Steel String & Electric Guitars

Steel strings first became widely available in around 1900.  Steel strings offered the promise of much louder guitars, but the increased tension was too much for the Torres-style fan-braced top.  A beefed-up X-brace proved equal to the job, and quickly became the industry standard for the flat-top steel string guitar.

At the end of the 19th century Orville Gibson was building arch-top guitars with oval sound holes.  He made the steel-string guitar with a body constructed more like a cello, where the bridge exerts no torque on the top, only pressure straight down.  This allows the top to vibrate more freely, and thus produce more volume.  In the early 1920s designer Lloyd Loar joined Gibson, and refined the arch-top jazz guitar into its familiar form with f-holes, floating bridge and cello-type tailpiece.

The electric guitar was born when pickups were added to Hawaiian and jazz guitars in the late 1920s, but met with little success before 1936, when Gibson introduced the ES150 model, which Charlie Christian made famous.  With the advent of amplification it became possible to do away with soundbox altogether.  Appleton constructed the very first solid body guitar.  But that as it may, the solid body electric guitar was here to stay.

The Guitar

Dr. Kasha defines a guitar as having "a long, fretted neck, flat wooden soundboard, ribs and a flat back, most often with curved sides".  The name "guitar" comes from the ancient Sanskrit word for "string"-"tar".  Many stringed folk instruments exists in Central Asia to this day which have been used in almost unchanged form for several thousand years, as shown by archaeological finds.


FROM FOUR-, TO FIVE-, TO SIX-STRING GUITAR
The early instrument had more often four strings; then it converted to five and six strings.  The standard tuning is E, B, G, D, A, E like the top five strings of the modern guitar.  The sixth string was added in the 17th century and guitar makes all over Europe followed the trend.  An incredibly ornate guitar by the German master from Hamburg, Joakim Thielke (1641-1719), was crafted in this way.  At the beginning of the 19th century one could see the modern guitar beginning to take shape.  Bodies were still fairly small and narrow-waisted.


The modern classical guitar took its present form when the Spanish maker Antonio Torres increased the size of the body, altered its proportions, and introduced the revolutionary fan top bracing pattern, in around 1850.  His design radically improved the volume, tone and projection of the instrument, and very soon became the accepted construction standard.  It has remained essentially unchanged, and unchallenged, to this day.
  

Ancestors of Guitar

The earliest stringed instruments known to archeologists are bowl harps and tamburs.  The world's museums contain many such harps from the ancient Sumerian, Babylonian and Egyptian civilizations.  Around 2500-2000 CE more advanced harps, such as the opulently carved 11-stringed instrument with gold decoration found in Queen Shub-Ad's tomb, started to appear.


A tambur is defined as "a long-necked stringed instrument with a small egg or pear-shaped body, with an arched or round back, usually with a soundboard of wood and a long, straight neck".  The tambur probably developed from the bowl harp as the neck was straightened out to allow the strings to be pressed down to create more notes.

History and Origin of Guitar

The modern word GUITAR was adopted into English from Spanish guitarra, German gitarre, French guitare, Arabic qutara, itself derived from the Latin cithara, which in turn came from the earlier Greek work kithara.

From the 19th century a guitar-like plucked instrument emerged.  The guitar is descended from the Roman cithara brought by the Romans to Hispania around 40 AD.  In the 14th and 15th centuries the qualifiers moresca and latina were dropped and these four course instruments were simple called guitars.  The Spanish vihuela or (in Italian) viola da mano, a guitar-like instrument of the 15th and 16th centuries, is often considered a major influence in the development of the modern one.  It had six course lute-like instrument with a sharply cut waist.  It was also larger than the contemporary four course guitars.  Meanwhile the five course baroque guitar, which was documented in Spain from the middle of the 16th century, enjoyed popularity, especially in Spain, Italy and France from the late 16th century to the mid 18th century.  Confusingly, in Portugal, the word vihuela referred to the guitar, whereas guitarra meant the "Portuguese guitar", a variety of cittern.

The instrument is an ancient and noble one instrument, the history of which can be traced back to over 4000 years.  Many theories have been advance about its ancestry.  The sole evidence for the kithara theory is the similarity between the Greek work kithara and the Spanish quitarra.

My First Blog

***Happy New Year 2011***

I'm a Carnatic Guitarist and a disciple of Kalaimamani Violin A.Kanyakumari.  My uncle S.Balasubramanium, a senior disciple of the great maestro G.N.Balasubramaniyan, first helped me to start the music lessons from swaravali, jantai, thaatu, alankaram, geetam, varnam and kritis.  After sometime I  joined Kum. Violin Kanyakumari for advanced training.  I learnt more techniques from her and she also gave me critical appraisals for my improvement.  She helped me to cope with advanced varnams, krities, pancharatna kritis, etc. 

I'm very proud to be a student of Kum. Violin Kanyakumari.  I'm very thankful and happy to say that I have got such kind-hearted and helpful Gurus in my music career. 

With the blessing of my Gurus I'll be blogging about the wonderful features of Carnatic Music and the application of Electric Guitar in Carnatic Music in my upcoming blogs.