The History of the Guitar

The History of the Guitar

Four hundred years ago the guitar was invented. Since then, guitar has been a great innovative instrument. It serves as the heart of a song, or sound. From Jazz, and Blues, to Heavy Metal, and punk music guitar has been perhaps the biggest factor in modern music. Between acoustic guitar, and electric guitar there is a lot of history.

When guitar was first invented, it looked nothing like the guitars that we know. The first guitars were lutes. Lutes evolved into vihuelas, and later became the guitar in the fifteenth century. The first guitar was called the four-coarse guitar. It was called the four-course guitar because it only had four strings. It also had a strange tuning rather than the usual D-G-B-E tuning it was tuned to C-F-A-D which is a tone lower. Later, in the sixteenth century the five course guitar. Although the five-course is basically a four-course with an extra string, that string (low E) becomes very important in today’s style of playing. Also it had frets, frets are the lines on the guitar that make the different notes. It was believed to be invented in Spain. Early music sheets were written in tablature, similar to today.

Later, in the eighteenth century the five-course guitar evolved in to the most popular model, the six-string guitar. Eventhough it’s not certain were exactly the six-string originated from it is said to originate from, France, Italy, or Germany. The first classical six-strings were considered to be very beautiful. The new guitar design led to different ways the guitar could be played. The new guitars gave birth to the “Floating arm” technique, which allowed the guitarists right arm to pivot from the elbow, but the strings were still only plucked using the thumb, index, and middle finger. The practice of using the ring finger along with other fingers was introduced in the nineteenth century. The golden age of guitars were considered to be in eighteen hundreds when England adopted the guitar after a visit from Fernando Sor, one of the grates in early guitar, along with Matteo Carcassi, and Dionysio Aquado, all European guitarists who had a big effect on the technique of guitars today. The father of modern guitar is said to be Antonio de Torres Jurado who is known as a classical guitarist who modernized the guitar.