History Of The Guitar

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in the middle and far east, deriving from gut, is the Arabic word for four, and tar, the Sanskrit word for string. The earliest European guitars did have four courses of gut strings. A

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course is a pair of strings tuned in unison. These early guitars were distinguished from lutes by body sides that curved inward to form a waist and by four courses of strings. Some but not all early guitars had a flat back, while lutes always had a flat back. In the Middle Ages and the Renaissance the lute was the dominant fretted instrument. The lute with was pear-shaped and had five or more courses of strings was generally regarded as a higher class of instrument. By 1546 the guitar had gained enough popularity to merit the publication of a book of guitar music. By this time guitars had added another course, and modern tuning had come into existence. Chord positions were the same as they are today. The frets of the early guitars were made of gut and tied around the ...

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bridge. By the 1820¹s most of the fingerboard extended all the way to the soundhole. As rapidly as the guitar changed so did it¹s acceptance. By the 1800¹s the Lute had all but disappeared.

One of the best known makers of this new-style of guitar was Johann Georg Staufer of Vienna. Staufer and another maker Johann Ertel in 1822 designed a fingerboard raised off the top of the guitar, and experimented with different fret metals, settling on an alloy of brass,copper,silver, and arsenic.

The first half of the 19th century was a time of great experimentation for the guitar. And many of the innovations that were credited to 20th century makers were actually tried a century ...

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