Guitar
About:
The guitar is a fretted musical instrument that usually has six strings.[1] It is typically played with both
hands by strumming or plucking the strings with either a guitar pick or the fingers/fingernails of one hand,
while simultaneously fretting (pressing the strings against the frets) with the fingers of the other hand. The
sound of the vibrating strings is projected either acoustically, by means of the hollow chamber of the guitar
(for an acoustic guitar), or through an electrical amplifier and a speaker.
The guitar is a type of chordophone, traditionally constructed from wood and strung with either gut, nylon or
steel strings and distinguished from other chordophones by its construction and tuning. The modern guitar was
preceded by the gittern, the vihuela, the four-course Renaissance guitar, and the five-course baroque guitar,
all of which contributed to the development of the modern six-string instrument.
There are three main types of modern acoustic guitar: the classical guitar (Spanish guitar/nylon-string guitar),
the steel-string acoustic guitar, and the archtop guitar, which is sometimes called a "jazz guitar". The tone of
an acoustic guitar is produced by the strings' vibration, amplified by the hollow body of the guitar, which acts
as a resonating chamber. The classical guitar is often played as a solo instrument using a comprehensive
finger-picking technique where each string is plucked individually by the player's fingers, as opposed to being
strummed. The term "finger-picking" can also refer to a specific tradition of folk, blues, bluegrass, and
country guitar playing in the United States. The acoustic bass guitar is a low-pitched instrument that is one
octave below a regular guitar.
Electric guitars, introduced in the 1930s, use an amplifier and a loudspeaker that both makes the sound of the
instrument loud enough for the performers and audience to hear, and, given that it produces an electric signal
when played, that can electronically manipulate and shape the tone using an equalizer (e.g., bass and treble
tone controls) and a huge variety of electronic effects units, the most commonly used ones being distortion (or
"overdrive") and reverb. Early amplified guitars employed a hollow body, but solid wood guitars began to
dominate during the 1960s and 1970s, as they are less prone to unwanted acoustic feedback "howls". As with
acoustic guitars, there are a number of types of electric guitars, including hollowbody guitars, archtop guitars
(used in jazz guitar, blues and rockabilly) and solid-body guitars, which are widely used in rock music.
The loud, amplified sound and sonic power of the electric guitar played through a guitar amp has played a key
role in the development of blues and rock music, both as an accompaniment instrument (playing riffs and chords)
and performing guitar solos, and in many rock subgenres, notably heavy metal music and punk rock. The electric
guitar has had a major influence on popular culture. The guitar is used in a wide variety of musical genres
worldwide. It is recognized as a primary instrument in genres such as blues, bluegrass, country, flamenco, folk,
jazz, jota, mariachi, metal, punk, reggae, rock, soul, and pop.
Types
Acoustic guitars
form 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
Renaissance and Baroque guitars are the ancestors
of the modern classical and
flamenco guitar. They are substantially smaller, more delicate in construction, and generate less volume. The
strings are paired in courses as in a modern 12-string guitar, but they only have four or five courses of
strings rather than six single strings normally used now. They were more often used as rhythm instruments in
ensembles than as solo instruments, and can often be seen in that role in early music performances. (Gaspar
Sanz's Instrucción de Música sobre la Guitarra Española of 1674 contains his whole output for the solo
guitar.)[13] Renaissance and Baroque guitars are easily distinguished, because the Renaissance guitar is very
plain and the Baroque guitar is very ornate, with ivory or wood inlays all over the neck and body, and a
paper-cutout inverted "wedding cake" inside the hole.
Classical
Classical guitars, also known as "Spanish" guitars,[14] are typically strung
with nylon strings, plucked with the fingers, played in a seated position and are used to play a diversity of
musical styles including classical music. The classical guitar's wide, flat neck allows the musician to play
scales, arpeggios, and certain chord forms more easily and with less adjacent string interference than on other
styles of guitar. Flamenco guitars are very similar in construction, but they are associated with a more
percussive tone. In Portugal, the same instrument is often used with steel strings particularly in its role
within fado music. The guitar is called viola, or violão in Brazil, where it is often used with an extra seventh
string by choro musicians to provide extra bass support.
In Mexico, the popular mariachi band includes a range of guitars, from the small requinto to the guitarrón, a
guitar larger than a cello, which is tuned in the bass register. In Colombia, the traditional quartet includes a
range of instruments too, from the small bandola (sometimes known as the Deleuze-Guattari, for use when
traveling or in confined rooms or spaces), to the slightly larger tiple, to the full-sized classical guitar. The
requinto also appears in other Latin-American countries as a complementary member of the guitar family, with its
smaller size and scale, permitting more projection for the playing of single-lined melodies. Modern dimensions
of the classical instrument were established by the Spaniard Antonio de Torres Jurado (1817–1892).[15]
FlapTop:
Flat-top or steel-string guitars are similar to the classical guitar, however,
within the varied sizes of the steel-stringed guitar the body size is usually significantly larger than a
classical guitar, and has a narrower, reinforced neck and stronger structural design. The robust X-bracing
typical of the steel-string was developed in the 1840s by German-American luthiers, of whom Christian Friedrich
"C. F." Martin is the best known. Originally used on gut-strung instruments, the strength of the system allowed
the guitar to withstand the additional tension of steel strings when this fortunate combination arose in the
early 20th century. The steel strings produce a brighter tone, and according to many players, a louder sound.
The acoustic guitar is used in many kinds of music including folk, country, bluegrass, pop, jazz, and blues.
Many variations are possible from the roughly classical-sized OO and Parlour to the large Dreadnought (the most
commonly available type) and Jumbo. Ovation makes a modern variation, with a rounded back/side assembly molded
from artificial materials.
Archtop:
Archtop guitars are steel-string instruments in which the top (and often the back)
of the instrument are carved, from a solid billet, into a curved, rather than a flat, shape. This violin-like
construction is usually credited to the American Orville Gibson. Lloyd Loar of the Gibson Mandolin-Guitar Mfg.
Co introduced the violin-inspired "F"-shaped hole design now usually associated with archtop guitars, after
designing a style of mandolin of the same type. The typical archtop guitar has a large, deep, hollow body whose
form is much like that of a mandolin or a violin-family instrument. Nowadays, most archtops are equipped with
magnetic pickups, and they are therefore both acoustic and electric. F-hole archtop guitars were immediately
adopted, upon their release, by both jazz and country musicians, and have remained particularly popular in jazz
music, usually with flatwound strings.
Flamanco:
The traditional flamenco guitar is made of Spanish cypress, sycamore, or
rosewood for the back and sides, and spruce for the top. This (in the case of cypress and sycamore) accounts for
its characteristic body color. Flamenco guitars are built lighter with thinner tops than classical guitars,
which produces a "brighter" and more percussive sound quality. Builders also use less internal bracing to keep
the top more percussively resonant. The top is typically made of either spruce or cedar, though other tone woods
are used today. Volume has traditionally been very important for flamenco guitarists, as they must be heard over
the sound of the dancers’ nailed shoes. To increase volume, harder woods, such as rosewood, can be used for the
back and sides, with softer woods for the top.
Dobro:
Dobro is an American brand of resonator guitars, currently owned by Gibson and
manufactured by its subsidiary Epiphone. The term "dobro" is also used as a generic trademark for any
wood-bodied, single-cone resonator guitar.
The Dobro was originally a guitar manufacturing company founded by the Dopyera brothers with the name "Dobro
Manufacturing Company". Their guitars designs, with a single outward-facing resonator cone, was introduced to
compete with the patented inward-facing tricone and biscuit designs produced by the National String Instrument
Corporation. The Dobro name appeared on other instruments, notably electric lap steel guitars and solid body
electric guitars and on other resonator instruments such as Safari resonator mandolins.
Electric:
An electric guitar is a guitar that uses one or more pickups to convert the
vibration of its strings into electrical signals. The vibration occurs when a guitar player strums, plucks,
fingerpicks, slaps or taps the strings. The pickup generally uses electromagnetic induction to create this
signal, which being relatively weak is fed into a guitar amplifier before being sent to the speaker(s), which
converts it into audible sound.
Twelve String:
The 12-string guitar is a steel-string guitar with 12 strings in six
courses, which produces a thicker, more ringing tone than a standard six-string guitar. Typically, the strings
of the lower four courses are tuned in octaves, with those of the upper two courses tuned in unison. The gap
between the strings within each dual-string course is narrow, and the strings of each course are fretted and
plucked as a single unit. The neck is wider, to accommodate the extra strings, and is similar to the width of a
classical guitar neck. The sound, particularly on acoustic instruments, is fuller and more harmonically resonant
than six-string instruments.
Hollow Electric:
Full hollow-body guitars have large, deep bodies made of glued-together
sheets, or "plates", of wood. They can often be played at the same volume as an acoustic guitar and therefore
can be used unplugged at intimate gigs. They qualify as electric guitars inasmuch as they have fitted pickups.
Historically, archtop guitars with retrofitted pickups were among the very earliest electric guitars. The
instrument originated during the Jazz Age, in the 1920s and 1930s, and are still considered the classic jazz
guitar (nicknamed "jazzbox"). Like semi-acoustic guitars, they often have f-shaped sound holes.
Resonator:
A resonator guitar or resophonic guitar is an acoustic guitar that produces
sound by conducting string vibrations through the bridge to one or more spun metal cones (resonators), instead
of to the guitar's sounding board (top). Resonator guitars were originally designed to be louder than regular
acoustic guitars, which were overwhelmed by horns and percussion instruments in dance orchestras. They became
prized for their distinctive tone, however, and found life with bluegrass music and the blues well after
electric amplification solved the problem of inadequate volume.
Components:
Tuning pegs
A tuning peg in a pegbox is perhaps the most common system. A peg has a grip or knob on it to allow it to be
turned. A tuning pin is a tuning peg with a detachable grip, called a tuning lever. The socket on the tuning
lever fits over the pin and allows it to be turned. Tuning pins are used on instruments where there is not space
for a knob on each string, such as pianos and harps.
Nut
A nut, on a stringed musical instrument, is a small piece of hard material that supports the strings at the end
closest to the headstock or scroll. The nut marks one end of the vibrating length of each open string, sets the
spacing of the strings across the neck, and usually holds the strings at the proper height from the fingerboard.
Along with the bridge, the nut defines the vibrating lengths (scale lengths) of the open strings.
Fret Board
The fingerboard (also known as a fretboard on fretted instruments) is an important component of most stringed
instruments. It is a thin, long strip of material, usually wood, that is laminated to the front of the neck of
an instrument. The strings run over the fingerboard, between the nut and bridge. To play the instrument, a
musician presses strings down to the fingerboard to change the vibrating length, changing the pitch. This is
called stopping the strings. Depending on the instrument and the style of music, the musician may pluck, strum
or bow one or more strings with the hand that is not fretting the notes. On some instruments, notes can be
sounded by the fretting hand alone, such as with hammer ons, an electric guitar technique.
Frets
Almost all guitars have frets, which are metal strips (usually nickel alloy or stainless steel) embedded along
the fretboard and located at exact points that divide the scale length in accordance with a specific
mathematical formula. The exceptions include fretless bass guitars and very rare fretless guitars. Pressing a
string against a fret determines the strings' vibrating length and therefore its resultant pitch. The pitch of
each consecutive fret is defined at a half-step interval on the chromatic scale. Standard classical guitars have
19 frets and electric guitars between 21 and 24 frets, although guitars have been made with as many as 27 frets.
Frets are laid out to accomplish an equal tempered division of the octave. Each set of twelve frets represents
an octave. The twelfth fret divides the scale length exactly into two halves, and the 24th fret position divides
one of those halves in half again.
Sound Hole
The sound hole is usually a round hole in the top of the guitar under the strings. Air inside the body vibrates
as the guitar top and body is vibrated by the strings, and the response of the air cavity at different
frequencies is characterized, like the rest of the guitar body, by a number of resonance modes at which it
responds more strongly
Pickguard
A pickguard (also known as scratchplate) is a piece of plastic or other (often laminated) material that is
placed on the body of a guitar, mandolin or similar plucked string instrument. The main purpose of the pickguard
is to protect the guitar's finish from being scratched by the guitar pick.[1]
As well as serving a practical purpose, the pickguard may also be used for decoration and is often made in a
contrasting color to that of the guitar body (popular variants are white pickguards on darker guitars and black
pickguards on lighter guitars). As well as plastic, other pickguard materials can include acrylic glass, glass,
plywood, fabrics, metal, and mother-of-pearl/pearloid varieties. Expensive guitars may have luxury pickguards
made from exotic woods,[1] furs, skins, gems, precious metals, Mother of Pearl and abalone pearl.
Picks
A guitar pick (American English) is a plectrum used for guitars. Picks are generally made of one uniform
material—such as some kind of plastic (nylon, Delrin, celluloid), rubber, felt, tortoiseshell, wood, metal,
glass, tagua, or stone. They are often shaped in an acute isosceles triangle with the two equal corners rounded
and the third corner less rounded. They are used to strum chords or to sound individual notes on a guitar.
Bridge
A bridge is a device that supports the strings on a stringed musical instrument and transmits the vibration of
those strings to another structural component of the instrument—typically a soundboard, such as the top of a
guitar or violin—which transfers the sound to the surrounding air.
Pickup Selector
Every electric guitar, except those with a single pickup, has a pickup selector. Guitars with two pickups have a
three-way switch which allows the guitarist to select either the neck pickup or the bridge pickup. When the
switch is in the middle position both pickups are used.
Tone knobs
The tone stack on a standard tube amp is in-between the preamp distortion and the power-tube distortion. Thus
the tone stack acts as the final part of shaping the preamp distortion voicing and also shapes the power-tube
distortion voicing, together with the Master Volume control, which affects the amount of power-tube distortion
voicing. For maximum power-tube distortion, set the tone controls and Master Volume to maximum, which is
equivalent to bypassing them entirely.
Output Jack
The guitar output jack typically provides a monaural signal. Many guitars with active electronics use a jack
with an extra contact normally used for stereo. These guitars use the extra contact to break the ground
connection to the on-board battery to preserve battery life when the guitar is unplugged. These guitars require
a mono plug to close the internal switch and connect the battery to ground. Standard guitar cables use a
high-impedance 1⁄4 inch (6.35 mm) mono plug. These have a tip and sleeve configuration referred to as a TS phone
connector. The voltage is usually around 1 to 9 millivolts.
Cut away
A cutaway on the guitar construction is an indentation in the upper bout of the guitar body adjacent to the
guitar neck, designed to allow easier access to the upper frets.
Cutaway bodies are mainly of interest when discussing acoustic guitars and semi-acoustic guitars; virtually all
solid body guitars either have at least one cutaway, or have a body shape (such as the flying V guitar) which
does not intrude into the upper neck area.
Some manufacturers denote instrument models with cutaway using the suffix C, such as the Gibson L5C or the Maton
CW80C.
Types
Venetian cutaway (rounded bout) on Gibson Super 400 CES
Florentine cutaway
Squared-off cutaway on Selmer-Maccaferri guitar by Hanno Kiel
There are two main types of cutaways: Venetian and Florentine.[1] A Venetian cutaway has a rounded bout. A
Florentine cutaway has a sharp bout. The terms probably originate with the Gibson Guitar Corporation and
probably do not reflect historic instrument-making practices of Florence and Venice.[2]
A less common third type is the squared-off cutaway, used on the Selmer-Maccaferri guitar and some nylon-string
guitars.