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Musical
Instrument Resources |
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Guitars
Acoustic
Guitar History
The guitar
had its primitive origins in the ancient Near East. Clay
plaques excavated from Babylonia, dated circa 1850 B.C.,
show figures playing musical instruments, some bearing a
general resemblance to a guitar and having a distinctly
differentiated body and neck. Later evidence from
ancient Egypt indicates a necked instrument with marked
frets about the neck. A stringed instrument from ancient
Rome incorporates a wood soundboard with five groups of
small sound holes.
During the Middle Ages, guitars with three, four, and
five strings co-existed. The Guitarra Latina had curved
sides and is thought to have come to Spain from
elsewhere in Europe. The Guitarra Morisca, brought to
Spain by the Moors, had an oval soundbox and many sound
holes on its soundboard. By the fifteenth century, four
double-string guitars, similar to lutes, became popular,
and by the sixteenth century, a fifth double-string had
been added.
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In this
period of time, composers wrote mostly in tablature
notation. Italy was the center of guitar world during
the 17th century, and the the Spanish school of guitar
making only began to flourish late in the 18th century
after the addition of the sixth string. During the 19th
century, improved communication and transportation
enabled performers to travel widely and the guitar
became a widely known instrument.
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Guitar
music became especially popular in Spain and Antonio de
Torres developed the Spanish guitar in its modern form,
with a broadened body, increased waist curve, thinned
belly, improved internal bracing, single string courses
replacing double courses, and a machined head replacing
wooden tuning pegs. While most of the credit for the
early development of the acoustic guitar goes to
Europeans, today's steel-string acoustic guitars were
developed in America. During the early 20th century,
when European emigrants were coming to America in
droves, there were a number of highly skilled instrument
makers among them, including those who specialized in
the steel-stringed acoustic guitar. Two types of
construction evolved: the flat-top guitar and the
arch-top guitar. Martin and Gibson were two of the
earliest — and most influential — American acoustic
guitar makers.
Modern guitars have six strings. Andres Segovia, a
Spanish guitarist who lived from 1893 to 1987, helped
establish the guitar as a concert instrument, adapting
it to the complex music of modern composers and
transcribing early polyphonic music. His virtuoso
playing inspired compositions by Manuel de Falla and
Villa-Lobos. Acoustic guitars are used most often in
folk and jazz music.
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Electric Guitar History
The development of the electric
solid body guitar owes a great deal to the popularity of
Hawaiian music in the 1920s and 1930s. Hawaiian guitars were
solo instruments played with a metal slide. Electric Hawaiian
guitars were the first musical instruments that depended
entirely on their sound being amplified electrically not just
acoustically.
A key figure was Adolph Rickenbacker who originally he was to
make metal components for Dopera Brothers' National Resonator
Guitars. While at National, Rickenbacker met George Beauchamp
and Paul Barth who had been working together on the principle of
the magnetic pick-up. Together they formed the Electro String
Company and in 1931 produced their first Hawaiian guitars. Their
success prompted Gibson and others to start producing electric
guitars,
In the 1940s Gibson new electric models became firmly
established. People began to work on ways of applying the solid
body of the Hawaiian and steel guitars to regular instruments.
In 1944, Leo Fender, who ran a radio repair shop, teamed up with
Doc Kaufman, a former Rickenbacker employee, started K & F
Company and produced a series of steel guitars and amplifiers.
Fender felt the large pick-up magnets in use at the time need
not be so large. He incorporated a new pick-up which he wanted
to try out into a solid body guitar based on the shape Hawaiian
but, with a regular properly fretted fingerboard. Though only
meant to demonstrate the pick-up the guitar was soon in demand.
1946 saw the formation of Fender Electric Instrument Company and
the introduction of the Broadcaster.
At the same time Les Paul was working in the same direction.
Paul experimented with pick ups throughout the 1930s but, had
experienced feedback and resonance problems and began to think
about a solid body guitar after hearing about a solid body
violin by Thomas Edison.. Paul was convinced the only way to
avoid body feedback was to reduce pick up movement and the only
way to do that was to mount it in a solid body.
Paul persuaded Epiphone to let him use workshop on Sundays,
where in 1941 he built the historic "log" guitar
In 1947 Paul Bigsby in consultation with Merle Travis built a
solid body electric guitar that shared certain design features
with the Broadcaster that Fender introduced in 1948. Bigsby
wasn't far from Fender operation in Fullerton and there is some
question who was looking over whose shoulder
Fender was more concerned with utility and practicality rather
then looks and wanted a regular guitar with the clear sound of a
electric Hawaiian but, without the feedback problems. The result
was the the Broadcaster which he began producing in 1948 later
renamed the Telecaster.
In 1954, Fender began producing the Stratocaster. Along with the
Telecaster and the guitars Les Paul was designing for Gibson,
they set the standard for solid body guitars.
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