As a pianist/keyboardist, my ability to impress chicks with my ivory-tickling skills is seriously hampered by a number of contemporary realities:

• "Gather 'round the piano while I play something" usually sounds either presumptuous ("so I can impress you") or hokey ("for an old-fashioned sing-along"), and just sitting down and playing tends to have a pretty dramatic and immediate effect upon the "room", while noodling on a guitar is far less imposing and allows a crowd to form more naturally.
• Limited availability of ivories to tickle - pianos are hard to lug along on camping trips or midnight runs to the beach
• The piano-free inclination of most of today's Top 40 and pop music (this was less of a problem when Billy Joel was still cranking out great albums; e.g. Storm Front)
• Chicks prefer guitarists (see women who like jerk guys); I've been called a "piano hero" twice in my life, compared with my best friend Will who has been called a guitar hero more times than either of us can count. (Note that he is the exception to the insinuation earlier in this bullet item.)

As such, I have been forced to take up the guitar as a kind of gateway instrument (see gateway drug); it's a lot easier to lead a group to the piano in the other room to play "And So it Goes" (and maybe get the girls to sing a Sarah McLachlan song in chorus) after I butter them up with a rousing rendition of "I'll be", "Closing Time", "Crash into me" or some other easily guitarable song that might appear on the Dawson's Creek Soundtrack.

See also on the selection of musical instruments.

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Of course, all this presumes that I have time to go to parties where I can do any of this; my indentured servant duties tend to interfere.

SEX

I was watching VH-1, or MTV or something and the guitarist for a band (no, I don't remember which one) said that there is only one reason anyone picks up a guitar for the first time, to get laid. Oh, sure, they learn to love the music, but when they first decide to pick up the guitar sex is the only thing on their mind.

As an ex-aspiring guitar player I agree.

Allow me to add a few more reasons about why playing the guitar will get women to have sex with you!
Anything to help an aspiring guitarist.

Play songs people will recognize from the radio. Radio == Cool!

Take a screaming guitar solo! It'll bring those girls to the brink of passion!

Remember, the smaller your guitar is, the easier it is for the chicks to dig your new Tommy Hilfiger apparel!

Mmmph!

I can't go on.This is the kind of thing that makes me want to pack my double bass full of C4 and take the next nationally televised music award ceremony hostage.

Seriously, to someone who is trying their very hardest to make music for the purpose of opening their heart to an audience and communicating a their innermost feelings to them, these penis driven guitarists which are so common today are spam. They give all performing artists a bad reputation. They fill venues and keep people trying to be genuine out on the street. And God forbid anyone with a guitar try to communicate something.

Quit wasting your time and give us all a fucking break. If you want to have sex, take out a personals ad and get the hell off the stage.