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The Guitar: History and Evolution

The guitar has been around for a long time in one form or another and is still one of the most popular musical instruments in moder music. Though the guitar has seen a bit of a decline since the hey days of rock and heavey metal music in the 1960s and 1970s, it's still a major driving force in the music you hear on the radio, especially blues and jazz guitarists who continue to dazzle the crowds with their guitar playing skills.

Modern bands continue to use the guitar, along with drums and often piano and keyboards as the standard modern music set of equipment. Guitar continues to be popular because of it's playability -- just about anyone can learn to play and become quite proficient. 

Modern electric guitar can also, with the aid of numerous effects boxes, emulate the sound of a number of other instruments, including piano, violin and even the sound of the human voice, and innovations in guitar techniques is never ending.

With the technical gagetry of modern electric guitar, it's nice to look back at the history of this popular instrument to fully appreciate how far it's come.

The guitar is't traceable to one single person. No doubt, before they started writing down history, some caveman managed to string together some form of an instrument that could be concocted as the first guitar. The guitar has gone through much evolution including it's image, which has changed many times throughout history.

The First Guitars

There were many musical instruments that were guitar-like going as far back as 5,000 years ago. Instruments which look like the guitar can be observed in statues recovered from various archeological digs, however, the first documented mention of a guitar goes back to the fourteenth century when an ancestor of the guitar had three pairs of strings, referred to as double courses, plus a single string that played the highest tone.

It's possible the word “guitar” came from the word “qitara”, which is Arabic for the different types of lutes popular during early times.

Guitar Evolution

The moder guitar likely originated in Spain, in the region of Malaga who are often created with inventing the instrument. Guitars began evolving from three pairs of strings to four pairs and finally to the six stringed instrument we know today.

Guitard became popular during the 16th century with the lower and middle classes as opposed to the vihuela, which was popular with the aristocrats. Though the vihuela's body was similar to that of a guitar, it was tuned like a lute.

The 18th century saw some major changes in the guitar, including having the double strings replaced by single strings and the addition of a sixth string. During this century, Antonio Torres de Jurado created the classical guitar, which included increasing the size of the body of the guitar.

The guitar was still considered an instrument for the taverns -- which meant it wasn't an instrument used for classical music. However, in Spain, the people where the piano wasn't really popular, the guitar started to catch on. At the time, however, it was tainted with the view that a guitar was more for gypsies and for no-goods who begged for loose change at bars.

The Modern Electric Guitar

What we know as the modern electric guitar was created in 1931. With an electric guitar, electronic “pick-ups” are used to enable it to produce sounds. These pick-ups convert vibrations from the strings into electric signals. The body of electric guitars can be semi-solid or solid, depending on the design, but with the invention of the electric guitar, the instrument took a major leap forward because the sound no longer depended on the structure and construction of the body, but was centered on the quality of the pick-ups and soundboard.

The sounds an electric guitar makes can be altered to achieve just about any tone. By using a guitar effects box, a guitar can create an amazing array of sounds and it's popularity continues in all fields of music, including classical.

From the crude instruments of those ancient days, and the many variations throughout history, the guitar is now one of the most sought after instruments whether playing or just listening and appreciating the magnificent sounds it creates.