guitar history
Guitar Research Paper
Most kids have a dream. Some dream of becoming presidents, astronauts, teachers, soldiers, policemen, firefighters, doctors, or whoever they look up to as a hero. And then there are kids who dream of becoming rock stars. They want to grow up and play on massive stages and have screaming and adoring fans, and how do they accomplish this dream? Well if you asked almost any kid who had this dream they’d say you have to learn how to play guitar. But what is the guitar? How is it so powerful of a symbol that it appears in children’s dreams? The guitar is much more than an instrument; it was and is a tool to shape culture and music.
There wasn’t really a specific day the guitar was invented. Not even a specific month. Maybe not even a specific year. The guitar came to be from centuries of advance in stringed instruments, which have been around for some thousand years. Some of the earliest stringed instruments known are believed to be the bowl harp and the tanbur (Paul Guy), which have since gone through many innovations and designs to become today’s guitar. The creation of today’s modern acoustic guitar, although not specific to anything or anyone, is credited to Spanish guitar maker Antonio Torres (Mary Bellis). Torres invented the fan brace top about the year 1850, this top is now a widely popular model used in most nylon-string acoustics, mainly because of the louder, clearer sound and longer neck (Mary Bellis). But Torres was soon to be out done by a man named C. F. Martin.
About the time Torres invented the fan top brace, Christian Friedrich Martin invented the x brace top guitar (The Invention of the Electric Guitar). This new design was sturdier, stronger, and louder. To further this breakthrough, steel strings capable of much louder, clearer, sound were developed in 1900, in a way, helping spread the popularity of x brace top guitars. Steel strings produced louder sound by having higher tension; tension which fan brace tops couldn’t
Most kids have a dream. Some dream of becoming presidents, astronauts, teachers, soldiers, policemen, firefighters, doctors, or whoever they look up to as a hero. And then there are kids who dream of becoming rock stars. They want to grow up and play on massive stages and have screaming and adoring fans, and how do they accomplish this dream? Well if you asked almost any kid who had this dream they’d say you have to learn how to play guitar. But what is the guitar? How is it so powerful of a symbol that it appears in children’s dreams? The guitar is much more than an instrument; it was and is a tool to shape culture and music.
There wasn’t really a specific day the guitar was invented. Not even a specific month. Maybe not even a specific year. The guitar came to be from centuries of advance in stringed instruments, which have been around for some thousand years. Some of the earliest stringed instruments known are believed to be the bowl harp and the tanbur (Paul Guy), which have since gone through many innovations and designs to become today’s guitar. The creation of today’s modern acoustic guitar, although not specific to anything or anyone, is credited to Spanish guitar maker Antonio Torres (Mary Bellis). Torres invented the fan brace top about the year 1850, this top is now a widely popular model used in most nylon-string acoustics, mainly because of the louder, clearer sound and longer neck (Mary Bellis). But Torres was soon to be out done by a man named C. F. Martin.
About the time Torres invented the fan top brace, Christian Friedrich Martin invented the x brace top guitar (The Invention of the Electric Guitar). This new design was sturdier, stronger, and louder. To further this breakthrough, steel strings capable of much louder, clearer, sound were developed in 1900, in a way, helping spread the popularity of x brace top guitars. Steel strings produced louder sound by having higher tension; tension which fan brace tops couldn’t