What style of music are guitar players most interested in?
Classic Rock
From a survey of 8565 guitar players, 1784 said that classic rock was the style of music they're most interested. At 20.83%, this category received the highest percentage of votes cast.
One of the quizzes we've built to survey our readers asks the question: What styles of music are you most interested in playing?
We've pulled in a healthy sample size of 8565 answers, which we think provides some valuable insight into where the guitar is as an instrument and what type of music aspiring (or current) guitar players are most interested in.
What style of music are guitar players/consumers most interested in?
This data was collected between September 10th, 2022, and October 18th, 2023, roughly 13 months. In total, 8565 people responded. These people were either guitar players or aspiring guitar players answering the question: What style of music are you most interested in?
Notes about the data
At 20.8%, classic rock is the most popular answer of all the options we've listed.
However, it should be noted that "heavy metal" and "progressive rock and metal" both received the following percentages:
- Heavy metal: 14.47%
- Progressive Rock and Metal: 15.41%
This was perhaps a poor method of dividing these categories as they are somewhat similar sub-genres. If we were to simply condense them into "metal" we'd possibly be at nearly 30%, which would easily eclipse classic rock.
However, I do think that heavy metal is a different category than progressive rock and modern metal. But it should be clear that this distinction is somewhat subjective. Metal, unlike classic rock, is still evolving and has more sub-genres that are harder to pin down.
The point being: Take the data with a grain of salt.
Highest Scoring Styles
If we stick with the graph, the highest scoring genres were the following:
- Classic Rock: 20.83%
- Progressive Rock and Metal: 15.41%
- Pop and Light Rock: 14.94%
Pop and light rock is a much clearer distinction from metal, so we're more comfortable with that data.
Lowest Scoring Styles
The lowest scoring genres were fairly distinct and easy to parse out. Surprisingly, country got one of the lowest percentage of shares.
- Christian Contemporary: 1.68%
- Country. 2.19%
- Jazz: 3.55%
I'm surprised that country and jazz scored this low. Especially given the fact that I fractured the metal and rock genres as much as I did. That should have made it easier for more straightforward style categories to score higher.
Some Surprises
I'm also shocked that blues did not score higher, at just 9.89%. Again, it had an easier road because it was not divided into sub-genres like rock and metal.
Disclaimer and Conclusion
But please keep in mind that this data reflects people who have visited Guitar Chalk and is not a scientific poll or study. However, we get a wide range of guitar players and aspiring musicians, that we like to think represents the greater guitar community very well.
Feel free to use this data, but please credit us since this is our original research.
If you have questions, feel free to email or get in touch via the comments section below.
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