Guitar History

he guitar goes way back to like the Medieval and the Renaissance time periods. Throughout the years it has impacted music in a huge way. You rarely listen to music that does not have the guitar either being the main instrument or working as a backup. Most music genres will be impossible without the guitar. Genres such as Rock, Spanish music, Country, American Blues etc. will not even exist if it wasn’t for the guitar. (Phoebe) “ Country and western music will not be the same without the guitar. The traditional spanish music will be impossible without the guitar. The American blues will not exist without the sad cry of the guitar”. The guitar has truly evolved and has impacted music in a huge way. And as the years go by it will keep on crying out its beautiful sound. In this essay i will tell you about how throughout the years artists have used the guitar to change music.

Whereas most renaissance and baroque instruments have direct descendants or analogues (for example, modern trombones and sackbuts, modern and baroque violins, etc.), this is not true for cornetts; no mainstream modern instrument combines a lip-vibrated mouthpiece with woodwind-style fingering, and this lack of any kind of continuous performing tradition necessitated a re-invention of both their playing technique and usage. Cornetts are usually considered to be difficult to play well, but performance standards have improved dramatically over the last fifty years or so.

The electric guitar was important to the society by helping musicians make better and more enjoyable music for themselves and the

The Hurdy-gurdy - the hurdy-gurdy was introduced in the 12th century - the bow was replaced by strings attached to a wheel which was cranked by a handle - extremely popular form of Street music

No matter what radio station is being played, who is playing, or the type of genre is performed at some point in time everyone has heard the chaotic sound of the electric guitar. Nowadays there’s only a few who know the origin of which the electric guitar. The man who created the first prototype of the electric body guitar was Lester William Polsfuss, also known as Les Paul. Without this man, much of the music that is listened to today would be drastically different; just the sound of the dull acoustic guitar would not be able to grasp our attention as securly.

“African Americans invented Rock and Roll, without their musical contributions we would not have the genre.” As an eager, attentive History 105 student I have had to opportunity to learn a great deal about the origins of the genre of Rock and Roll. The origin, even though many historians have attempted to determine exactly where it came from, is still unknown. Rock and Roll is a blend of Gospel, Jazz, Blues, Hillbilly, Rhythm and Blues and many more types of music. Throughout this essay I will try and determine if the statement first mentioned is an accurate statement, and why or why not?

“Some stories demand to be told. Others are simply content on being heard. Hearing through music, through lyrics, through a cultural revolution, this is the story of Washburn Guitars.” (the history of Washburn, 2009)

During the 1860’s the English began to add extra strings to the already popular five-string banjo so that there were now banjos that has seven, eight, or nine strings. The extra strings included bass and thumb strings that were supposed to be plucked. Though this addition to English banjos was accepted by most professional banjo players, by the 1890’s professional musicians decided to return to predominantly playing the traditional five-string

Berry continued to release singles, that reached popular status with both black and white listeners. The actual birth of Rock N’ Roll is a mix between Country, Blues, and R&B. White kids were tired of listening to the same old thing, and when they heard black artists on black radio stations, they were hooked. It was this new sound that propelled the birth of rock to where it is today. Chuck Berry helped create this new sound, with the songs of “Johnny B Goode”, “My Ding-a-Ling”, “Maybellene”, and many others. If not for his specific sound, we would not have the genre of Rock N’ Roll we have today.

Manuel Nunes also suggested a different tuning pattern to make chord formation easier. The body of the ukulele is usually made from wood. The type of wood has a significant impact on the sound, tone, and quality. Mahogany is thought to be the finest wood for making ukuleles. It also has excellent aging properties, sounding better as it gets older. Typically, the same type of wood is used for the entire instrument. The ukulele is a small instrument that looks like a miniature version of a guitar. It consists of a short neck, the main body, four strings and tuning keys, a bridge, a fretboard, and a sound hole. There are a variety of different types of ukuleles including the soprano, concert, tenor, and baritone. The soprano is the smallest (20 inches) and the baritone is the largest (30 inches). The strings are tuned to the notes G-C-E-A on all ukuleles except the Baritone. Tuning for the Baritone is D-G-B-E because it has a deeper sound like that of a guitar. Fun fact about the ukulele: Neil Armstrong loved to play the ukulele in his downtime. After his trip to the moon, he feared that he had contracted a strange bacterium, so he spent weeks in quarantine, often

Music played a large part in the Elizabethan era. It was an important form of entertainment and was favored by Queen Elizabeth. Court music was considered to be the most unique and broad style of music at the time. Elizabethan court music was a refined style of music specifically used in the courts of Queen Elizabeth. Court instruments were a main part in court music.

Three years later (1951), he made the Fender Precision Bass. It is a solid-body, four-stringed bass that is outfitted with a single split-coil humbucking pickup and 20 fret neck. This set the trend for most electric bass guitars.

Stradivari was actually well in touch with the results of other impressive instruments that had been constructed before his. He was able to gain experience by comparing the many instruments built by the early Brescian and Cremonese makers by deducing from them the aspects that made them unfavorable and applying these aspects to his own creative works. Every generation has contributed something to the construction of musical instruments, and Stradivari combined these centuries of contributions to create something astounding that opened up a new chapter in history. While it is a known fact that Stradivari got a lot of inspiration from previous violinmakers (Visconti, who is a well-known violinist, is said to have given advice to this “master” of violin construction), people insist that he was a natural born genius, so much so that he has been claimed to be a “superhuman”. Based on scientific principles, many different works have been written based on the unsurpassed tonal qualities found in his instruments. However, there has also been a daily study of Stradivari’s works that were compared to those of the craftsmen who came before him. When put to the test it was found that the density of the bellies and backs of Stradivari’s instruments were made based on the principles of Gasparo, in addition to the result of a gradual progression, which Maggini and Amatis had in common with him. Those who have examined his work have noted that Stradivari adjusted the thickness of his instruments, but there is no indication that he used any principles as a guide other than what has been derived from the practices of his forerunners. Stradivari left the backs and bellies of his instruments a little thinner (or stouter), with their backs displaying a larger variation than their

After the Guittern, the guitar’s structure stayed the same and had little changes. One of the slightly improved guitars was called the Ghitarra Battente. The Ghitarra Battente was the first guitarlike instrument to use a saddle, a movable bridge, and led the trend towards metal frets (4). The Ghitarra Battente helped the popularity of the guitar grow tremendously. This instrument somewhat slowed down the development and improvements to the guitar until the 1500s. In the 1500s, the Vinuhela de Mano was introduced to the world. The Vinuhela de Mano is the the largest guitar to date and set the size for the modern guitar. This instrument had several soundholes on the top of the guitar, was played using a pick, and used gut strings. The Vihuela de Mano resembles the modern twelve-stringed guitars. The first publication of music for the guitar was published in 1564 and was called “Tres Libros de Musica en Cifras para Vihuela.” After the Vihuela de Mano, many forms of the guitar emerged that improved the structure of the

Inventors have been playing with the idea of electrically powered musical instruments since the 1800s, but "the first attempts at an amplified instrument did not come until the development of electrical amplification by the radio industry in the 1920s."