History of the Guitar

Guitar-like instruments were documented as early as the 14th century. At this time, they had only three strings. The guitar as we know it today is said to have come from Spain. Many believe that the people of Malaga invented it. Over the course of time, the guitar went from having three strings, to four strings and then eventually six strings. Most guitars nowadays have six strings. However, some modern guitars have four, seven, eight, ten or even twelve strings.

Around the 16th century is when the guitar really became popular. People from both the lower and middle classes enjoyed playing it. The upper class people from that time, also known as the aristocrats, often preferred to play the vihuela instead.

In the 18th century is when the guitar really went through a serious change. During this time, Antonio Torres de Jurado expanded the size of the body of the guitar. This came to be known by many as the “birth” of the classical guitar. Some people still looked down on guitars during this time and considered guitars to only be worthy of being played in taverns. The oldest surviving six string guitar is said to have been built by a man named Gaetano Vinnacia of Naples, Italy.

For many years, guitars were relegated to mainly minor roles in musical ensembles due to the relatively quiet sound that they produced. Thus, one of the major reasons that electric guitars were invented was that there were many people out there that desired a much louder guitar that could stand out above all of the other instruments, rather than just blending in. Electric guitars were first made in the 1920’s although they have become much more sophisticated since then. Paul H. Turmac is said to have invented the very first electric guitar. Right around the same time period, two Los Angeles musicians, George Beauchamp and John Dopyera teamed up to try to create an even louder electric guitar.

They succeeded and took their findings to Adolph Rickenbacker, and Rickenbacker then became the first mass manufacturer of electric guitars. Orville Gibson then created another electric guitar model that completely forever changed the music industry. This model was known as the ES-150. Although this guitar was overall a smashing success, it wasn’t quite perfect yet. It still had a somewhat distorted sound to it. In the 1940’s, Les Paul who was a guitar player as well as an inventor decided to try to come up with a better model. In 1946, he took it to Gibson but they were still a bit skeptical about it his design. However, his design made sense to Fender and in 1949, he started selling electric guitars that were based on Les Paul’s design. By the time the 1960’s rolled around, the electric guitar was considered to be a well known and respected instruments. Throughout the years, improvements have continually been made on electric guitars. The sounds quality on most of today’s electric guitars is just fantastic, and the variety of styles and colors they’re available in is practically endless!

Thank you for taking the time to read this article, and I hope that you’ve found it to be both interesting and informative.