Acoustic Guitar
Definition and History

The guitar is one of the primary musical instruments in blues, country, flamenco, rock  and many forms of pop music. They are also a versatile solo classical instrument. The acoustic guitar typically has six strings, but four, seven, eight, ten and twelve string guitars also exist.

An acoustic guitars tone is produced by the vibration of the strings and modulated by the hollow body. It is not dependent on any external device to be heard but uses a soundboard. This is a wooden piece mounted on the front of the guitar's body. The acoustic guitar is quieter than other instruments commonly found in bands and orchestras, so when playing within such groups, it is often externally amplified. Many acoustic guitars available today feature a variety of pickups which enable the player to amplify and modify the raw guitar sound.

Guitars can be constructed to meet the demands of both left and right-handed players. Traditionally the dominant hand, for the majority of people this is their right hand, is used for plucking or strumming the strings. This is because musical expression (dynamics, tonal expression and colour etc) is largely determined by the plucking hand.

The left hand is generally used as the fretting hand and assigned the lesser mechanical task of depressing the strings on the fretboard. This is similar to the convention of the violin family of instruments where the right hand controls the bow.

Instruments similar to the guitar have been popular for at least 5,000 years. The six string classical guitar first appeared in Spain but was itself the product of a long and complex history of diverse influences.The oldest known iconographic representation of an instrument (displaying all the essential features of a guitar) being played is a 3,300 year old stone carving of a Hittite bard.

The modern word, guitar, was adopted into English from the Spanish guitarra. The modern guitar is descended from the Roman cithara brought by the Romans to Hispania around 40 AD. It was further adapted and developed with the arrival of the four-string oud, brought by the Moors after their conquest of the Iberian peninsula in the 8th century.The dimensions of the modern classical guitar (also known as the Spanish guitar) were established by Antonio Torres Jurado (1817-1892), working in Seville in the 1850s.

 More Articles on Acoustic Guitar

• Three Types of Guitars
• Acoustic Guitar Parts
• Acoustic Guitar Inlays
• Tuning My Guitar
• Learn Chords For Guitar
• How to Write Songs on Guitar