Great Guitarist
...creative minds. Throughout the life of music, instruments have made it happen. The guitar has become one of the most popular of all instruments. In fact, almost every band heard on the radio has a lead guitar accompanying the vocals. Thanks to the greats like B.B. King, Jimi Hendrix, Andres Segovia, and Eric Clapton the guitar has been made the lead instrument in much of music. With contributions from each one of these legendary players, the guitar is used in a variety of styles; heavy metal to classical.
Now a days, guitars are seen and heard everywhere. There are so many different types and styles. The two major categories are electric and acoustic. Electric guitars where first introduced in the 1940's to enhance and amplify the sound of acoustic guitars. Acoustic guitars have hollow, wooden bodies. When the strings are played, the sound is amplified and echoes in the resonating body (New Grove 827).
Today the common guitars, acoustic and electric, have six strings and on average of nineteen frets that range 3 ½ octaves. An octave is a unit of measurement obtaining to tones. Each string has a name. The bottom and thinnest string is the high e, next is b, then g, onto d, then A, and finally low E. Sound is made by strumming or plucking these strings while placing the fingers of the opposite hand on the frets and strings to produce different notes (Turnbull 825).
The guitar is hard to trace back beyond the Renaissance period but it is known the guitar has roots in Spain. The first known guitar was small with four sets of strings; each set called a course. Later a fifth course was added. At the end of the Baroque period, single strings replaced the double strings and a sixth was added. Since then, the guitar was changed little until Manuel Torres worked with the design and body. First, he increased the overall size. Making the body...
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