009 History of Guitars, Crazy Guitars

DEC GUITAR NEWSLETTER, issue no. 9

THE HISTORY OF GUITARS & CRAZY GUITARS

2009 Oct 26
 
News: All issues are currently available online! I'm still getting links activated, but now you can see all of my news, links, and wisdom on my website.

CRAZY GUITARS

This, I guarantee will blow your mind.
Wikipedia article: 10-String Guitar
Perfecto De Castro talks about his 10-string Guitar youtube
Eleven String Guitarist plays Desafinado
Janet Marlow plays a 10-string guitar
Wikipedia article: Harp Guitar
See Don Alder play a Harp Guitar on Youtube
Wikipedia article: Contrabass guitar
Peter Constant plays Bourées 1&2 from cello suite BWV 1010 on a 4-string classical (contra)bass guitar.
Wikipedia article: Tenor Guitars - 4 strings tuned in fifths, CGDA
A Tenor Guitar Sampler
Colbie Caillat's Realize on Tenor Guitar
Joe Engbino on Jazz Tenor Guitar

THE HISTORY OF THE GUITAR
This is a very special issue on the history of the guitar and crazy guitars that exist today. Originally, I believed that the guitar was invented in spain around 1800, and it was pretty close to the classical guitar we have today. There were ancestors like the lute and such, but none of them really rocked as hard as the guitar setup we have today. This was only a partial truth.

I've dived into the depths of research and have found that the guitar has been around since even before the ancient egyptians! Man has been grappling with the mysteries of the guitar for over 5,000 years!

Ancient Near East

It is believed that the history of the guitar began in the ancient Near East. There, the archeologists found instruments and representations of them that served as landmarks or guideposts in the relatively uncharted territory of the guitar's beginning.

Among the artifacts excavated from Babylonia, the most relevant were the clay plaques dated (1900-1800 B.C.). These showed nude figures playing musical instruments, some of which bear a general resemblance to the guitar. Close examination of the instrument on the plaque shows it to have a distinctly differentiated body and neck. Its back is undoubtedly flat; the manner in which it rests against the priest's chest precludes the possibility of its being bowl-shaped. It is clear that the right hand pluck the strings.

In 1400 B.C: The Hittites play a four-string, guitar-like instrument. This four string instrument had soft, curved sides, which were somewhat similar to the current guitar. Also around this time, the Greeks produced a similar instrument which was modified by the Romans and became known as the cithara.

Precursors of the guitar can be traced back as much as 4000 years to an Indo-European origin of stringed instruments once known in central Asia and India. For this reason guitars are distantly related to contemporary instruments from these regions, including the tanbur, setar and sitar, among others.

Egypt and Rome

In the earliest days, the only plucked string instrument in Egypt was the bow-shaped harp. Later, a necked instrument with carefully marked frets, probably made of gut, wound about the neck. Eventually, some of the features and characteristics would combine in a later instrument, one would be the predecessor not only of the guitar but of all necked string instruments, both plucked and bowed. Further developments made this instrument even more similar in form to the guitar.

The instrument from the Roman period (30 B.C. - 400 A.D.) is made entirely of wood. The rawhide soundboard is replaced with wood on which five groups of small sound holes are visible. This arrangment persisted up to the 16th century. On an instrument found in Coptic tomb in Egypt, the curves along the sides are already quite deep and the basic guitar shape is apparent. The back has become completely flat instead of it curving upward to meet the soundboard, the two surfaces are now attached to each other by strips of wood that form the sides of the soundbox. These features remain to the present day.

This brings us to Medieval Europe. The Carolingian Dynasty, which encompassed both France and Germany, produced the Carolingian instrument; which is rectangular, approximatively equal in lenght to its neck, the upper end of which is a wider rounded area containing small pegs for the attachment of strings. Next, we'll see two main types of guitars found in this period, one of them will lay the groundwork for the modern guitar.

Guitarra Latina and Guitarra Morisca

The Guitarra Morisca was brought by the Moors, hence, its name. Its soundbox was oval and it had many sound holes on its soundboard. The Arabs, passing through Egypt on their way to complete the great Muslim conquest of North Africa and Spain, may well have transmitted the cardinal features of this design to the instrument makers of Western Europe. It is equally possible that the first Spanish guitars were a European development. Certain is only that the Arabic influence in Spain prepared the ground for the advent of the guitar.

The Guitarra Latina however, did have curved sides and was thought to have come to Spain from some other European country. It was this type that undoubtedly developped into the modern guitar.

The late 1400s: A new guitar, called the vihuela, evolved from the two types of guitar mentioned. The vihuela was a large instrument with double the strings of the Latin and Moorish guitars, a longer neck and ten or eleven frets. The Portuguese and Spanish courts preferred the vihuela over any other instrument for roughly 200 years.

Until the late 1600s: The vihuela, and another instrument called the lute, were more popular than the guitar. This changed when the popularity of the lute declined because it had too many strings and was too hard to play and tune. The vihuela was replaced by four and five course guitars of that time. Four course guitars had seven strings—a single high string and three pairs of other strings—while five course guitars had nine strings—a single high string and four pairs of other strings. Some feel that the addition of the fifth course during the 16th century, which gave the guitar greater flexibility, was the reason why the guitar became popular.

By the beginning of the 1800s: Some guitars used fan struts under the soundboard and featured six strings (like the modern guitar). Also changed during this time was the neck (which was raised), the fingerboard (which used ebony or rosewood), and the tuning pegs (which were replaced with machine tuners). Guitars like these are most similar to early classical guitars.

By the late 1800s: A man named Antonio Torres Jurado changed the guitar dramatically by refining the strutting of the guitar. This allowed for as many as seven struts to be spread out like a fan under the soundboard. Additionally, the size of the body and the width of the neck were greatly increased. As a result of Jurado’s improvements, the guitar had greater bass response and volume. Jurado’s work made it possible for the guitar to meet the demands of both the solo performer and the concert stage.

The Present: Our modern guitar is practically the same as the one made by Jurado.

For more info...LINKS
Illustrated History
Guitar: Wikipedia
Guitar History: Wikipedia
Guitar History Timeline
Guitar History
A Brief Guitar History
History of the Classical Guitar
Guitar History
Guitar History