Guitar Guide Book

Online Guide to Guitars

The guitar is a popular music instrument that was invented at least three thousand years ago. It can be used in almost any style of music including jazz, classical, rock and country. It is a six string instrument but twelve and seven string guitars are also sold and played by many people. The guitar can be played as one of the main instruments in a band or the classical guitar can be performed solo. Traditionally guitars are made of wood and have a large hollow body that echoes the vibrations of the strings. Today guitars come in thousands of shapes, sizes and designs in order to suit the personal expression of the player as well as the style of music.

An electric guitar uses a speaker called an amplifier to give the instrument enough volume to be heard by an audience. Electric guitars were invented in the 1930s and have been in high demand ever since. Guitars have come a long way since the time when strings were made out of animal guts. Now strings are made out of steel or nylon. There is even a modern professional name for guitar makers called a “luthier”. The guitar has gone from being a humble instrument to an international industry and icon of popular music in and of itself.

The acoustic guitar just wasn’t loud enough to compete with the huge horn sections in Jazz bands. Also, as jazz music became popular audiences grew and venues got bigger. The first electric guitars were just acoustics with microphones or pickups attached. Then the solid body guitar came on the market later in the 30’s. Les Paul of Gibson guitars and Audiovox were the first two companies to sell what we now know as the electric guitar. With the advent of amplifiers and effects like distortion, rock and roll took the guitar to new heights of popularity.

In order to match the performance demands of the electric guitar, the bass guitar went electric too. The bass guitar is normally played with bare fingers instead of a pick in order to get a warmer, fuller tone. The electric bass guitar looks allot like a regular electric guitar but it has a larger body and neck. It has only four strings that are the same notes as the bottom four strings of the guitar, but one octave lower. By the 1950’s the electric bass replaced the use of the large acoustic stand up bass in all styles except jazz.

Then there is what is called the semi-hollow body guitar which has some space for the string vibrations to resonate. This kind of guitar also has pickups though and many think that the sound is better because the notes ring out longer and have a fuller tone. Then there are acoustic-electric guitars that are normal steel-string hollow body guitars with a pick-up or microphone installed. The nice thing about an acoustic electric is that you can play them alone with no amplifier or for a large audience when plugged in. However, an acoustic-electric is not a replacement for a solid-body electric guitar because the sound is completely different.