primary instrument of the kind of blues that early rock largely cribbed from, for reasons already given here but magnified in the situation of those blues musicians - cheap, portable, versatile.