History of the Guitar

 by Attish Das

 

As you may already know, the guitar is a fretted musical instrument with you play by striking the strings with your fingers or individual finger picks with the most dominant hand and the less dominant simultaneously hand pressing against the strings against the frets. The most known types of guitar today are the classical guitar, the acoustic guitar, the bass guitar and the electric guitar. But was this always the case with the guitars that we see today?

The guitar originally had only four strings that ran from a violin like pegbox to a tension bridge glued to the soundboard, or belly. In the belly, like today there was a circular sound hole, which was often ornamented with a rose carved into the wood. In the sixteenth century the guitar was tuned C-F-A-D like the lute and the vihuela, two other stringed instruments. From the sixteenth century to the nineteenth century, several changes happened to the guitar. A fifth string was added just before 1600 and by the late 1700s a sixth string was added. And the standard tuning for today (E-A-D-G-B-E) got replaced just before 1800.

The violin type pegbox was replaced around 1600 by a flat, slightly reflexed head with rear tuning pegs, and in the nineteenth century, metal screws were substituted for tuning pegs. The gut frets were replaced by ivory or metal frets in the eighteenth century and the original fingerboard which was flush and ended exactly at the belly got put on top of the belly ending at the edge of the sound hole and got raised slightly higher.

In the nineteenth century the body of the guitar changed resulting in a higher sonority. The guitar became shallower, and the soundboard was extremely thin, and the neck was formed into a brace, or shoe, that projected a short distance inside the body and was glued to the back; this gave extra stability against the pull of the strings.

The inventions to the guitar in the nineteenth century were largely the work of Antonio Torres. These inventions lead up to the resulting classical guitar from today, strung with three gut ad three metal spun silk strings. Nylon or other types of plastic was later used in place of gut.

Now, the guitar is widely played in the folk and popular music of many countries. In Jazz ensembles it is part of the rhythm section and is occasionally played as a solo instrument. In popular music the guitar is usually amplified, and ensembles frequently include more than one instrument, a “lead” guitar for solos, another for rhythm, and a “bass” guitar to play bass lines.