History of the Guitar

Guitars have a distant relation to instruments from ancient central Asia and India including the tanbur, the setar, and the sitar. The oldest known image and representation of an instrument displaying the essential features of a guitar is a 3,300 year old stone carving of a Hittite bard and the oldest known guitar like instrument was found in Ancient Egypt. It is said to have been used by Har-Mose, a singer to the Egyptian queen Hatshepsut. This guitar can be seen today at the Archaeological Museum in Cairo, Egypt.

The Greeks also used a guitar-like stringed instrument they called Tanbur or Tranobur which crossed mediterranean trade routes and got adopted by the Romans who referred to it as Chitara. Whilst the Greek instrument’s popularity increased across the Middle East, the Romans incorporated the chitara as part of their culture and travelled through Portugal and Spain with it.

6 - 9th Century

The lute and the oud emerged during this period as predecessor instruments to the guitar. The lute was brought into Europe between the 6th and the 9th century in varied forms by the Eastern Roman empire. It was an instrument favoured by musicians of the early medieval and the renaissance periods. The body of the lute was oval with a rounded back and has four strings which are plucked rather than strummed. The build of the lute makes it’s a subdued instrument sound wise hence it could not be played in any kind of band setting.

The Oud, a four stringed instrument that shared ancestry with the lute appeared in Europe following the Moor (Arab) southern Spanish invasion of the 8th century. Similar to the lute, the Oud had a rounded body but had a smaller neck with no frets.

13th Century

Two medieval instruments that were referred to as Guitars during the 1200's were the Moorish guitar (Guitarra Moresca) and the Latin Guitar (Guitarra Latina). The Moorish guitar’s design had a rounded back, wide fingerboard and several sound holes whilst the Latin Guitar had a single sound hole and a narrower neck making it look more like the modern guitar than the Moorish Guitar. The adjectives used in qualifying these guitars (Latin and Moorish) were dropped by the 14th century.

15th - 16th Century

The Spanish vihuela or "viola da mano" as referred to in Italian was developed in Spain in the 15th century and is a guitar-like instrument that was popular between the 15th and 16th centuries. It is
extensively considered to have been of great influence in the development of the baroque guitar. It is narrower and deeper than the modern guitar with a less pronounced waist, a smaller body than the lute and with treble strings, in pairs, calledcourses, which were tuned like the lute and made to be strummed.

By the 16th century, the vihuela's construction had more in common with the modern guitar. Some very beautiful models were made by the violin maker Stradivarius.

The vihuela enjoyed a relatively short period of popularity in Spain and Italy whilst the lute’s popularity increased elsewhere in Europe. The last surviving published music for the vihuela appeared in 1576. There was also the baroque guitar, a five course gut string guitar with moveable gut frets which came into its own from the middle of the 16th century replacing the renaissance lute in popularity across Spain, Italy and France up until mid-18th century.

16th - 19th Century

The guitar grew in popularity between the 17th and early 19th century as the lute and vihuela declined, though it remained an amateur’s instrument. Around the same time period, several changes occurred to the instrument. The violin- type peg box was replaced by a flat, slightly reflexed head with rear tuning pegs around 1600. A fifth string was added and in the late 18th century a sixth. Before 1800 the double strings were replaced by single strings tuned in e-a-d-g-b-e (still the standard tuning).

The early tied-on gut frets were replaced by built-on ivory or metal frets in the 18th century. In the 19th century Metal screws were substituted for the tuning pegs, the fingerboard was raised slightly above the level of the belly and was extended across it to the edge of the sound hole.

The guitar's body underwent changes that resulted in increased sound. It became broader and shallower, with an extremely thin soundboard. Internally, transverse bars reinforcing the soundboard were replaced by radial bars that fanned out below the sound hole.

The neck, formerly set into a wood block was formed into a brace or shoe that projected a short distance inside the body and was glued to the back. This gave extra stability against the pull of the strings.

The 19th-century innovations to the guitar were largely the work of Antonio de Torres Jurado also referred to as the Stradivari of guitars and the instrument that resulted was the classical guitar.

European immigrants carried the steel-stringed version of the reshaped Spanish instrument with them to America, where the development of the guitar really started to take shape and where the flat top, the archtop, and eventually, the modern electric guitar would be created.

Key innovators of the instrument at that point included Christian Frederick Martin, a German-born American luthier who made his first guitar in the US in the 1830s and developed the flat top acoustic guitar and Orville Gibson who is credited with the creation of the archtop guitar with its violin-like sound holes (F-holes) and adjustable bridge design features that gave the archtop increased volume and tone.

The guitar developed in many other variant forms. Among these are the Mexican Jarana, the South American Charango, the metal-strung guitar, the cello guitar, the Hawaiian or steel guitar. Modern classical-guitar technique owes much to the Spaniard Francisco Tárrega, whose transcriptions of works by Bach, Mozart, and other composers formed the basis of the concert repertory.

20th Century

Andrés Segovia gave the guitar further prominence as a concert instrument. Composers like Heitor Villa-Lobos and Manuel de Falla wrote serious works for it and others like Pierre Boulez scored for the guitar in chamber ensembles.

The electric guitar was developed by George Beauchamp, Paul Barth and Adolph Rickenbacker an electrical engineer who created Rickenbacker International Corporation with the main aim of creating electric versions of musical instruments.

The first patent for the electric guitar was awarded to George Beauchamp for a guitar he made with partner Adolph Rickenbacker in 1931. This new technology was first used by Haiwain bands but swing and jazz bands quickly picked this up too.

A lot of other inventors and guitar makers were working on electric guitars during that same time. Prominent amongst electric guitar makers include Les Paul who pioneered the solid body acoustic guitar made by Gibson Guitars in 1948. In 1951, Leo Fender invented the Fender Telecaster.

This guitar, together with the Gibson Les Paul, the Fender Telecaster, and the Gibson SG would make solid-body electric guitars hugely popular. These are still the most popular styles and models made today.

Electric guitars have had a continuing profound influence on popular culture. Guitars are recognized as a primary instrument and widely played in the folk and popular music of many countries and genres such as blues, bluegrass, country, flamenco, jazz, jota, mariachi, reggae, rock, soul, and many forms of pop.

In jazz ensembles it is part of the rhythm section and is occasionally played as a solo instrument.
In popular music the guitar is usually amplified, and ensembles frequently include more than one instrument, a "lead" guitar for solos, another for rhythm, and a "bass" guitar to play bass lines.

Famous guitar players throughout time

Les Paul, Django Reinhardt, Jimi Hendrix, B.B. King, Eric Clapton, Eddie Van Halen, Bob Dylan, Jeff Beck, Keith Richards, Bo Diddley, Elmore James, Jimmie Page, Chuck Berry, Buddy Guy, Muddy Waters, Willie Nelson, John Lee Hooker, Buddy Holly, Carlos Santana, George Benson, Earl Klugh, Eric Gale, Curtis Mayfield, Frank Zappa, Kurt Cobain, Pete Townshend and T-Bone Walker