Guitar history
For my research paper I wanted to write it on guitars because this is something I’m very involved in. My question was where did the guitar originate from and who where the first to play them. The guitar is part of the lute family of instruments and before there was a lute there was a the Arabic Ood this instrument was a eleven string guitar with five pairs of strings and one string on it’s own and they can be found as far back as five thousand years ago in the Mesopotamian region. In the year 711 the Moors invaded Spain and took a Ood with them and crafted their own version of the Ood and called it the lute. The lute was played until the 1500’s and only had four or five strings on them but still keeping the double strings like the Ood. The instrument was very popular in the 1600’s and gave birth to the finger picking style of play called polyphony, people also started playing music that was not tied to the church.
The first guitar was made in the mid 1500’s. Honestly it’s crazy to think there where two other instruments that inspired the creation of the guitar. The first guitar became very popular in France despite many people calling it to simple. This early guitar dropped the tear drop look and sported a new flat back like the modern guitar today, but this guitar was much smaller than the guitars today and had many improvement to go threw. The Portuguese took the early guitar to Hawaii in 1550’s and they made the ukulele based of the model and the fact that the guitar only had four strings at the time.
In the 1600’s the Baroque Guitar was invented. This guitar still kept the double string format but was the first guitar to have the pegs on a flat head apposed to the curved one that all the other models had.The guitar was very popular in Spain and created and newer louder style of playing called musical rodozo and was very loud and obnoxious. In the 1800’s the 19th century guitar was made and was the very first six single string guitar but was still not as big as people would like it to be. They ditched the double strings for the new metal strings invented by Savareze. These new strings were much louder and this guitar was the first guitar to have twenty two frets all the other guitars only had seven or six.
The classic guitar was made around 1850 and was made by Antonio de torres. He completely got all the dimensions of the guitar correctly and made the first guitar with gears instead of pegs which made it much easier to tune a guitar. But there was one flaw with this guitar the metal string would break the guitar easily so shortly after the classic guitar was made the modern day acoustic guitar was made by Christian Martin and this guitar was made with a x-bracing system designed to brace the underside of the sound board.
The electric guitar was invented by George Beauchamp and Adolph Rickenbacker in the 1930’s and was invented to give the guitar more sound because in concerts many people couldn’t hear guitar players because the instraument was simply just not loud enough to where a whole crowd could hear you play. Some people even would get bloody fingers from how hard they would pluck when needed. Les Paul being a tinkerer he invented the minitrack recorder which made playing over lapping music on stage so much easier than having three guitarist playing on stage at once, you could fit a whole orchestra into one guitar.
Now that we have solved our question where did the guitar come from and who played them first there’s nothing else to cover. I was suprised the know that the guitar used to be double stringed on all cords and how they just used to look in general.All the information on this paper was from interviews with secondary and primary sources and I’ve left links to the interviews and books in the work sited if anyone wants to watch the videos for them self. I hope that this new knowledge inspires someone to also become a guitar player. I don’t see why anyone wouldn’t because they are fun and net and a great hobby to have.
PRIMARY SOURCES
<http://www.modernguitars.com/archives/000818.html>: This link will direct you to a video were you can see Les Paul himself explain the Minitrack recorder
<http://www.rickenbacker.com/catalog_booklet.asp?pages=2&catalog=31>: This link will direct you to where you can see official adds on guitar prices throw the years.
ACADEMIC SECONDARY SOURCES
Guitar A complete guide for the player by Dave Hunter
The Ultimate Guitar book by Tony Bacon
History of the American Guitar 1833 to the Present Day by Tony Bacon
SECONDARY SOURCES
The history of guitar -Rob Scallon
How to play electric guitar for total beginners- Andy Guitar
