The guitar is a musical instrument of the chordophone family. The standard guitar has six strings but four-, seven-, eight-, nine-, ten-, eleven-, twelve-, thirteen- and eighteen-string guitars are also available. The two primary families of guitar types are the electric guitars and the acoustic guitars. The three main types of acoustic guitar are the classical guitar, the steel-string flattop guitar, and the archtop guitar.
Guitars are recognized as one of the primary instruments in flamenco, jazz, blues, country, mariachi, rock music, and many forms of pop. They can also be a solo classical instrument. Guitars may be played acoustically; the tone is produced by the vibration of the strings which is amplified by the body of the guitar which acts as a large hollow resonating chamber, or they may rely on an amplifier that can electronically manipulate tone. Such electric guitars were introduced in the 1930s, and they have continued to have a profound influence on popular culture since then.
Traditionally guitars have been constructed of various woods and strung with animal gut, or more recently, with either nylon or steel strings. Guitars are made and repaired by luthiers.
History
Main article: History of the classical guitarBefore the development of the electric guitar and the use of synthetic materials, a guitar was defined as being an instrument having "a long, fretted neck, flat wooden soundboard, ribs, and a flat back, most often with incurved sides". The term is used to refer to a number of such related instruments that were developed and used across Europe in the modern era. Some types of guitars, which are themselves related to these European instruments, originated in the Americas. origin of stringed instruments once known in central Asia and India. For this reason guitars are distantly related to contemporary instruments from these regions, including the tanbur, setar and sitar, among others. The oldest known iconographic representation of an instrument displaying the essential features of a guitar is a 3,300 year old stone carving of a Hittite bard.
The modern word, guitar, was adopted into English from Spanish guitarra (German Gitarre , French Guitare ), loaned from the medieval Andalusian Arabic qitara , itself derived from the Latin cithara , which in turn came from the earlier Greek word kithara , a descendant of Old Persian sihtar ( Tar means string in Persian).
The guitar is descended from the Roman cithara brought by the Romans to Hispania around 40 AD, and further adapted and developed with the arrival of the four-string oud, brought by the Moors after their conquest of Iberia in the 8th century. Elsewhere in Europe, the indigenous six-string Scandinavian lut (lute), had gained in popularity in areas of Viking incursions across the continent. Often depicted in carvings c. 800 AD, the Norse hero Gunther (also known as Gunnar), played a lute with his toes as he lay dying in a snake-pit, in the legend of Siegfried. By 1200 AD, the four-string "guitar" had evolved into two types: the guitarra moresca (Moorish guitar) which had a rounded back, wide fingerboard and several soundholes, and the guitarra latina (Latin guitar) which resembled the modern guitar with one soundhole and a narrower neck. In the 14th and 15th centuries the qualifiers "moresca" and "latina" were dropped and these four course instruments were simply called guitars.
The Spanish vihuela or (in Italian) " viola da mano ", a guitar-like instrument of the 15th and 16th centuries, is often considered a major influence in the development of the modern guitar. It had six courses (usually), lute like tuning in fourths and a guitar-like body, although early representations reveal an instrument with a sharply-cut waist. It was also larger than the contemporary four course guitars. By the late 15th century some vihuelas began to be played with a bow, leading to the development of the viol. By the sixteenth century the vihuela's construction had more in common with the modern guitar, with its curved one-piece ribs, than with the viols, and more like a larger version of the contemporary four-course guitars. The vihuela enjoyed only a short period of popularity in Spain and Italy during an era dominated elsewhere in Europe by the lute; the last surviving published music for the instrument appeared in 1576. Meanwhile the five-course baroque guitar, which was documented in Spain from the middle of the 16th century, enjoyed popularity, especially in Spain, Italy and France from the late 16th century to the mid 18th century. Confusingly, in Portugal, the word vihuela referred to the guitar, whereas guitarra meant the "Portuguese guitar", a variety of cittern.
Types of guitars
Guitars can be divided into two broad categories, acoustic and electric:
Acoustic guitars
There are several notable subcategories within the acoustic guitar group: classical and flamenco guitars; steel-string guitars, which include the flat-topped, or "folk," guitar; twelve-string guitars; and the arched-top guitar. The acoustic guitar group also includes unamplified guitars designed to play in different registers, such as the acoustic bass guitar, which has a similar tuning to that of the electric bass guitar.
Renaissance and Baroque guitars
Classical guitars
Flamenco guitars
The modern Ten-string guitar
Main article: Ten-string guitarPortuguese guitar
Main article: Portuguese guitarFlat-top (steel-string) guitars
Archtop guitars
Selmer-Maccaferri guitars
Resonator , resophonic or Dobro guitars
12-string guitars
Russian guitars
Acoustic bass guitars
Guitarrón
Tenor guitars
Harp guitars
Extended-range guitars
Guitar battente
Electric guitars
Main article: Electric guitarElectric guitars can have solid, semi-hollow, or hollow bodies, and produce little sound without amplification. Electromagnetic pickups convert the vibration of the steel strings into electrical signals, which are fed to an amplifier through a cable or radio transmitter. The sound is frequently modified by other electronic devices or the natural distortion of valves (vacuum tubes) in the amplifier. There are two main types of pickup, single and double coil (or humbucker), each of which can be passive or active. The electric guitar is used extensively in jazz, blues, and rock and roll. The first successful magnetic pickup for a guitar was invented by George Beauchamp, and incorporated into the 1931 Ro-Pat-In (later Rickenbacker) "Frying Pan" lap steel; other manufacturers, notably Gibson, soon began to install pickups in archtop models. After World War II the completely solid-body electric was popularized by Gibson in collaboration with Les Paul, and independently by Leo Fender of Fender Music. The lower fretboard action (the height of the strings from the fingerboard), lighter (thinner) strings, and its electrical amplification lend the electric guitar to some techniques which are less frequently used on acoustic guitars. These include tapping, extensive use of legato through pull-offs and hammer-ons (also known as slurs), pinch harmonics, volume swells, and use of a tremolo arm or effects pedals.
The first guitarist of note to use a seven-string guitar was jazz guitarist George Van Eps, who was noted as a pioneer of this instrument. Solid body seven-strings were popularized in the 1980s and 1990s in part due to the release of the Ibanez Universe guitar, endorsed by Steve Vai. Other artists go a step further, by using an 8-string guitar with two extra low strings. Although the most common 7-string has a low B string, Roger McGuinn (of The Byrds and Rickenbacker) uses an octave G string paired with the regular G string as on a 12-string guitar, allowing him to incorporate chiming 12-string elements in standard 6-string playing. in 1982 Uli Jon Roth developed the "Sky Guitar", with a vastly extended amount of frets, which was the first guitar to venture into the upper registers of the violin. Roth's 7-string and 33 fret "Mighty Wing" guitar features an altogether 6-octave range.
The electric bass guitar is similar in tuning to the traditional double bass viol. Hybrids of acoustic and electric guitars are also common. There are also more exotic varieties, such as guitars with two, three, or rarely four necks, all manner of a
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