"The Erosion of Memory"

"An example? Take the cowboy chords–so-called because they were favored by Gene Autry, Ray Whitley, and other RKO Western balladeers. The cowboy chords are considered 'easy' because they use open strings, while jazz and rock require bar chords, which are more demanding because the left hand has to clamp or mute all six strings at once. The cowboy chords are essential knowledge for guitarists. When I was in high school, most of us would have been ashamed if we hadn’t memorized all of them in a couple of weeks, maybe a month. Today it is routine for students to take six months to a year to learn them. Many fail to learn even a fraction of them in the same length of time. Now I could be the worst teacher in the world, but even if it were so, the change has been dramatic, given the abundance of lessons and reference material online. The desire, the aptitude, and the will to memorize seem to have withered."

David Alzofon at The American Songwriter worries over the impact of technology on musicianship.