The last trend I've noticed would be "Polyphia Collage" based music, which just now seems waning.
At the moment, for the first time in awhile I would say that trends towards styles has settled down. I don't see any new ones, but a sort of... kerfluffel...? Of already established styles.
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| Wylee is Taking Note of Your Influences |
I would see this as a period of consolidation and reflection (so profound). I think that without any major things happening, people are going to gravitate back towards their true musical identities. What I mean by that is that I see a lot of people, and students, getting blown towards the Latest Cool Style, even though it may not reflect the kind of music they would choose to listen to without outside influence.
For instance, there was a time everyone wanted to learn the Self-Accompanied Percussion Solo Acoustic Guitar style. I had a lot of students wanting to learn to sneak ostinato patterns into their strumming. At other times it was Loose Nirvana Chording, more recently it was Tim Pierce in the Pocket Perfect Soloing, and then there was the Polyphia Phase that happened before covid.
Right now I have maybe the most diffuse assortment of interests among students, which sounds like a negative, but I call it a positive. There doesn't seem to be an overbearing artificial influence happening, and students seem to be interested in nailing down particular things again.
YouTube had accelerated the premise of "gotta learn this Cool Happening Thing now!" by promulgating lots of perfectly produced videos, extorting either how easy (never the case) or how cool (subjective) the New Way is. For the past 5 years, having this constant influx tugging at the *eyes* of students has made people, I think, a bit distraught over whether what they thought they wanted to do on the guitar was cool or not.
With no New Major Thing grabbing attention, I think it's leaving room for people to get back to their center, so to speak. A positive phenomenon.
