Evolution of the Guitar
Try to figure out what proceeded the guitar. I dare you. There’s a lot of theories and plenty of instruments that archaeologists have found in places such as ancient Egyptian tombs that seem definitively guitaresque. To such an extent if you wanted to argue they are more than seem guitaresque I, for one, wouldn’t put up much of a fight. For instance the lute of Har-Mose clocking in at 3500 years old. String, resonator, neck. Most future elements of the guitar are present. Even a plectrum attached to the instrument by a string because, apparently, losing your pick has been going on for millenniums. What’s missing though? Frets on the neck. Does that disqualify this instrument from claiming heritage to the guitar? Does that mean this is a wholly unrelated instrument that played no part in the evolution of the guitar? If we don’t know by now we’ll probably never know but I’d be glad to take either side and argue it with you.
Here’s another example of something very guitar like known as a bowl harp. Strings, resonator, neck. Check.
You get the idea. There’s something in the human brain that makes us want to take a stick, attach it to the body of something that resonates, and then stretch a string along the stick to the other part. Then… we sing songs, maybe drink a little wine and, if it has a nice beat, dance. If we can prove nothing else this stick, resonator, string thing has been going on for a very long time and, if you’ll allow a bold prediction, it will continue for a very long time to come.
So without getting stuck in the morass of the lutes and the ouds of this world, which are fine instruments but I didn’t set out to find their origins, let us pick up the thread of history where we can find the guitar as it’s more closely represented today. As for ouds and lutes maybe a future post.
So, off we go. By the 1500’s Renaissance period as the paint is drying in the Sistine Chapel and Martin Luther is nailing his proclamation to the church door the instrument that would shape our world as much as anything else was gaining in popularity all over Europe. Not exactly in the form we know it today but something called a 4 course guitar. They were in royal households and non-aristocratic households alike. For definition purposes, first, what is this course thing? A course is a pair of strings, like the way a modern 12 string guitar has 6 pairs of 2 strings tuned to the same notes and played simultaneously.
That’s what a course is. Two strings played simultaneously. The tuning for this guitar was G-C-E-A. The same intervals as the top 4 strings of the guitar. A 4th, a major 3rd, and a 4th apart. This had a figure 8 resonator and frets. Now we’re talking apples to apples. If we had a time machine we could go back to 1540 and find someone playing this instrument they could show you chords and songs that you could go back to present day and play on your Les Paul.
4 Course Guitar
Then came the five course guitar.
This, amongst other things, historically proves guitarists and luthiers are never satisfied. They just had to see what happened if they added another course. And with this addition in the 1600’s the guitar became one step closer to the modern guitar and the most popular instrument in Europe.
5 course Guitar
Then, sometime in the 17th century, a 6th course was added and guitar makers all over Europe once again followed suit. Some were built specifically as a 6 string instrument and some luthiers adapted 5 course guitars to handle the extra string. We are now at the 6 string fretted guitar with the same tuning as the instrument we know today and we are definitely in the home stretch of our journey. As the baroque period ended luthiers began to make instruments with 6 single strings, doing away with the double string courses. But notice how much smaller the body of the guitar is compared to the guitars we’re used to seeing today.
1830 6 String Guitar
Ok. We’re so freaking close. Most of the features we recognize in modern guitars are present.
Then in 1850 a Spaniard, Antonio Torres Jurado, increased the size of the body of the guitar, altered its proportions, and invented the fan-braced pattern. Bracing is the internal pattern of wood reinforcements and it secures the guitar’s top and back and stops the instrument from collapsing under tension of the strings. This allowed for the top to be thinner which made it louder and gave it more projection. Also, different woods could be used to enhance the tone. Torres’ design has remained the standard design for classical guitars to this day and is essentially unchanged since then.
6 String Fan Braced Guitar
So there you have it. From ancient Egypt to the guy you just saw playing in the park. The guitar has consistently evolved over hundreds, if not thousands of years. In all its variations, though, it continues to capture our imagination and be a form of human expression that doesn’t seem to have an end. Connecting people from generation to generation. From one continent to the another. Anytime you play or see a guitar being played you are having a similar experience to other people rich and poor. Past, present and future all over the world. What a thing!
