What's So Special About The Guitar?

The guitar is one of the most popular musical instruments today. Most of the kinds of music that you hear on the radio uses guitars in many ways. Pop, rock, reggae, blues, ballads and everything else is influenced by and features the guitar.

The guitar, together with drums, bass  and keyboards comprise the instruments used most in modern music. The playability of the guitar has made it a very popular instrument. A guitar can be played by everyone from an inexperienced child to an experienced adult. It’s not at all picky about who plays it. 

Today, the electric guitar is mostly used in rock and pop music. Using an electric guitar with one of the many, increasingly cheap, effects units out there gives you an ever-expanding range of sounds to choose from. Today, guitars can emulate the sounds of a piano, a violin, even the sounds of the human voice. The guitar is continuously widening its horizons.

With the functions and features of the modern electric guitar, one can’t help thinking about the beginnings of the instrument. Where did the guitar come from? This article tries to give a brief history of the wonderful musical instrument, which is the guitar.

The creation of the guitar cannot be traced to a single person. The guitar came about through the evolution of its predecessors. Its image has also undergone change throughout the centuries. Today, playing the guitar is a symbol of talent and musical prowess, but during the early times, the guitar was actually a symbol of being poor and it was refuted by most classical musicians.

Predecessors

There have been many guitar-like musical instruments in the ancient times, up to at least 5,000 years ago. Instruments which look like the guitar were seen in statues which were recovered in archeological expeditions in the Iranian region of Susa. However, the very first documented mention of the instrument dates back to the fourteenth century. Back then, the said guitar-ancestor had three pairs of strings (usually referred to as double courses) and a single string with the highest tone.

Some say that the word “guitar” came from the word “qitara.” Qitara is an Arabic name for the different kinds of lutes during the early times.

Evolution

The guitar, as we know it, is said to originate in Spain. It is believed that the people of Malaga invented the instrument. The guitar evolved from having three pairs of strings to four pairs of strings and eventually six single strings.

The guitar began to become popular in the 16th century. It was played by the lower and middle classes as a counterpart for the vihuela which was played by the aristocrats. The vihuela was tuned like a lute but had a body similar to that of the guitar.

The guitar took serious evolution during the 18th century: the double strings where replaced by single strings and a sixth string was added. In the 1800s, Antonio Torres de Jurado gave birth to the classical guitar. Basically, he increased the size of the body of the guitar. The guitar still struggled during these times because it was considered as an instrument for the taverns - an instrument which cannot be used for classical music. In Spain, where people hated the piano, the guitar found refuge. However, it was also tainted with views that guitars are for undesirables.

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