A Moment Of Silence For the Sony Walkman

It has happened. After some thirty years, Sony has discontinued production of the cassette Walkman. For those old enough to remember, the Walkman was the first portable music device. It is the forefather of the iPod. It allowed us for the first time to carry our music with us. It created a personal, isolated world, a soundtrack for life. It changed the way we listen to music.

Previous to the Walkman, listening to music was a static activity. Record players are not that portable, and while portable record players that played 45s did exist, it was a huge hassle to gather up the records and pack up the turntable just so you could listen to records at your friend's house. Plus, you needed headphones if you wanted to listen in private and headphones were a luxury that few had or could afford.

The first Walkman appeared in 1979. It came equipped with a faux leather carrying case and headphones. The buttons were big and chunky and it had second headphone jack so two people could listen. Battery life was about three hours. It was originally marketed in the US as the Soundabout, but trademark difficulties necessitated Sony use the name Walkman worldwide, thereby creating a popular culture icon. Incredibly Sony has sold over 200 million units since the device was introduced.

In the early 1980s, the Walkman turned the cassette into the dominant format, outselling LPs. With the ubiquity of home cassette recorders, consumers could create their own so-called mix tapes by cherry picking favourite songs off albums. Blank cassette sales soared and the record companies countered by releasing new albums on high-quality tape complete with liner notes printed so small you needed a magnifying glass to read the lyrics and production credits.

The Walkman morphed into other models like the Sport Walkman that was designed for joggers and outdoor use. It was even waterproof. Scuba divers listened to music. Just kidding. There was a version that had an AM/FM radio and one that could record as well as play back. It was a Walkman with a radio that provided my contact with the outside world during the Great Blackout of 2003, when the northeastern corner of the US and southern Ontario suffered a huge power failure.

While Sony has stopped manufacturing the cassette Walkman, the CD version will still be available along with third-party knockoffs. But for many, the Walkman will fondly live on, if only vicariously through an iPod. 

Fun Has Six Strings

Guitar instruction has become big business. There's a proliferation of "how-to" methods that all, obviously, teach essentially the same thing. From printed tablature anthologies of the latest and greatest songs to Internet tab sites and YouTube videos, from guitar magazines and instructional DVDs to Estoban and iPhone apps, guitar instruction is readily available. And much of it is free.

This plethora of guitar instruction materials and methods got me thinking what effect this field of fretted pedagogy will have. I'm all in favour of someone learning to play a musical instrument. It's good for you. And now with all these ways to learn how to play the guitar, anyone with a modicum of talent can manage to bang out a few chords and amaze and astound their friends.

I am a self-taught guitarist. Compared to what is available today, in 1969 when I started it was a wasteland. There were printed guitar instruction methods like the venerable Alfred's series and the odd guitar teacher here and there, but that was it. I had a book and a guitar and a burning desire to be a musician. So, I taught myself how to read music notation and how to play a few chords and rapidly chewed through the meagre amount of materials I had. In order to go any further, I realized that I would have to resort to figuring out songs off records and the radio. In the beginning, a hugely daunting task that I was not looking forward to. It seemed impossible. How was I supposed to listen to a record and then magically play what I heard?

I discovered the technique of playing and re-playing the song over and over painstakingly trying different chords until I found the ones that fit. When it came time to learn how to play lead guitar, this skill was even more necessary. Eventually it became easier to do and, during my tenure as a road musician, it continued to be the way I learned songs. I was not the only one either. Every band and musician used the same method. The recording had gained supremacy as the primary text.

Fast forward to the present. Today's novice guitarist has, as I said, a vast amount of resources available. Whereas once upon a time I would have had to play a song like "Magic Carpet Ride" over and over to figure out what the guitar is doing, the new guitarist today can Google how to play it. Technology even makes it possible to slow down audio tracks without pitch loss to help decipher a rapid-fire guitar solo like Randy Rhodes' masterpiece in "Crazy Train." A far cry from hearing the solo and trying to reproduce it in real time, something that takes a lot of practice and is not easy to do. Moreover, the difficulty of this can be seen as a contributing factor to the rise of the fore-mentioned Internet tab sites and anthologies.

The "play it again" method helps develop the musical ear among other things. Popular music is formulaic and familiar patterns emerge after repeated listening. Something heard in one song can many times be found in others. Some songs cross genres and styles, so inadvertently by learning a rock song, for example, it's possible to learn the blues or country at the same time. As a result, listening to music takes on a whole new meaning. Songs become aurally deconstructed to reveal their musical secrets. There is much to be said for doing it this way.

You would think with the materials available there would be more people playing the guitar. But regardless of the amount or quality of guitar instruction, the simple fact remains that in order to play any instrument, one truism rises above the rest. You have to practice and unless you're a musical prodigy, the pay-off takes time. While today's guitar instruction methods have not resulted in measurably more people seriously playing the guitar, they have fostered a new sort of "hobby" guitarist. This guitarist can play a few chords, wank out a passable version of the "Sunshine Of Your Love" riff, and almost knows at least five songs. Almost. The hobby guitarist picks up his or her guitar now and then, using it more for relaxation or something to do to kill some time.

So, the hobby guitarist is what's driving the guitar as big business. And having more people interested in music education can only be beneficial, not only to the students but to the teachers and other musicians as well. Learning to play the guitar can create opportunities to hear a diverse amount of new music and, at the same time, generate an appreciation for styles that may otherwise be ignored. Whether it's learning by ear or by some other method, playing the guitar or any instrument can be immensely rewarding as a means of relaxation, a way of creative expression, or just plain enjoyment.

"I don't want you to play me a riff that will impress Joe Satriani; give me a riff that makes a kid want to go out and buy a guitar and learn to play." -Ozzy Osbourne