1.
C. F. Martin & Company
–
Martin & Company is an American guitar manufacturer established in 1833 by Christian Frederick Martin. Martin is highly regarded for its guitars and is a leading manufacturer of flat top guitars. Martin instruments can sell for thousands of dollars, and vintage instruments occasionally command six-figure prices, the company has also made mandolins as well as several models of electric guitars and electric basses, although none of these other instruments are currently in production. The companys headquarters and primary factory are situated in Nazareth, Pennsylvania, the building includes the Martin Guitar Museum, which features over 170 guitars made by the company over its history. Visitors can see pictures of famous guitar owners, try out some guitars, Martin also manufactures instruments in Navojoa, Mexico. Martin produced 182 instruments during 1901, increasing to 56,422 in 2000, the company has been run by the Martin family throughout its history. The current chairman and CEO, C. F, Chris Martin IV, is the great-great-great-grandson of the founder. The firm was the first to many of the characteristic features of the modern flat top. Influential Martin innovations include the Dreadnought body style and scalloped bracing, C. F. Martin was born in 1796 in Markneukirchen, Germany, and came from a long line of cabinet makers and woodworkers. His father, Johann Georg Martin, also built guitars, by the age of 15, according to the book Martin Guitars, A History by Mike Longworth, C. F. Martin apprenticed to Johann Georg Stauffer, a well-known guitar maker in Vienna, Austria. Martin returned to his hometown after completing training and opened his own guitar-making shop, however, he soon became embroiled in a controversy between two guilds. In the early 1800s, European craftsmen still operated under the guild system, the guitar was a relatively new instrument, and most guitar makers were members of the Cabinet Makers Guild. However, the Violin Makers Guild claimed exclusive rights to manufacture musical instruments, the Violin Makers Guild filed appeals on three occasions—the first in 1806—to prevent cabinet makers from producing guitars. Johann Martin is mentioned in a surviving submission dated 1832, although the cabinet makers successfully defended their right to build guitars, C. F. Martin believed that the guild system was too restrictive and moved to New York City in 1833. By 1838, he moved his business to Nazareth, Pennsylvania, the Martin company is generally credited with developing the X-bracing system during the 1850s although C. F. Martin did not apply for a patent on the new bracing system. The Martin company was the first to use X-bracing on a large scale, from the 1860s on, fan bracing became standard in Europe. Martin and other American builders including Washburn and others since forgotten used X-bracing instead, the growing popularity of the guitar in the early 1900s led to a demand for louder and more percussive guitars. In response, many began to use metal strings instead of the traditional catgut
2.
Guitar
–
The guitar is a musical instrument classified as a fretted string instrument with anywhere from four to 18 strings, usually having six. The sound is projected either acoustically, using a wooden or plastic and wood box, or through electrical amplifier. It is typically played by strumming or plucking the strings with the fingers, the guitar is a type of chordophone, traditionally constructed from wood and strung with either gut, nylon or steel strings and distinguished from other chordophones by its construction and tuning. There are three types of modern acoustic guitar, the classical guitar, the steel-string acoustic guitar, and the archtop guitar. The tone of a guitar is produced by the strings vibration, amplified by the hollow body of the guitar. The term finger-picking can also refer to a tradition of folk, blues, bluegrass. The acoustic bass guitar is an instrument that is one octave below a regular guitar. Early amplified guitars employed a body, but a solid wood body was eventually found more suitable during the 1960s and 1970s. As with acoustic guitars, there are a number of types of guitars, including hollowbody guitars, archtop guitars and solid-body guitars. The electric guitar has had a influence on popular culture. The guitar is used in a variety of musical genres worldwide. It is recognized as an instrument in genres such as blues, bluegrass, country, flamenco, folk, jazz, jota, mariachi, metal, punk, reggae, rock, soul. The term is used to refer to a number of chordophones that were developed and used across Europe, beginning in the 12th century and, later, in the Americas. The modern word guitar, and its antecedents, has applied to a wide variety of chordophones since classical times. Many influences are cited as antecedents to the modern guitar, at least two instruments called guitars were in use in Spain by 1200, the guitarra latina and the so-called guitarra morisca. The guitarra morisca had a back, wide fingerboard. The guitarra Latina had a sound hole and a narrower neck. By the 14th century the qualifiers moresca or morisca and latina had been dropped, and it had six courses, lute-like tuning in fourths and a guitar-like body, although early representations reveal an instrument with a sharply cut waist
3.
Electric guitar
–
The vibrations of the strings are sensed by a pickup, of which the most common type is the magnetic pickup, which uses the principle of direct electromagnetic induction. The signal generated by a guitar is too weak to drive a loudspeaker, so it is plugged into a guitar amplifier before being sent to a loudspeaker. The output of a guitar is an electric signal. Invented in 1931, the electric guitar was adopted by jazz guitarists. Early proponents of the guitar on record included Les Paul, Lonnie Johnson, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, T-Bone Walker. During the 1950s and 1960s, the guitar became the most important instrument in pop music. It has evolved into an instrument that is capable of a multitude of sounds and styles in genres ranging from pop and rock to country music, blues and jazz. It served as a component in the development of electric blues, rock and roll, rock music, heavy metal music. Electric guitar design and construction vary greatly in the shape of the body and the configuration of the neck, bridge, Guitars may have a fixed bridge or a spring-loaded hinged bridge that lets players bend the pitch of notes or chords up or down or perform vibrato effects. The sound of a guitar can be modified by new playing techniques such as string bending, tapping, hammering on, using audio feedback, in a small group, such as a power trio, one guitarist switches between both roles. In larger rock and metal bands, there is often a rhythm guitarist, many experiments at electrically amplifying the vibrations of a string instrument were made dating back to the early part of the 20th century. Patents from the 1910s show telephone transmitters were adapted and placed inside violins, hobbyists in the 1920s used carbon button microphones attached to the bridge, however, these detected vibration from the bridge on top of the instrument, resulting in a weak signal. With numerous people experimenting with electrical instruments in the 1920s and early 1930s, Electric guitars were originally designed by acoustic guitar makers and instrument manufacturers. Some of the earliest electric guitars adapted hollow-bodied acoustic instruments and used tungsten pickups, the first electrically amplified guitar was designed in 1931 by George Beauchamp, the general manager of the National Guitar Corporation, with Paul Barth, who was vice president. The maple body prototype for the one-piece cast aluminum frying pan was built by Harry Watson, commercial production began in late summer of 1932 by the Ro-Pat-In Corporation, in Los Angeles, a partnership of Beauchamp, Adolph Rickenbacker, and Paul Barth. In 1934, the company was renamed the Rickenbacker Electro Stringed Instrument Company, in that year Beauchamp applied for a United States patent for an Electrical Stringed Musical Instrument and the patent was issued in 1937. The Electro-Spanish Ken Roberts provided players a full 25 scale, with 17 frets free of the fretboard and it is estimated that fewer than 50 Electro-Spanish Ken Roberts were constructed between 1933 and 1937, fewer than 10 are known to survive today. The need for the guitar became apparent during the big band era as orchestras increased in size, particularly when acoustic guitars had to compete with large
4.
Sound board (music)
–
A sound board, or soundboard, is the surface of a string instrument that the strings vibrate against, usually via some sort of bridge. Pianos, guitars, banjos, and many other stringed instruments incorporate soundboards, the resonant properties of the sound board and the interior of the instrument greatly increase the loudness of the vibrating strings. The sound board operates by the principle of forced vibration, the string gently vibrates the board, and despite their differences in size and composition, makes the board vibrate at exactly the same frequency. This produces the sound as the string alone, differing only in timbre. The string would produce the amount of energy without the board present, but the greater surface area of the sound board moves a greater volume of air. Sound boards are made of wood, though other materials are used. Wooden sound boards typically have one or more sound holes of various shapes, round, oval, or F-holes appear on many plucked instruments, such as guitars and mandolins. F-holes are usual in violin family instruments, the upper surface of the sound board, depending on the instrument, is called a top plate, table, sound-table, or belly. It is usually made of a softwood, often spruce, the rear part, known as the back, typically does not contain sound holes and is made of a hardwood such as maple or pear. In a grand piano, the board is part of the case. In an upright piano, the board is a large vertical plate at the back of the instrument. The harp has a sound board below the strings, more generally, any hard surface can act as a sound board. An example is when someone strikes a tuning fork and holds it against a top to amplify its sound. Ernst Chladni Harpsichord Piano Piano acoustics Soundboard Wood Preparation
5.
Sound box
–
A sound box or sounding box is an open chamber in the body of a musical instrument which modifies the sound of the instrument, and helps transfer that sound to the surrounding air. Objects respond more strongly to vibrations at frequencies, known as resonances. The frequency and strength of the resonances of the body of a musical instrument have a significant impact on the quality it produces. The air inside the chamber has its own resonances, and these interact with the resonances of the body, the sound box typically adds resonances at lower frequencies, enhancing the lower-frequency response of the instrument. The distinctive sound of an instrument with a sound box owes a lot to the made to the tone. A sound box is found in most string instruments, the most notable exceptions are some electrically amplified instruments like the solid body electric guitar or the electric violin, and the piano which uses only a sound board instead. Drumhead lutes such as the banjo or erhu have at least one end of the sound box covered with animal skin. Open back banjos are used for clawhammer and frailing, while those used for bluegrass have the back covered with a resonator. In some arrangements, loudspeakers are mounted on a sound box to enhance their output. One notable example of this arrangement is called the bass reflex enclosure, however, in these cases the box resonance is carefully tuned so as to make the sound more equal across frequencies, rather than to impart a particular character to the reinforced sound. Acoustic guitar Basic physics of the violin Filter Frequency response Resonance chamber
6.
Pizzicato
–
Pizzicato is a playing technique that involves plucking the strings of a string instrument. The exact technique varies depending on the type of stringed instrument. On bowed string instruments it is a method of playing by plucking the strings with the fingers and this produces a very different sound from bowing, short and percussive rather than sustained. On a keyboard string instrument, such as the piano, pizzicato may be employed as one of the variety of techniques involving direct manipulation of the strings known collectively as string piano. On the guitar, it is a form of plucking. For details of technique, see palm mute. When a string is struck or plucked, as with pizzicato and this complex timbre is called inharmonicity. The inharmonicity of a string depends on its characteristics, such as tension, composition, diameter. The first recognised use of pizzicato in classical music is found in Tobias Humes Captain Humes Poeticall Musicke, wherein he instructs the viola da gamba player to use pizzicato. Another early use is found in Claudio Monteverdis Il combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda, later, in 1756, Leopold Mozart in his Versuch einer gründlichen Violinschule instructs the player to use the index finger of the right hand. This has remained the most usual way to execute a pizzicato, the bow is held in the hand at the same time unless there is enough time to put it down and pick it up again between bowed passages. In jazz and bluegrass, and the few popular music styles which use double bass, in classical double bass playing, pizzicato are often performed with the bow being held in the hand, as such, the string is usually only plucked with a single finger. In contrast, in jazz, bluegrass, and other non-Classical styles, in classical music, however, string instruments are most usually played with the bow, and composers give specific indications to play pizzicato where required. Pieces in classical music that are played entirely pizzicato include, J. S. Bach, johann Strauss II, Neue Pizzicato Polka. 4 Benjamin Britten, the movement of the Simple Symphony Leroy Anderson. He also included pizzicato in the movement of Winter from The Four Seasons. In music notation, a composer will normally indicate the performer should use pizzicato with the abbreviation pizz, a return to bowing is indicated by the Italian term arco. If a string player has to play pizzicato for a period of time
7.
Strum
–
In music, strumming is a way of playing a stringed instrument such as a guitar. A strum or stroke is an action where a fingernail or plectrum brushes past several strings in order to set them all into motion. Strums are executed by the dominant hand, while the hand holds down notes on the fretboard. Strums are contrasted with plucking, as a means of activating strings into vibration, because in plucking. A hand-held pick or plectrum can only be used to pluck one string at a time, plucking multiple strings simultaneously requires a fingerstyle or fingerpick technique. A strumming pattern or strum is a pattern used by a rhythm guitar. Compare with pattern picking, strumming patterns may be indicated through notation, tablature, up and down arrows, a simple eight-to-a-bar rhythm is known as straight eights as opposed swung eights, in which each pair are played as the first and third notes in a triplet. The fretting hand can also be lifted off the fretboard to damp a chord, creating staccato, in reggae and ska, a few staccato chops are played per bar. In funk rhythm playing, the strumming hand keeps a steady motion in 16th notes, while the left hand. Some of the many possible fingerstyle strums include A slow downstroke with the thumb and this is a sforzando or emphatic way of playing a chord. Light brushing strokes with the fingers moving together at an angle to the strings. Works equally in either direction and can be alternated for a chord tremolo chord effect, upstrokes with one finger make a change from the standard downstroke strum. A pinch with the thumb and fingers moving towards each other gives a crisp effect and it is helpful to clearly articulate the topmost and bass note in the chord, as if plucking, before following through. Rasgueado, Strumming typically done by bunching all the right hand fingers, the rasgueado or rolling strum is particularly characteristic of flamenco. Turning p-a-m-i tremolo plucking into a series of downstrokes and this is a lighter version of the classic rasgueado, which uses upstrokes
8.
Guitar pick
–
A guitar pick is a plectrum used for guitars. Picks are generally made of one uniform material—such as some kind of plastic, rubber, felt, tortoiseshell, wood, metal, glass, tagua and they are often shaped in an acute isosceles triangle with the two equal corners rounded and the third corner less rounded. They are used to strum chords or to individual notes on a guitar. In British English, guitar picks are referred to as plectrums reserving the term pick to identify the difference between this and finger picks, musicians have used plectrums to play stringed instruments for thousands of years. Feather quills were likely the first standardized plectra and became widely used until the late 19th century, other alternatives had come and gone, but tortoiseshell provided the best combination of tonal sound and physical flexibility for plucking a taut string. There have been innovations in the design of the guitar pick. Most of these were out of the issue of guitar picks slipping and flying out of the hand of the player. In 1896, a Cincinnati man affixed two rubber disks to either side of a pick, which made it the first popular solution to the problem. Over the next two decades more innovations were made, such as corrugating the rounded surface of the pick or drilling a hole through the center to fit the pad of a players thumb. A more notable improvement was attaching cork to the part of the pick. Some of these new designs made picks undesirably expensive, eventually, pickers realized that all they needed was something to sink their fingerprints into so the pick wouldnt slip, such as a high relief imprinted logo. Celluloid was a material on which this could easily be done, tony DAndrea was the one of the first people to use celluloid to produce and sell guitar picks. From the 1920s through the 1950s, DAndrea Manufacturing would dominate the worlds international pick market, providing to major businesses such as Gibson, Fender, and Martin. One of the main reasons celluloid was so popular as guitar pick material was that it very closely imitated the sound and flexibility of a tortoise shell guitar pick. Musicians had been partial to shell picks, and when DAndrea provided an alternative, DAndrea Manufacturing became very successful, Celluloid provided a good alternative in many ways. Tortoise shell was rare, expensive, and had a tendency to break, Celluloid was made from cellulose, one of the most abundant raw materials in the world, and nitrocellulose combined with camphor under heat and pressure produced celluloid. Later, other materials, such as nylon and less popularly wood, glass, or metal would become popular for making guitar picks for their increased grip, flexibility, or tonal qualities. Pick shapes started with guitarists shaping bone, shell, wood, cuttlebone, metal, amber, most of todays guitar pick shapes were created by the company that made the first plastic pick in 1922, DAndrea Picks
9.
Vihuela
–
The vihuela is a guitar-shaped string instrument from 15th and 16th century Spain, Portugal and Italy, usually with five or six doubled strings. The vihuela, as it was known in Spanish, was called the viola de mà in Catalan, viola da mano in Italian, the two names are functionally synonymous and interchangeable. In its most developed form, the vihuela was an instrument with six double-strings made of gut. Vihuelas were tuned identically to their contemporary Renaissance lute, 4ths, plucked vihuelas, being essentially flat-backed lutes, evolved in the mid-15th century, in the Kingdom of Aragón, located in north-eastern Iberia. In Spain, Portugal, and Italy the vihuela was in use by the late 15th through to the late 16th centuries. In the second half of the 15th century some vihuela players began using a bow, the vihuelas descendants that are still played are the violas campaniças of Portugal. Much of the place, role, and function was taken up by the subsequent Baroque guitar. Today, the vihuela is in use primarily for the performance of early music, today, instruments like the tiple are descendants of vihuelas brought to America in the 16th century. Vihuela bodies were constructed from thin flat slabs or pieces of wood. This construction method distinguished them from some types of string instruments whose bodies were carved out from a solid single block of wood. The back and sides of common lutes were also made of pieces however, being curved or bent staves joined and glued together to form a bowl. Vihuela were built in different sizes, large and small, a family of instruments, duet music was published for vihuelas tuned one step, a minor third, a fourth, or a fifth apart, as well as unison tuned. The physical appearance of vihuelas was varied and diverse, there was little standardization, overall and in general, vihuelas looked very similar to modern guitars. The first generation of vihuela, from the century on, had sharp cuts to its waist. A second generation of vihuela, beginning sometime around 1490, took on the now familiar smooth-curved figure-eight shaped body contours, the sharp waist-cut models continued to be built into the early-to-mid-16th century, side by side with the later pattern. Many early vihuelas had extremely long necks, while others had the shorter variety, top decoration, the number, shape, and placement, of sound holes, ports, pierced rosettes, etc. also varied greatly. More than a few styles of peg-boxes were used as well, vihuelas were chromatically fretted in a manner similar to lutes, by means of movable, wrapped-around and tied-on gut frets. Vihuelas, however, usually had ten frets, whereas lutes had only seven, unlike modern guitars, which often use steel and bronze strings, vihuelas were gut strung, and usually in paired courses
10.
Lute
–
The European lute and the modern Near-Eastern oud descend from a common ancestor via diverging evolutionary paths. The lute is used in a variety of instrumental music from the Medieval to the late Baroque eras and was the most important instrument for secular music in the Renaissance. It is also an instrument, especially in vocal works. The player of a lute is called a lutenist, lutanist or lutist, the words lute and oud possibly derive from Arabic al-ʿud. Recent research by Eckhard Neubauer suggests ʿud may in turn be an Arabized version of the Persian name rud and it has equally been suggested the wood in the name may have distinguished the instrument by its wooden soundboard from skin-faced predecessors. Gianfranco Lotti suggests the wood appellation originally carried derogatory connotations because of proscriptions of all music in early Islam. Lutes are made almost entirely of wood, the soundboard is a teardrop-shaped thin flat plate of resonant wood. In all lutes the soundboard has a single decorated sound hole under the strings called the rose. The sound hole is not open, but rather covered with a grille in the form of a vine or a decorative knot. Robert Lundberg, in his book Historical Lute Construction, suggests ancient builders placed bars according to ratios of the scale length. He further suggests the inward bend of the soundboard is an adaptation by ancient builders to afford the lutenists right hand more space between the strings and soundboard. Soundboard thickness varies, but generally hovers between 1.5 and 2 mm, some luthiers tune the belly as they build, removing mass and adapting bracing to produce desirable sonic results. The lute belly is almost never finished, but in cases the luthier may size the top with a very thin coat of shellac or glair to help keep it clean. After joining the top to the sides, a half-binding is usually installed around the edge of the soundboard, the half-binding is approximately half the thickness of the soundboard and is usually made of a contrasting color wood. The rebate for the half-binding must be precise to avoid compromising structural integrity. The back or the shell is assembled from strips of hardwood called ribs. There are braces inside on the soundboard to give it strength, the neck is made of light wood, with a veneer of hardwood to provide durability for the fretboard beneath the strings. Unlike most modern stringed instruments, the fretboard is mounted flush with the top
11.
Gittern
–
The gittern was a relatively small gut strung round-backed instrument that first appears in literature and pictorial representation during the 13th century in Western Europe. It is usually depicted played with a plectrum, as we can see clearly beginning in manuscript illuminations from the thirteenth century. It was also called the guitarra in Spain, guiterne or guiterre in France, a popular instrument with court musicians, minstrels, and amateurs, the gittern is considered ancestral to the modern guitar, possibly other instruments like the mandore and gallichon. From the early 16th century, a vihuela shaped guitarra began to appear in Spain - then France, although the round-backed instrument appears to have lost ground to the new form which gradually developed into the guitar familiar today, the influence of the earlier style continued. Examples of lutes converted into guitars exist in museums, while purpose built instruments like the gallichon utilised the tuning. A tradition of building round-backed guitars in Germany continued to the 20th century with names like gittar-laute and Wandervogellaute, up until 2002, there were only two known surviving medieval gitterns, one in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the other in the Wartburg Castle Museum. A third was discovered in an outhouse in Elbląg, Poland. The back, neck and pegbox were probably usually carved from one piece of timber, occurring less rarely later in the 15th century, the back was built up from a number of thin tapered ribs joined at the edges, as was characteristic of the lute. Unlike the sharp corner joining the body to the neck seen in the lute, the sickle, or occasional gentle arc pegbox, made an angle with the neck of between 30-90 degrees. Unlike the lute, most pegboxes on gitterns ended in a carving of a human or animal head, most gitterns were depicted as having three or four courses of double strings. There are also references to some five course gitterns in the 16th century, although there is not much direct information concerning gittern tuning, the later versions were quite possibly tuned in fourths and fifths like the mandore a few decades later. Frets were represented in a few depictions, although absent in most French. The gitterns sound hole was covered with a rosette, similar to the lute, the construction resembles other bowed and plucked instruments, including the rebec, Calabrian and Byzantine lyra, gǎdulka, lijerica, klasic kemençe, gudok and cobza. These have similar shapes, a neck, and like the gittern are carved out of a single block of wood. Some have pointed out there have been errors in scholarship which led to the gittern being called mandore and vice versa. As a result of uncertainty, many modern sources refer to gitterns as mandoras. The various regional names used appear derived over time from a Greco-Roman origin, although when, the gittern had faded so completely from memory in England that identifying the instrument proved problematic for 20th century early music scholarship. It was assumed the ancestry of the guitar was only to be discovered through the study of flat-backed instruments
12.
Renaissance
–
The Renaissance was a period in European history, from the 14th to the 17th century, regarded as the cultural bridge between the Middle Ages and modern history. It started as a movement in Italy in the Late Medieval period and later spread to the rest of Europe. This new thinking became manifest in art, architecture, politics, science, Early examples were the development of perspective in oil painting and the recycled knowledge of how to make concrete. Although the invention of movable type sped the dissemination of ideas from the later 15th century. In politics, the Renaissance contributed to the development of the customs and conventions of diplomacy, the Renaissance began in Florence, in the 14th century. Other major centres were northern Italian city-states such as Venice, Genoa, Milan, Bologna, the word Renaissance, literally meaning Rebirth in French, first appeared in English in the 1830s. The word also occurs in Jules Michelets 1855 work, Histoire de France, the word Renaissance has also been extended to other historical and cultural movements, such as the Carolingian Renaissance and the Renaissance of the 12th century. The Renaissance was a movement that profoundly affected European intellectual life in the early modern period. Renaissance scholars employed the humanist method in study, and searched for realism, however, a subtle shift took place in the way that intellectuals approached religion that was reflected in many other areas of cultural life. In addition, many Greek Christian works, including the Greek New Testament, were back from Byzantium to Western Europe. Political philosophers, most famously Niccolò Machiavelli, sought to describe life as it really was. Others see more competition between artists and polymaths such as Brunelleschi, Ghiberti, Donatello, and Masaccio for artistic commissions as sparking the creativity of the Renaissance. Yet it remains much debated why the Renaissance began in Italy, accordingly, several theories have been put forward to explain its origins. During the Renaissance, money and art went hand in hand, Artists depended entirely on patrons while the patrons needed money to foster artistic talent. Wealth was brought to Italy in the 14th, 15th, and 16th centuries by expanding trade into Asia, silver mining in Tyrol increased the flow of money. Luxuries from the Eastern world, brought home during the Crusades, increased the prosperity of Genoa, unlike with Latin texts, which had been preserved and studied in Western Europe since late antiquity, the study of ancient Greek texts was very limited in medieval Western Europe. One of the greatest achievements of Renaissance scholars was to bring this entire class of Greek cultural works back into Western Europe for the first time since late antiquity, Arab logicians had inherited Greek ideas after they had invaded and conquered Egypt and the Levant. Their translations and commentaries on these ideas worked their way through the Arab West into Spain and Sicily and this work of translation from Islamic culture, though largely unplanned and disorganized, constituted one of the greatest transmissions of ideas in history
13.
Plectrum
–
A plectrum is a small flat tool used to pluck or strum a stringed instrument. For hand-held instruments such as guitars and mandolins, the plectrum is often called a pick, in harpsichords, the plectra are attached to the jack mechanism. A plectrum for electric guitars, acoustic guitars, bass guitars, the size, shape and width may vary considerably. Thin items such as coins, bread clips or broken compact discs. Banjo and guitar players may wear a metal or plastic thumb pick mounted on a ring, guitar picks are made of a variety of materials, including celluloid, metal, and rarely other exotic materials such as turtle shell, but today delrin is the most common. For other instruments in the day most players use plastic plectra but a variety of other materials, including wood. Many guitarists also use the pick and the remaining right-hand fingers simultaneously to combine some advantages of flat picking and this technique is called hybrid picking. A plectrum of the type is often called a pick. The plectra for the Japanese biwa and shamisen can be large. Plectra used for Chinese instruments such as the sanxian were formerly made of animal horn, click on the images to view them in full size. In a harpsichord, there is a plectrum for each string. These plectra are very small, often only about a long, about 1.5 millimeters wide. The plectrum is gently tapered, being narrowest at the plucking end, the top surface of the plectrum is flat and horizontal, and is held in the tongue of the jack, which permits it to pluck moving upward and pass almost silently past the string moving downward. In the historical period of harpsichord construction plectra were made of feather quills. In Italy, some makers used vulture quills, other Italian harpsichords employed plectra of leather. In late French harpsichords by the great builder Pascal Taskin, peau de buffle, modern harpsichords frequently employ plectra made with plastic, specifically the plastic known as acetal. Some plectra are of the variety of acetal, sold by DuPont under the name Delrin, while others are of the copolymer variety. Harpsichord technicians and builders generally use the names to refer to these materials
14.
Antonio de Torres Jurado
–
Antonio de Torres Jurado was a Spanish guitarist and luthier, and the most important Spanish guitar maker of the 19th century. It is with his designs that the first recognisably modern classical guitars are to be seen, most acoustic guitars in use today are derivatives of his designs. Antonio de Torres was the son of Juan Torres, a tax collector. As was common, when he was 12 he started an apprenticeship as a carpenter, in 1833, a dynastic war broke out, and soon after Torres was conscripted into the army. Through his fathers machinations, young Antonio was dismissed as unfit for service. Children soon followed, a daughter in 1836, another in 1839, and a third in 1842, in 1845 his wife died at the age of 23, of tuberculosis. These were difficult years for Torres, who was often in debt, although there is some debate as to who taught Torres, one theory is that some time around 1842, Torres may have gone to work for José Pernas in Granada, rapidly learning to build guitars. He soon returned to Seville, and opened a shop on the Calle de Cerragería No.7 that he shared with Manuel Soto y Solares, Julián Arcas offered Torres advice on building, and their collaboration turned Torres into an inveterate investigator of the guitar construction. While Torres was not the first to use this method he was the one who perfected the symmetrical design. To prove that it was the top, and not the back and sides of the guitar that gave the instrument its sound, in 1862 he built a guitar with back and sides of papier-mâché. There is an anecdote about how he had made a guitar made like a Chinese puzzle that could be assembled without glue, there is no evidence that he ever made such a guitar though. During his later years, Torres close friend, a priest named Juan Martínez Sirvent, lent him a hand in his workshop, everyone was left convinced that the artistic genius cannot be passed on In 1868, Torres married again, wedding Josefa Martín Rosada. Shortly after, Torres met Francisco Tárrega for the first time, Tárrega, who was then aged seventeen, had come to Seville from Barcelona to buy a Torres guitar from the maker of Julián Arcas instrument. Torres offered him a modest guitar he had in stock, but on hearing him play, offered him a much better guitar that he had made for himself a few years before. About 1870, Don Antonio, who was then in his 50s, closed his shop in Seville and moved back to Almería where he and his wife opened up a china and crystal shop on the calle Real. About five years later, Don Antonio began his second epoch as he refers to it on the labels of his guitars, Torres guitars are divided into two periods. The first, belonging to Sevilla from 1852–1870, the second being the years 1871-1893 in Almería. The guitars Torres made were so superior to those of his contemporaries that their example changed the way guitars were built, first in Spain, although they are not particularly loud by modern standards, they have a clear, balanced, firm and rounded tone that projects very well
15.
Amplifier
–
An amplifier, electronic amplifier or amp is an electronic device that can increase the power of a signal. An amplifier functions by taking power from a supply and controlling the output to match the input signal shape. In this sense, an amplifier modulates the output of the power supply based upon the properties of the input signal, an amplifier is effectively the opposite of an attenuator, while an amplifier provides gain, an attenuator provides loss. An amplifier can either be a piece of equipment or an electrical circuit contained within another device. Amplification is fundamental to modern electronics, and amplifiers are used in almost all electronic equipment. Amplifiers can be categorized in different ways, another is which quantity, voltage or current is being amplified, amplifiers can be divided into voltage amplifiers, current amplifiers, transconductance amplifiers, and transresistance amplifiers. A further distinction is whether the output is a linear or nonlinear representation of the input, amplifiers can also be categorized by their physical placement in the signal chain. The first practical device that could amplify was the triode vacuum tube, invented in 1906 by Lee De Forest. Vacuum tubes were used in almost all amplifiers until the 1960s–1970s when the transistor, invented in 1947, today most amplifiers use transistors, but vacuum tubes continue to be used in some applications. Before the invention of electronic amplifiers, mechanically coupled carbon microphones were used as amplifiers in telephone repeaters. After the turn of the century it was found that negative resistance mercury lamps could amplify, the first practical electronic device that could amplify was the Audion vacuum tube, invented in 1906 by Lee De Forest, which led to the first amplifiers around 1912. The terms amplifier and amplification were first used for this new capability around 1915 when triodes became widespread, the amplifying vacuum tube revolutionized electrical technology, creating the new field of electronics, the technology of active electrical devices. It made possible long distance lines, public address systems, radio broadcasting, talking motion pictures, practical audio recording, radar, television. For 50 years virtually all electronic devices used vacuum tubes. Early tube amplifiers often had positive feedback, which could increase gain but also make the amplifier unstable, much of the mathematical theory of amplifiers was developed at Bell Telephone Laboratories during the 1920s to 1940s. Other advances in the theory of amplification were made by Harry Nyquist, the vacuum tube was the only amplifying device for 40 years, and dominated electronics until 1947, when the first transistor, the BJT, was invented. Today most amplifiers use transistors, but vacuum tubes are used in some high power applications such as radio transmitters. All amplifiers have gain, a factor that relates the magnitude of some property of the output signal to a property of the input signal
16.
Loudness
–
Loudness is the characteristic of a sound that is primarily a psycho-physiological correlate of physical strength. More formally, it is defined as, That attribute of auditory sensation in terms of sounds can be ordered on a scale extending from quiet to loud. The relation of physical attributes of sound to perceived loudness consists of physical, physiological and psychological components, in different industries, loudness may have different meanings, and different standards exist, each purporting to define the measurement. Some definitions such as LKFS refer to relative loudness of different segments of electronically reproduced sounds such as for broadcasting and cinema. Others, such as ISO 532A, ISO 532B, DIN45631 and it is sometimes stated that loudness is a subjective measure, often confused with physical measures of sound strength such as sound pressure, sound pressure level, sound intensity or sound power. It is often possible to separate the truly subjective components such as social considerations from the physical and physiological. Filters such as A-weighting attempt to adjust sound measurements to correspond to loudness as perceived by the typical human, A-weighting follows human sensitivity to sound and describes relative perceived loudness for at quiet to moderate speech levels, around 40 phons. However, physiological loudness perception is a more complex process than can be captured with a single correction curve. Not only do equal-loudness contours vary with intensity, but perceived loudness of a complex sound depends on whether its spectral components are closely or widely spaced in frequency. When generating neural impulses in response to sounds of one frequency, the ear is sensitive to nearby frequencies. Sounds containing spectral components in critical bands are perceived as louder even if the total sound pressure remains constant. The perception of loudness is related to sound level, frequency content. The human auditory system averages the effects of SPL over a 600–1000 ms interval, for sounds of duration greater than 1 second, the moment-by-moment perception of loudness will be related to the average loudness during the preceding 600–1000 ms. For sounds having a longer than 1 second, the relationship between SPL and loudness of a single tone can be approximated by Stevens power law in which SPL has an exponent of 0.6. More precise measurements indicate that loudness increases with a higher exponent at low and high levels, the sensitivity of the human ear changes as a function of frequency, as shown in the equal-loudness graph. Each line on this shows the SPL required for frequencies to be perceived as equally loud. It also shows that humans with normal hearing are most sensitive to sounds around 2–4 kHz, a complete model of the perception of loudness will include the integration of SPL by frequency. Historically, loudness was measured using an ear-balance audiometer in which the amplitude of a wave was adjusted by the user to equal the perceived loudness of the sound being evaluated
17.
Impedance matching
–
In the case of a complex source impedance ZS and load impedance ZL, maximum power transfer is obtained when Z S = Z L ∗ where the asterisk indicates the complex conjugate of the variable. Impedance is the opposition by a system to the flow of energy from a source, for constant signals, this impedance can also be constant. For varying signals, it changes with frequency. The energy involved can be electrical, mechanical, acoustic, magnetic, the concept of electrical impedance is perhaps the most commonly known. Electrical impedance, like electrical resistance, is measured in ohms, in general, impedance has a complex value, this means that loads generally have a resistance component which forms the real part of Z and a reactance component which forms the imaginary part of Z. In simple cases the reactance may be negligible or zero, the impedance can be considered a pure resistance, in the following summary we will consider the general case when resistance and reactance are both significant, and the special case in which the reactance is negligible. Impedance matching to minimize reflections is achieved by making the load impedance equal to the source impedance, if the source impedance, load impedance and transmission line characteristic impedance are purely resistive, then reflection-less matching is the same as maximum power transfer matching. Complex conjugate matching is used when maximum power transfer is required and this differs from reflection-less matching only when the source or load have a reactive component. If the source has a component, but the load is purely resistive, then matching can be achieved by adding a reactance of the same magnitude. This simple matching network, consisting of an element, will usually only achieve a perfect match at a single frequency. For wide bandwidth applications, a complex network must be designed. For two impedances to be complex conjugates their resistances must be equal, and their reactances must be equal in magnitude, in low-frequency or DC systems the reactances are zero, or small enough to be ignored. In this case, maximum power occurs when the resistance of the load is equal to the resistance of the source. Impedance matching is not always necessary, for example, if a source with a low impedance is connected to a load with a high impedance the power that can pass through the connection is limited by the higher impedance. This maximum-voltage connection is a configuration called impedance bridging or voltage bridging. In such applications, delivering a voltage is often more important than maximum power transfer. In older audio systems, the source and load resistances were matched at 600 ohms, one reason for this was to maximize power transfer, as there were no amplifiers available that could restore lost signal. Most modern audio circuits, on the hand, use active amplification and filtering
18.
Helmholtz resonance
–
Helmholtz resonance or wind throb is the phenomenon of air resonance in a cavity, such as when one blows across the top of an empty bottle. Helmholtz described in his 1862 book, On the Sensations of Tone, when the resonators nipple is placed inside ones ear, a specific frequency of the complex sound can be picked out and heard clearly. The proper tone of the resonator may even be sometimes heard cropping up in the whistling of the wind, the rattling of carriage wheels, a set of varied size resonators was sold to be used as discrete acoustic filters for the spectral analysis of complex sounds. This type of resonator is in use in the Fourier analyzer, when air is forced into a cavity, the pressure inside increases. When the external force pushing the air into the cavity is removed, due to the inertia of the moving air the cavity will be left at a pressure slightly lower than the outside, causing air to be drawn back in. This process repeats, with the magnitude of the pressure oscillations increasing and decreasing asymptotically after the sound starts, the port is placed in the external meatus of the ear, allowing the experimenter to hear the sound and to determine its loudness. The resonant mass of air in the chamber is set in motion through the second hole, a gastropod seashell can form a low Q Helmholtz resonator, amplifying many frequencies, resulting in the sounds of the sea. The term Helmholtz resonator is now generally applied to include bottles from which sound is generated by blowing air across the mouth of the bottle. In this case the length and diameter of the neck also contribute to the resonance frequency. By one definition a Helmholtz resonator augments the amplitude of the motion of the enclosed air in a chamber by taking energy from sound waves passing in the surrounding air. In the other definition the sound waves are generated by a stream of air flowing across the open top of an enclosed volume of air. This value is usually 1.4 for air and diatomic gases, a is the cross-sectional area of the neck, m is the mass in the neck, P0 is the static pressure in the cavity, V0 is the static volume of the cavity. From the definition of mass density, V n m =1 ρ, thus, ω H = γ P0 ρ A V0 L e q, and f H = ω H2 π, where, fH is the resonant frequency. The speed of sound in a gas is given by, v = γ P0 ρ, thus, the length of the neck appears in the denominator because the inertia of the air in the neck is proportional to the length. The volume of the cavity appears in the denominator because the constant of the air in the cavity is inversely proportional to its volume. The area of the neck matters for two reasons, increasing the area of the neck increases the inertia of the air proportionately, but also decreases the velocity at which the air rushes in and out. Depending on the shape of the hole, the relative thickness of the sheet with respect to the size of the hole and the size of the cavity. More sophisticated formulae can still be derived analytically, with physical explanations
19.
Violin family
–
The violin family of musical instruments was developed in Italy in the 16th century. At the time the name of family of instruments was violas da braccio which was used to distinguish them from the viol family. The standard modern violin family consists of the violin, viola, cello, instrument names in the violin family are all derived from the root viola, which is a derivative of the Medieval Latin word vitula. A violin is a viola, a violone is a big viola or a bass violin. The instruments of the family may be descended in part from the lira da braccio. The playing ranges of the instruments in the violin family overlap each other, the ranges are as follows, violin, G3 to E7, viola, C3 to A6, violoncello, C2 to A5, and double-bass, E1 to C5. Both the violin and viola are played under the jaw, the viola, being the larger of the two instruments, has a playing range that reaches a perfect fifth below the violins. The cello is played sitting down with the instrument between the knees, and its range reaches an octave below the violas. The double bass is played standing or sitting on a stool, with a range typically reaches a minor sixth. While the cello, the viola and the violin are indisputable members of the violin or viola da braccio family. Others point out that correlation does not imply causation and say that these similarities are either arbitrary or that they arose from causes other than a relationship to the viol family. Its origins aside, it has historically used as the lowest member of the violin family. All string instruments share similar form, parts, construction and function, however, instruments in the violin family are set apart from viols by similarities in shape, tuning practice and history. Violin family instruments have four each, are tuned in fifths, are not fretted and have four rounded bouts while always having a sound post. The instruments of the family are the most used bowed string instruments in the world today. The violin is used extensively in fiddle music, country music. The double bass plays a part in both classical and jazz music forms. One of the most popular and standardized groupings in classical chamber music and this similarity in the manner of sound production allows string quartets to blend their tone colour and timbre more easily than less homogeneous groups
20.
Gibson ES-335
–
The Gibson ES-335 is the worlds first commercial thinline archtop semi-acoustic electric guitar. Released by the Gibson Guitar Corporation as part of its ES series in 1958, it is fully hollow nor fully solid, instead. The side wings formed by the two cutaways into its upper bouts are hollow, and the top has two violin-style f-holes over the hollow chambers, before 1952 Gibson produced only hollow-body guitars, which are prone to feedback when amplified loudly. By 1958 Gibson was making a few models which had much lower feedback and better sustain but lacked the darker, warmer tone. The ES-335 was an attempt to find a ground, a warmer tone than a solid body produced with almost as little feedback. With a basic price of $267.50, it became a best-seller. The first major update came in mid 1962, with the most visible change being the markers on neck, early models had dots, later models had blocks. Notable users were Larry Carlton, Robben Ford, John Scofield, Lee Ritenour, Alvin Lee, Richie Blackmore, Noel Gallagher, some models feature a coil split switch, which allows the humbuckers to produce a single-coil sound. The ES-335 Pro, ES-335TD CRS and CRR models were equipped with Gibson Dirty Fingers humbuckers, other signature models have included the heavily customized Alvin Lee Big Red 335. A reissue of the 1963 model was a 2014 Editors pick in Guitar Player magazine, the ES-345 also featured an optional stereophonic output jack, gold-plated hardware, large split parallelogram fingerboard inlays, and a thicker three-ply edge binding than that of the ES-335. Notable users were B. B. King, Freddie King, Bill Nelson, John McLaughlin, Jorma Kaukonen, Fred Frith, Porl Thompson of The Cure, Steve Howe and Elvin Bishop. The ES-345 was discontinued in 1981, one year after the Gibson Lucille, as of 2012, the ES-345 is available as a limited edition from Gibsons discount line, Epiphone Guitars, as well as the ES-355. The differences between two models are, The ES-355TD was at the top of Gibsons range of thinline semi-acoustic guitars and it was manufactured from 1958 to 1982, fitted with Varitone Stereo option, as ES-355TD-SV released in 1959. The headstock has a split-diamond inlay rather than the crown inlay on the 335/345. The fingerboard inlays are inlaid mother-of-pearl blocks, beginning at the first position of the fretboard, in addition to the headstock, binding is also applied to the fretboard and both the front and the back edges of the body. Rather than the rosewood fretboard on a 335 or 345, both variations of the 355 have an ebony fingerboard for a smoother sound, early models of Epiphones limited edition budget version had an ebony fingerboard but the later issues had a rosewood board. The ES-355 was available with a Vibrola vibrato unit or a Bigsby vibrato tailpiece and it was also available with a stereo output and Varitone tone filter circuitry. When fitted with the optional stereo wiring and Varitone, the model was known as the ES-355TD-SV, the best-known user of this guitar is probably B. B. King, whose trademark guitar, Lucille, was the basis for a 1981 signature model
21.
Gibson ES-175
–
The Gibson ES-175 is an electric guitar manufactured by the Gibson Guitar Corporation, currently still in production. It is a 24 3⁄4 scale full hollow-body guitar with a trapeze tailpiece and it is one of the most famous jazz guitars in history. The ES-175 is a single- or dual-pickup archtop electric guitar made by Gibson, the ES-175 has a rosewood fingerboard with parallelogram inlays, a 3 deep body, a floating bridge, one or two humbuckers,20 frets and independent volume and tone controls for each pickup. The guitar has the standard Gibson scale length of 24, the ES-175 was originally designed to be a cheaper alternative to Gibsons high-end archtop models, though current production ES-175s feature figured maple laminates. The ES-175 debuted in 1949, as Gibsons mid-level laminate top alternative to the L-5 and it was also the first Gibson electric to feature a stylish Florentine cutaway. Its first incarnation had one pickup in the neck position. The models name is derived from its price of $175. In 1953, the ES-175D, a model, was introduced. The ES-175 or ES-175D could be ordered in either sunburst finish or in natural finish, beginning in February 1957, ES-175s came equipped with humbuckers. Many new jazz guitarists such as Pat Metheny used these to emulate the sound of Joe Pass, the ES-175 with humbuckers is prized for its full, rich tone. Some guitarists will try to mimic the rich resonant sound of this rather large hollow-body instrument by turning the knob all the way down on smaller, or solid body. The ES-175 was largely spared these changes until the mid-1970s, in 1976, the three-piece maple neck replaced the one-piece mahogany neck, a volute was added, and the wooden bridge was replaced by a Nashville bridge. By the mid-1970s, Gibson had discontinued the single-pickup model, in 1976 Gibson introduced the ES-175T, a thin-body variant on the ES-175. It was made for three years, and available in sunburst, natural and wine red. The model proved unpopular and was discontinued in 1979. In 2002, Gibson released a Steve Howe signature model, based on Howes 1964 ES-175, in 2012, Gibson released a pair of 1959 ES-175 reissues, a single-pickup and a dual-pickup model. It is the first production ES-175 single pickup model since the 1970s, Jazz guitarist Joe Pass played his ES-175, donated to him ca. This model guitar is used not only by jazz guitarists, scotty Moore, the guitarist for Elvis Presley, played an ES-295, dual P-90-equipped, all gold ES-175
22.
Harmonic
–
A harmonic is any member of the harmonic series, the divergent infinite series. Every term of the series after the first is the mean of the neighboring terms. The phrase harmonic mean likewise derives from music, the term is employed in various disciplines, including music, physics, acoustics, electronic power transmission, radio technology, and other fields. It is typically applied to repeating signals, such as sinusoidal waves, a harmonic of such a wave is a wave with a frequency that is a positive integer multiple of the frequency of the original wave, known as the fundamental frequency. The original wave is called the 1st harmonic, the following harmonics are known as higher harmonics. As all harmonics are periodic at the frequency, the sum of harmonics is also periodic at that frequency. On strings, harmonics that are bowed have a glassy, pure tone, harmonics may also be called overtones, partials or upper partials. In some music contexts, the harmonic, overtone and partial are used fairly interchangeably. Most acoustic instruments emit complex tones containing many individual partials, rather, a musical note is perceived as one sound, the quality or timbre of that sound being a result of the relative strengths of the individual partials. Oscillators that produce harmonic partials behave somewhat like one-dimensional resonators, and are long and thin. Wind instruments whose air column is open at one end, such as trumpets and clarinets. However they only produce partials matching the odd harmonics, at least in theory, the reality of acoustic instruments is such that none of them behaves as perfectly as the somewhat simplified theoretical models would predict. Partials whose frequencies are not integer multiples of the fundamental are referred to as inharmonic partials, antique singing bowls are known for producing multiple harmonic partials or multiphonics. An overtone is any partial higher than the lowest partial in a compound tone, the relative strengths and frequency relationships of the component partials determine the timbre of an instrument. This chart demonstrates how the three types of names are counted, In many musical instruments, it is possible to play the upper harmonics without the note being present. In a simple case this has the effect of making the note go up in pitch by an octave, in some cases it also changes the timbre of the note. This is part of the method of obtaining higher notes in wind instruments. The extended technique of playing multiphonics also produces harmonics, on string instruments it is possible to produce very pure sounding notes, called harmonics or flageolets by string players, which have an eerie quality, as well as being high in pitch
23.
Acoustic-electric guitar
–
An electric-acoustic guitar is an acoustic guitar fitted with a magnetic pickup, a piezoelectric pickup or a microphone. In electric-acoustic nylon string guitars, piezoelectric pickups and microphones are used because magnetic pickups are not capable of picking up vibrations of non-magnetic materials. The design is distinct from a guitar, which is an electric guitar. These preamps may also come with tone controls of varying types and they are also referred to as a plug-in acoustic guitar, due to their ability to simply plug in to a speaker system without the need for microphones. They are commonly used in a variety of music genres where the sound of a guitar is desired but more volume is required. Various experiments at electrically amplifying the vibrations of a string instrument date back to the part of the twentieth century. Patents from the 1910s show telephone transmitters adapted and placed inside violins, hobbyists in the 1920s used carbon button microphones attached to the bridge, however these detected vibration from the bridge on top of the instrument, resulting in a weak signal. Many of these instruments could also be played unamplified. Commercially produced jazz guitars from the 1940s on were most commonly hollow body guitars with pickups and he added electrical pickups to provide the option of amplification. The Kaman Music Corporation, built on the success of the Roundback, became one of the largest music instrument manufacturers in the United States
24.
Ovation Guitar Company
–
The Ovation Guitar Company is a manufacturer of guitars. Ovation primarily manufactures steel-string acoustic guitars and nylon-string acoustic guitars, often with pickups for electric amplification, in 2015, it became a subsidiary of Drum Workshop after being acquired from KMCMusicorp. The companys Ovation and Adamas guitars are known for their round backs, the latter are also well known for the use of carbon fiber tops. Among musicians the relatively thin neck stands out as well, compared to other acoustic guitars, founder Charles Kaman developed the first Ovation guitar in 1965–1966. Kaman, an amateur guitarist from an age, worked on helicopter design as an aerodynamacist at United. Eventually, he founded a design company, Kaman Aircraft. The Kaman Corporation soon diversified, branching into nuclear weapons testing, commercial flight, development and testing of chemicals. In the early 1960s, however, financial problems from the failure of their commercial flight division forced them to expand new markets, such as entertainment. Charles Kaman, still a guitar player, became interested in making guitars. From 1966 to 2007 Ovation guitars, and later on Adamas guitars, were a brand of KMCMusicorp, in 2008 KMCMusicorp was sold to the Fender Musical Instruments Corporation. In 2014, Fender announced that they were closing the iconic Ovation guitar factory in New Hartford, Connecticut, before that announcement Fender established a U. S. production of various acoustic guitars in the New Hartford factory. Alongside Ovation and Adamas guitars, which have been produced there for decades, Fender started a U. S. production of other Fender-owned brands in that factory, as is known, Guild and Fender. Shortly after closing the New Hartford factory it was announced that the Ovation brand has sold to the company Drum Workshop. The announcement was made on January 7,2015, aside from the Ovation brand, Drum workshop has also bought the New Hartford factory and reinstated the previously ceased U. S. production of Ovation and Adamas guitars, basses, ukuleles and mandolins. Charles Kaman put a team of employees to work to invent a new guitar in 1964, for the project, Kaman chose a small team of aerospace engineers and technicians, several of whom were woodworking hobbyists as well. One of these was Charles McDonough, who created the Ovation Adamas model, Kaman founded Ovation Instruments, and in 1965 its engineers and luthiers worked to improve acoustic guitars by changing their conventional materials. The R&D team spent months building and testing prototype instruments and their first prototype had a conventional dreadnought body, with parallel front and back perpendicular to the sides. The innovation was the use of a thinner, synthetic back, unfortunately, the seam joining the sides to the thin back was prone to breakage
25.
Sound hole
–
A sound hole is an opening in the upper sound board of a stringed musical instrument. Bowed lyras have D-holes and mandolins may have F-holes, round or oval holes, a round or oval hole is usually a single one, under the strings. F-holes and D-holes are usually made in pairs placed symmetrically on both sides of the strings, most hollowbody and semi-hollow electric guitars also have F-holes. Though the purpose of sound holes is to help acoustic instruments project their sound more efficiently, in 2015 researchers at MIT published an analysis charting the evolution and improvements in effectiveness of violin F-hole design over time. Tacoma Guitars has developed a unique paisley soundhole placed on the side of the upper bout of their Wing Series guitars. This is a relatively low-stress area that requires less bracing to support the hole, a few hollowbody or semi-hollow electric guitars, such as the Fender Telecaster Thinline and the Gibson ES-120T, have one f-hole instead of two, usually on the bass side. Stringworks U - brief explanation of the effects of sound holes, with a closeup diagram of an F-shaped soundhole
26.
Audio feedback
–
Audio feedback is a special kind of positive feedback which occurs when a sound loop exists between an audio input and an audio output. In this example, a received by the microphone is amplified and passed out of the loudspeaker. The sound from the loudspeaker can then be received by the microphone again, amplified further, for small PA systems the sound is readily recognized as a loud squeal or screech. Feedback is almost always considered undesirable when it occurs with a singers or public speakers microphone at an event using a reinforcement system or PA system. The sound of guitar feedback is considered to be desirable musical effect in metal music, hardcore punk. Jimi Hendrix was an innovator in the use of guitar feedback in his guitar solos to create unique sound effects not possible with more traditional playing techniques. The principles of audio feedback were first discovered by Danish scientist Søren Absalon Larsen, if the small signal gain is greater than 1 for some frequency then the system will start to oscillate at that frequency because noise at that frequency will be amplified. Sound will be produced without anyone actually playing, the sound level will increase until the output starts clipping, reducing the loop gain to exactly unity. This is the principle upon which electronic oscillators are based, although in case the feedback loop is purely electronic. Early academic work on acoustical feedback was done by Dr. C. Paul Boner, Boner reasoned that when feedback happened, it did so at one precise frequency. He also reasoned that it could be stopped by inserting a very narrow notch filter at that frequency in the signal chain. He worked with Gifford White, founder of White Instruments to hand craft notch filters for specific feedback frequencies in specific rooms, Boner was responsible for establishing basic theories of acoustic feedback, room-ring modes, and room-sound system equalizing techniques. To maximize gain before feedback, the amount of energy that is fed back to the microphones must be reduced as much as is practical. As well, microphones should not be positioned in front of speakers, additionally, the loudspeakers and microphones should have non-uniform directivity and should stay out of the maximum sensitivity of each other, ideally at a direction of cancellation. Public address speakers often achieve directivity in the mid and treble region via horn systems, sometimes the woofers have a cardioid characteristic. This allows independent control of the pressure levels for the audience. If monitors are oriented at 180 degrees to the microphones that are their sources, almost all microphones for sound reinforcement are directional. Almost always, the frequency responses of sound reinforcement systems is not ideally flat
27.
Pickup (music technology)
–
The signal from a pickup can also be recorded directly, using a DI box or broadcast on the radio or television. Most electric guitars and electric basses use magnetic pickups, acoustic guitars, upright basses and fiddles often use a piezoelectric pickup. A magnetic pickup consists of a permanent magnet with a core of such as alnico or ferrite. The pickup is most often mounted on the body of the instrument, Magnetic pickups used with string basses can be attached to the bridge. The permanent magnet creates a field, the motion of the vibrating steel strings disturbs the field, changing magnetic flux. The pickup is then connected with a cable to an amplifier which amplifies the signal to a sufficient magnitude of power to drive a loudspeaker. A pickup can also be connected to recording equipment via a patch cable, there may also be an internal preamplifier device mounted in an acoustic guitar or in an external box. When a preamp is used in way, it is between the pickup and cable and can significantly reduce the equivalent impedance of the pickup coil. The output voltage of magnetic pickups varies between 100 mV rms to over 1 V rms for some of the higher output types, some high-output pickups achieve this by employing very strong magnets, thus creating more flux and thereby more output. This can be detrimental to the sound because the magnets pull on the strings can cause problems with intonation as well as damp the strings. Other high-output pickups have more turns of wire to increase the voltage generated by the strings movement, however, this also increases the pickups output resistance/impedance, which can affect high frequencies if the pickup is not isolated by a buffer amplifier or a DI unit. The turns of wire in proximity to each other have an equivalent self-capacitance that and this resonance can accentuate certain frequencies, giving the pickup a characteristic tonal quality. The more turns of wire in the winding, the higher the output voltage, the inductive source impedance inherent in this type of transducer makes it less linear than other forms of pickups, such as piezo-electric or optical. The tonal quality produced by this nonlinearity is, however, subject to taste, the external load usually consists of resistance and capacitance between the hot lead and shield in the guitar cable. The electric cable also has a capacitance, which can be a significant portion of the overall system capacitance and this arrangement of passive components forms a resistively-damped second-order low-pass filter. Single coil pickups act like an antenna and are prone to pick up mains hum along with the musical signal. Mains hum consists of a signal at a nominal 50 or 60 Hz, depending on local alternating current frequency. The changing magnetic flux caused by the mains current links with the windings of the pickup, the pickups also are sensitive to the electromagnetic field from nearby cathode ray tubes in video monitors or televisions
28.
Classical guitar
–
The classical guitar is the member of the guitar family used in classical music. It is an acoustical wooden guitar with strings made of nylon, the traditional classical guitar has twelve frets clear of the body and is held on the left leg, so that the hand that plucks or strums the strings does so near the back of the soundhole. The modern steel string guitar, on the hand, usually has fourteen frets clear of the body and is commonly played off the hip. Examples of early guitars include the early romantic guitar. Classical guitar strings once made of catgut are now made of polymers as nylon. A guitar family tree may be identified, the flamenco guitar derives from the modern classical, but has differences in material, construction and sound. Todays modern classical guitar was established by the designs of the 19th-century Spanish luthier. Cultural baroque court music, 19th century opera and its influences, 19th century folk songs, Latin American music, thus over recent decades we have become accustomed to specialist artists with expertise in the art of vihuela, lute, Baroque guitar, 19th-century guitar, etc. Different types of guitars have different sound aesthetics, e. g. different colour-spectrum characteristics, different response and these guitars in turn sound different from the Torres models used by Segovia, that are suited for interpretations of romantic-modern works such as Moreno Torroba. When considering the guitar from a perspective, the musical instrument used is just as important as the musical language. As an example, It is impossible to play a historically informed de Visee or Corbetta on a classical guitar. The reason is that the guitar used courses, which are two strings close together, that are plucked together. This gives baroque guitars an unmistakable sound characteristic and tonal texture that is an part of an interpretation. Additionally the sound aesthetic of the guitar is very different from modern classical type guitars. However, they are considered to emphasize the fundamental too heavily for earlier repertoire, Some attribute this to the popularity of Segovia, considering him the catalyst for change toward the Spanish design and the so-called modern school in the 1920s and beyond. Some people consider it to have been influence of Segovia. It was the 19th century classical guitarist Francisco Tárrega who first popularized the Torres design as a solo instrument. Vihuela, renaissance guitars and baroque guitars have a bright sound - rich in overtones -, later in Spain a style of music emerged that favored a stronger fundamental, With the change of music a stronger fundamental was demanded and the fan bracing system was approached
29.
Steel-string acoustic guitar
–
The steel-string acoustic guitar is a modern form of guitar that descends from the classical guitar, but is strung with steel strings for a brighter, louder sound. It is often referred to simply as a guitar, though the nylon-strung classical guitar is also sometimes called an acoustic guitar. The most common type is called a flat top guitar, to distinguish it from the more specialized archtop guitar. The standard tuning for a guitar is E-A-D-G-B-E, although many players, particularly fingerpickers, use alternate tunings, such as open G, open D. There are many variations in construction and materials used in steel-string guitars, different combinations of woods and construction elements affect the timbre or tone of the guitar. Many players and luthiers are convinced that a well-made guitars tone improves over time, acoustic guitars are commonly constructed in several different body types. The proportion and overall size of two parts helps determine the overall tonal balance and native sound of a particular body style – the larger the body. The 00, also called the Double-Oh or the Grand Concert and it has the thinnest soundbox and the smallest overall size of the major styles, making it very comfortable to play but also one of the quietest. Its smaller size makes it suitable for younger or smaller-framed players and these guitars are commonly called parlor steels as they are well-suited to smaller rooms. Martins 00-xxx series and Taylors x12 series are common examples, the Grand Auditorium guitar, sometimes called the 000 or the Triple-Oh, is very similar in design to the Grand Concert, but slightly wider and deeper. Many 000-style guitars also have a back panel to increase the volume of space in the soundbox without making the soundbox deeper at the edges. Eric Claptons signature Martin guitar, for example, is of this style, Martins 000-xxx series and Taylors x14 series are well-known examples of the Grand Auditorium style. The Dreadnought style was designed by Martin Guitars to produce a deeper sound than classic-style guitars and this body styles combination of a small profile with a deep sound has made it immensely popular, and it has since been copied by virtually every major steel-string luthier. Martins D series guitars, such as the highly-prized D-28, are examples of the Dreadnought. This comes at the expense of being oversized, with a very deep sounding box, the foremost example of this style is the Gibson J-200, but like the Dreadnought, most guitar manufacturers have at least one jumbo model. Any of these body type can optionally incorporate a cutaway, a cutaway guitar has a redesigned upper bout that removes a section of the soundbox on the underside of the neck, hence the name cutaway. This allows for access to the frets that are located on top of the soundbox past the heel of the neck. The tradeoff is reduced soundbox volume, and often a change in bracing, the 12-string guitar replaces each single string with a course of two strings
30.
Lap steel guitar
–
The lap steel guitar is a type of steel guitar, an instrument derived from and similar to the guitar. The player changes pitch by pressing a metal or glass bar against the strings instead of by pressing strings against the fretboard, there are three main types of lap steel guitar, Lap steel guitars, the first developed, which use a similar sound box to a Spanish guitar. Resonator guitars, particularly those with square necks, but also round neck versions with a raised nut, Electric lap steel guitars, which include the first commercially successful solid body instruments. These were originally marketed as electric Hawaiian guitars, in addition to the lap-played model, a closely related version called a console steel guitar is supported on legs. Electric lap steels typically have six or 8 and up to ten strings, Lap steel and resonator guitars may also be fitted with pickups, but do not depend on electrical amplification to produce sound. A lap steel guitars strings are raised at both the nut and bridge ends of the fingerboard, typically to about half an inch. The strings are too high to contact the surface of the neck, so frets, some lap steel guitars can be converted between lap and fretted playing, or are modified versions of conventional guitars—the only difference is usually string height. Round-necked resonator guitars set up for steel playing fall into this category, instruments designed exclusively as lap steel guitars typically have modified necks that make fretted playing impossible. The hollow neck acoustic lap steel, developed by Chris Knutsen and popularized by Weissenborn, the square-necked resonator guitar has a strengthened square profile neck, allowing heavier string gauges and/or higher tunings that would normally be considered impossible on a conventional guitar. The electric lap steel guitar typically incorporates the entire neck into the body of the guitar, again providing extra strength to allow a greater variety of string gauges. The lap steel guitar is typically placed on the players lap and this method of playing greatly restricts the number of chords available, so lap steel music often features melodies, a restricted set of harmonies, or another single part. This allows the player greater control when picking sets of notes on non-adjacent strings, on the other hand, a minority of Blues players, and many Rock players, use a conventional flatpick. Tut Taylor is one of the few Dobro players that use a flatpick and it is widely reported that the lap steel guitar was invented by a man named Joseph Kekuku in 1885. It is said that, at the age of 7, Kekuku was walking along a track and picked up a metal bolt. He taught himself to using this method with the back of a knife blade. Various other people have also credited with the innovation. The instrument became a fad in the United States during the 1920s and 1930s. The instrument became popular in Hawaii, as musicians played in tent-rep shows
31.
Baroque guitar
–
The Baroque guitar is a string instrument with five courses of gut strings and moveable gut frets. The first course used only a single string. The Baroque guitar replaced the Renaissance lute as the most common instrument found in the home, the earliest attestation of a five-stringed guitar comes from the mid-sixteenth-century Spanish book Declaracion de Instrumentos Musicales by Juan Bermudo, published in 1555. The first treatise published for the Baroque guitar was Guitarra Española de cinco ordenes, intimately tied to the development of the Baroque guitar is the alfabeto system of notation. Three different ways of tuning the guitar are well documented in sources as set out in the following table. This includes the names of composers who are associated with each method, very few sources clearly indicate that one method of stringing rather than another should be used and it may have been up to the player to decide what was appropriate. E. Monica Hall, Baroque Guitar Stringing, a survey of the evidence ISBN 0-905655-40-0 Monica Hall, in Consort, The Journal of the Dolmetsch Foundation, Vol.61. ISSN 0268-9111 Monica Hall, The Guitarra espanola of Joan Carles Amat, in Early Music, Vol.6, no. Monica Hall, Dissonance in the music of Francesco Corbetta. In Lute, The Journal of the Lute Society, Vol. XLVII Monica Hall, in Lute, The Journal of the Lute Society, Vol. XLVII Monica Hall, Tuning instructions for the baroque guitar in Bibliotheque Nationale Res. In Lute, The Journal of the Lute Society, Vol. XLVII Antoni Pizà, ISBN 84-89868-50-6 Hélène Charnassé, Rafael Andia, Gérard Rebours, The Guitar Books of Robert de Visée, Paris, Editions Musicales Transatlantiques,2000,235 pages. Thomas Schmitt, Sobre la ornamentación en el repertorio para guitarra barroca en España, in, Revista de Musicología, XV, nº1,1992 Giovanni Accornero, Eraldo Guerci - The Guitar, Four Centuries of Masterpieces, Edizioni Il Salabue,2008. ISBN 978-88-87618-13-6 Carlo Alberto Carutti, Passioni di un collezionista, Catalogue by Giovanni Accornero, ISBN 978-88-87618-15-0 Ulrik Gaston Larsen, lutenist Technique Baroque guitar for the modern performer - a practical compromise, by Don Rowe and Richard d’A Jensen. The Guitar, Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History, The Metropolitan Museum of Art Baroque guitar music The Five-course guitar
32.
Gibson
–
Gibson Brands, Inc. is an American manufacturer of guitars and other instruments, now based in Nashville, Tennessee. The company was known as Gibson Guitar Corp. and renamed Gibson Brands. Orville Gibson founded the company in 1902 as The Gibson Mandolin-Guitar Mfg. Co. Ltd. in Kalamazoo, Gibson invented archtop guitars by constructing the same type of carved, arched tops used on violins. By the 1930s, the company was also making flattop acoustic guitars, as well as one of the first commercially available hollow-body electric guitars, Gibson sells guitars under a variety of brand names and builds one of the worlds most iconic guitars, the Gibson Les Paul. Many Gibson instruments are highly collectible, Gibson was at the forefront of innovation in acoustic guitars, especially in the big band era of the 1930s, the Gibson Super 400 was widely imitated. In 1952, Gibson introduced its first solid-body electric guitar, the Les Paul which became its most popular guitar to date— designed by Ted McCarty, Gibson was owned by the Norlin corporation from 1969 to 1986. In 1986, the company was acquired by its present owners, Gibson is a privately held corporation owned by its chief executive officer Henry Juszkiewicz and its president David H. Berryman. Orville Gibson patented a single-piece mandolin design in 1898 that was more durable than other mandolins, Orville Gibson began to sell his instruments in 1894 out of a one-room workshop in Kalamazoo Michigan. In 1902 Gibson Mandolin-Guitar Mfg. Co, Ltd. was incorporated to market the instruments, initially, the company produced only Orville Gibsons original designs. Orville died in 1918 of endocarditis, the following year the company hired designer Lloyd Loar to create newer instruments. Loar designed the flagship L-5 archtop guitar and the Gibson F5 mandolin that was introduced in 1922, in 1936 Gibson introduced their first Electric Spanish model, the ES-150 followed by other electric instruments like steel guitars, banjos and mandolins. During World War II, instrument manufacturing at Gibson slowed due to shortages of wood and metal, between 1942-1945, Gibson employed women to manufacture guitars. Women produced nearly 25,000 guitars during World War II yet Gibson denied ever building instruments over this period, Gibson folklore has also claimed its guitars were made by seasoned craftsmen who were too old for war. In 1944 Gibson was purchased by Chicago Musical Instruments, the ES-175 was introduced in 1949. Gibson hired Ted McCarty in 1948, who became President in 1950, the Les Paul was offered in Custom, Standard, Special, and Junior models. In the mid-50s, the Thinline series was produced, which included a line of thinner guitars like the Byrdland, the first Byrdlands were slim, custom built, L-5 models for guitarists Billy Byrd and Hank Garland. Later, a neck was added. Other models such as the ES-350T and the ES-225T were introduced as less costly alternatives, in 1958, Gibson introduced the ES-335T model
33.
Archtop guitar
–
His 1898 patent for a mandolin, which was also applicable to guitars according to the specifications, was intended to enhance power and quality of tone. However, Gibson was not the first to apply design principles to the guitar. Back obtained patent #508,858 in 1893 for a guitar that among other features included an arched top, another transitional design is the parlor guitar fitted with a floating bridge and tailpiece. These inexpensive instruments, manufactured by such as Stella and Harmony, are associated with early blues musicians. The earliest Gibson designs introduced the arched top, and increasing body sizes, in 1922, Lloyd Loar was hired by the Gibson Company to redesign their instrument line in an effort to counter flagging sales, and in that same year the Gibson L5 was released to his design. Perhaps the most revered instrument from this period is the F5 mandolin, but probably the more influential was the L5 guitar. The mature Gibson archtop guitar and its imitators are regarded as the quintessential jazzbox, in Europe, companies such as Framus, Höfner and Hagström took up the manufacture of archtops. Archtop guitars were particularly adopted by jazz and country musicians, and in big bands and swing bands. Gibsons ES-150 guitar is generally recognized as the worlds first commercially successful Spanish-style electric guitar, the ES stands for Electric Spanish, and it was designated 150 because it cost $150, along with an EH-150 amplifier and a cable. After its introduction in 1936, it became popular in jazz orchestras of the period. Unlike the usual acoustic guitars utilized in jazz, it was enough to take a more prominent position in ensembles. The ES-150s top was not carved on the underside, making it unsuitable for acoustic use, in 1951, Gibson released the L5CES, an L5 with a single cutaway body and two electric pickups, equally playable as either an acoustic guitar or an electric guitar. This innovation was immediately popular, and while purely acoustic archtop guitars such as the Gibson L-7C remain available to this day, they have become the exception. In 1958, the L5CES was redesigned with humbucking pickups, most, the electric archtop was particularly popular with jazz musicians Tal Farlow, Barney Kessel and Johnny Smith. Other manufacturers introduced electric archtop guitars, notable including the Gretsch White Falcon. Some of these instruments have a distinctive sound and were taken up by country music and early rock and roll artists such as Duane Eddy. Similar models remain popular in rockabilly, Gibsons last innovation in archtop design was the creation, in late 1950s, of thinline models with a reduced body depth, notably the Gibson ES-335 and Epiphone Casino. These were more resistant and easier to play standing up
34.
Romantic guitar
–
The early romantic guitar, the guitar of the Classical and Romantic period, shows remarkable consistency from 1790 to 1830. Guitars had six or more courses of strings while the Baroque guitar usually had five double courses. The romantic guitar eventually led to Antonio de Torres Jurados fan-braced Spanish guitars, from the late 18th century the guitar achieved considerable general popularity though, as Ruggero Chiesa stated, subsequent scholars have largely ignored its place in classical music. It was the era of such as Fernando Sor, Ferdinando Carulli, Mauro Giuliani. The first known guitar built to be strung with single rather than pairs of strings was built in 1774 by Ferdinando Gagliano in Naples. This guitar, which was displayed in the Heyer Museum, Cologne before that museum was dispersed, showed some important differences from the classical guitar. It had 5 single strings, inlaid brass frets, a long neck relative to string length, a pegged bridge and it lacked only a sixth string to make it identical with the early romantic guitar. The earliest extant six-string guitar was built in 1779 by Gaetano Vinaccia in Naples, the Vinaccia family of luthiers is also known for developing the mandolin. This guitar shows no sign of modification from a double-course guitar, while the authenticity of guitars before the 1790s is often in question. Morettis 6-string method appeared in 1792, around the same time France also began to produce guitars with six single courses and Spain soon followed. Italian, French, and Spanish six-string guitars differed from the guitar in similar ways. Frets were no longer of tied gut but fixed strips of some harder material, wooden pegs were later replaced by metal tuning machines. The many instructional books of the show no standard playing technique. The thumb and first two fingers were used for plucking with, in the 19th century, a free stroke more commonly than the rest stroke that was favoured in the 20th century. Unlike most classical guitarists today, players were divided as to whether or not use fingernails, Fernando Sor, for example, did not use them while his compatriot Aguado did. Romantic guitars often had a neck-strap around the neck while Dionysio Aguado invented a “tripodion” for holding the instrument. Heck, Thomas Fitzsimons, Mauro Giuliani, Virtuoso Guitarist and Composer, ISBN 1-882612-00-0 Heck, Thomas Fitzsimons, The Birth of the Classic Guitar and its Cultivation in Vienna, Reflected in the Career and Compositions of Mauro Giuliani. Ribouillault-Bibron, Danielle, La Technique de guitare en France dans la première moitié du XIXe siècle,1 Walter, Adrian Charles, The Early Nineteenth-Century Guitar, An Interpretative Context for the Contemporary Performer, with a Specific Focus on the Compositions of Mauro Giuliani and Fernando Sor
35.
Classical guitar with additional strings
–
These are also known as extended-range guitars, and should not be confused with harp guitars. There is no question, however, that Sychra was a proponent of the seven-string instrument, having written a method. Seventy-five of these pieces were republished in the 1840s by Stellovsky, some of these were published again in the Soviet Union in 1926. Eight-string classical guitars are tuned with two extra basses that vary in pitch depending on the piece being played. Another common variation is to add a bass and treble string. Galbraith generally tunes EADGBEA which puts standard 6 string guitar chord voicings and scale shapes within the neck, vynograd chooses to tune AEADGCEA which allows him to play the top 6 strings like a guitar a 4th higher. Vynograd writes his music on a staff in a different key. The Brazilian guitarist Raphael Rabello also adopted the 8 string guitar on many of his presentations also Australian guitarist Sirsom Solo-Jazz plays the 8-string Classical guitar. The Brahms guitar was developed by guitarist Paul Galbraith and luthier David Rubio to allow the music of Brahms to be played more comfortably on the guitar. Information,8 string guitar Late 18th and early 19th century method books for nine-string guitars exist, modern nine-string guitars are almost exclusively steel-string or electric instruments. Includes the Decacorde - a historical romantic guitar - which was tuned C2-D2-E2-F2-G2-A2-D3-G4-B4-E4 and the modern 10-string guitar, the Bolin alto guitar most often has eleven strings, but a thirteen-string version also exists. The eleven-string alto guitar is played by such as John Francis, Stefan Östersjö. The Godin Glissentar is another type of eleven-string guitar and is fretless, the 11-string archguitar built by American luthier Walter Stanul is played by guitarists such as Peter Blanchette. External links altoguitar. com, site dedicated to the Bolin altgitarren, user description of their Bolin pattern alto guitar. John Francis Web Page The 13-string Chiavi-Miolin guitar is played by Anders Miolin, luthier Michael Thames has developed the 13-string Dresden designed to function as a baroque lute for guitarists. Bolin created a version of his eleven-string alto guitar. External links Chiavi-Miolin Dresden The harp guitar is a guitar with added strings which are floating, as with extended-range guitars, these additional strings may be lower or higher in pitch than the standard strings. Unlike extended-range instruments, the strings on harp guitars may only be played as open strings
36.
Russian guitar
–
The Russian guitar is an acoustic seven-string guitar that was developed in Russia toward the end of the 18th century, it shares most of its organological features with the Spanish guitar. It is known in Russian as the semistrunnaya gitara, or affectionately as the semistrunka and these guitars are most commonly tuned to an Open G chord as follows, D2 G2 B2 D3 G3 B3 D4. In classical literature, the lowest string occasionally is tuned down to the C and it is true that Sychra was very influential in creating the school of Russian guitar playing. He left over a thousand compositions, seventy-five of which were republished in the 1840s by Stellovsky, some of these were published yet again in the Soviet Union in 1926. Construction of the Russian is very similar to that of the western 6-string guitar except for the additional string, woods used and internal bracing layouts are also similar. There are two types of Russian guitar, the classical model and the gypsy model. The classical model closely resembles the western 6-string classical guitar, and has nylon or gut strings, the gypsy model is steel strung, and resembles the western 6-string steel-string acoustic guitar, although more size and shape variations are found among gypsy guitars. A two-necked version of the Russian guitar was also popular, these guitars usually had 11 or 12 strings—one neck with seven fretted strings. There are also some specimens that were built with an oval body. The head or headstock is located at the end of the guitar neck farthest from the body, modern instruments are fitted with machine head tuners, though older instruments sometimes used friction pegs. The traditional tuner layout is 4+3, with four tuners on the side of the head. The nut is a small strip traditionally of bone, but plastic, brass, headstock, fingerboard, and truss rod, all attached to a long wooden extension which collectively constitutes the neck. The wood used to make the fretboard usually differs from the wood in the rest of the neck, the neck joint or heel is the point at which the neck is attached to the body of the guitar. The fingerboard is made of hardwood, fitted with metal frets of brass or steel, fret spacing almost always follows the western twelve tone equal temperament system. The surface of the fingerboard may be flat or curved slightly, inlayed position markers are common, and appear in the same locations as 6-string guitars. The sound board is made of spruce or cedar. Overall proportions of classical seven string instruments nylon string) are similar to those of 6-string guitars, gypsy instruments may be proportioned similarly, but also may often feature a narrower upper bout, and an enlarged sound hole. Both traditionally shaped instruments and instruments with cut-away bodies are available, the bridge is made of a hardwood similar to that used for the fingerboard, and the bridge saddle is usually bone or sometimes plastic, on old instruments, ivory was sometimes used
37.
Flamenco guitar
–
A flamenco guitar is a guitar similar to a classical guitar but with thinner tops and less internal bracing. It is used in toque, the part of the art of flamenco. The cheapest guitars were often simple, basic instruments made from the less expensive woods such as cypress, antonio de Torres, one of the most renowned luthiers, did not differentiate between flamenco and classical guitars. Only after Andrés Segovia and others popularized classical guitar music, did this distinction emerge, the traditional flamenco guitar is made of Spanish cypress, sycamore, or rosewood for the back and sides, and spruce for the top. This accounts for its body color. Flamenco guitars are built lighter with thinner tops than classical guitars, builders also use less internal bracing to keep the top more percussively resonant. The top is made of either spruce or cedar, though other tone woods are used today. Volume has traditionally been important for flamenco guitarists, as they must be heard over the sound of the dancers’ nailed shoes. To increase volume, harder woods, such as rosewood, can be used for the back and sides, the harder materials increase volume and tonal range. A typical cypress flamenco guitar produces more treble and louder percussion than the more sonorous negra and these guitars strive to capture some of the sustain achieved by concert caliber classical guitars while retaining the volume and attack associated with flamenco. Classical guitars are made with spruce or cedar tops and rosewood or mahogany backs. Flamenco guitars are made with spruce tops and cypress or sycamore for the backs and sides to enhance volume. Nevertheless, other types of wood may be used for the back and sides, like rosewood, maple, koa, satinwood, a well-made flamenco guitar responds quickly, and typically has less sustain than a classical. This is desirable, since the flurry of notes that a good player can produce might sound muddy on a guitar with a big, lush. The flamenco guitar’s sound is described as percussive, it tends to be brighter, drier. Flamenco is played differently from classical guitar. Players use different posture, strumming patterns, and techniques, Flamenco guitarists are known as tocaores and flamenco guitar technique is known as toque. Flamenco players tend to play the guitar between the hole and the bridge, but as closely as possible to the bridge, to produce a harsher
38.
Twelve-string guitar
–
The twelve-string guitar is a steel-string guitar with twelve strings in six courses, which produces a richer, more ringing tone than a standard six-string guitar. Typically, the strings of the four courses are tuned in octaves. The gap between the strings within each dual-string course is narrow, and the strings of each course are fretted and plucked as a single unit, the neck is wider, to accommodate the extra strings, and is similar to the width of a classical guitar neck. The sound, particularly on acoustical instruments, is fuller and more resonant than six-string instruments. Structurally, twelve-string guitars, especially those built before 1970, differ from six-string guitars in the following ways, the added tension of the six additional strings necessitates heavier-duty reinforcement of the neck. The body is reinforced, and built with a stronger structure. The fretting scale is generally shorter to reduce the overall string tension, Twelve-string guitars are made in both acoustic and electric forms. However, it is the type that is most common. The result to the ear is a sound that seems to shimmer, pete Seeger described the distinctive sound of the 12-string guitar as the clanging of bells. The effect is more apparent when listening to notes that sustain for longer periods of time, at the very end of the nineteenth century, the Archtop mandolin was one of the first instruments with courses of doubled strings designed in the United States. The 19th and early 20th century twelve-strings were regarded as novelty instruments, the twelve-string guitar has since occupied roles in certain varieties of folk, rock, jazz, and popular music. Initially, it was used for accompaniment, owing to the greater difficulty of picking or executing string bends on the twelve-string guitars double-strung courses. In the later 20th century, however, a number of players devoted themselves to producing solo performances on the twelve-string guitar, the strings are placed in courses of two strings each that are usually played together. The two strings in each of the four courses are normally tuned an octave apart, while each pair of strings in the top two courses are tuned in unison. Another common variant is to tune the octave string in the course two octaves above the lower string, rather than one. Some players, either in search of distinctive tone or for ease of playing, for example, removing the higher octave from the three bass courses simplifies playing running bass lines, but keeps the extra treble strings for the full strums. Some manufacturers have produced nine-string instruments based on this setup, in either the lower three courses are undoubled, or the upper three courses are undoubled. The extra tension placed on the instrument by the strings is high
39.
Resonator guitar
–
A resonator guitar or resophonic guitar is an acoustic guitar that produces sound by carrying string vibration through the bridge to one or more spun metal cones, instead of to the sound board. Resonator guitars were designed to be louder than regular acoustic guitars. They became prized for their sound, however, and found life with several musical styles well after electric amplification solved the issue of inadequate guitar sound levels. The body of a guitar may be made of wood, metal. Typically there are two sound holes, positioned on either side of the fingerboard extension. In the case of models, the sound holes are either both circular or both f-shaped, and symmetrical. The older tricone design has irregularly shaped sound holes, cutaway body styles may truncate or omit the lower f-hole. Dopyera experimented with configurations of up to four resonator cones and with cones composed of different metals. In 1927, Dopyera and Beauchamp formed the National String Instrument Corporation to manufacture guitars under the brand name National. The first models were metal-bodied, and featured three conical aluminum resonators joined by a T-shaped aluminum bar that supported the system called the tricone. National originally produced wooden-bodied Tricone models at their factory in Los Angeles and they called these models the Triolian, but made only 12 of them. They changed the body meant for tricones to single-cone models, and this system was cheaper to produce, and produced more volume than Nationals tricone. National countered the Dobro with its own single resonator model, which Dopyera had designed before he left the company and they also continued to produce the tricone design, which many players preferred for its tone. Both National single and tricone resonators remained conical, with their convex surfaces uppermost, single resonator models used a wooden biscuit at the cone apex to support the bridge. At this point, both companies sourced many components from Adolph Rickenbacher, including the aluminium resonators, after much legal action, the Dopyera brothers gained control of both National and Dobro in 1932, and subsequently merged them into the National Dobro Corporation. However, they ceased all resonator guitars production following the U. S. entry into World War II in 1941. Emile Dopyera manufactured Dobros from 1959, before selling the company and trademark to Semie Moseley, in 1967, Rudy and Emile Dopyera formed the Original Musical Instrument Company to manufacture resonator guitars, first branded Hound Dog. In 1970 they again acquired the Dobro trademark, Mosrite having gone into temporary liquidation, the Gibson Guitar Corporation acquired OMI in 1993, and announced it would defend its right to exclusive use of the Dobro trademark—which many people commonly used for any resonator guitar
40.
Dobro
–
The word Dobro is, in popular usage, the generic term for a wood-bodied, single cone resonator guitar. It is also an American brand of guitar, currently owned by the Gibson Guitar Corporation. The Dobro was originally made by the Dopyera brothers when they formed the Dobro Manufacturing Company and their design, with a single inverted resonator, was introduced in competition to the patented Tricone and biscuit designs produced by the National String Instrument Corporation. The Dobro name appeared on other instruments, notably electric lap steel guitars and solid body electric guitars, Gibson Guitar Corporation acquired the Dobro trademark in 1994. Although the name Dobro is generically associated with the single-inverted-cone design, the name originated in 1928 when the Dopyera brothers, John and Emil, formed the Dobro Manufacturing Company. Dobro is both a contraction of Dopyera brothers and a word meaning goodness or goodwill in their native Slovak, an early company motto was Dobro means good in any language. The Dobro was the third resonator guitar design by John Dopyera, the inventor of the resonator guitar, unlike his earlier tricone design, the Dobro had a single resonator cone and it was inverted, with its concave surface facing up. The Dobro company described this as a bowl shaped resonator, the Dobro was louder than the tricone and cheaper to produce. In Dopyeras opinion, the cost of manufacture had priced the resonator guitar beyond the reach of many players and his failure to convince his fellow directors at the National String Instrument Corporation to produce a single-cone version was part of his motivation for leaving. Since National had applied for a patent on the single cone, in the following years both Dobro and National built a wide variety of metal- and wood-bodied single-cone guitars, while National also continued with the Tricone for a time. Both companies sourced many components from National director Adolph Rickenbacher, by 1934, the Dopyera brothers had gained control of both National and Dobro, and they merged the companies to form the National-Dobro Corporation. From the outset, wooden bodies had been sourced from existing guitar manufacturers, Dobro had granted Regal a license to manufacture resonator instruments. By 1937, it was the manufacturer, and the license was officially made exclusive. Regal continued to manufacture and sell resonator instruments under many names, including Regal, Dobro, Old Kraftsman, however, they ceased all resonator guitar production following the United States entry into World War II in 1941. Emil Dopyera manufactured Dobros from 1959 under the brand name Doperas Original before selling the company, Moseley merged it with his Mosrite guitar company and manufactured Dobros for a time. Meanwhile, in 1967, Rudy and Emil Dopyera formed the Original Musical Instrument Company to manufacture resonator guitars, however, in 1970, they again acquired the Dobro name—Mosrite having gone into temporary liquidation. The Gibson Guitar Corporation acquired OMI in 1993, along with the Dobro name and they renamed the company Original Acoustic Instruments and moved production to Nashville. Gibson now uses the name Dobro only for models with the design that the original Dobro Manufacturing Company used
41.
Selmer guitar
–
The Selmer Guitar is an unusual acoustic guitar best known as the favored instrument of Django Reinhardt. It was produced by Selmer, a French manufacturer, from 1932 to about 1952, in 1932 Selmer partnered with the Italian guitarist and luthier Mario Maccaferri to produce a line of acoustic guitars based on Maccaferris unorthodox design. Although Maccaferris association with Selmer ended in 1934, the continued to make several models of this guitar until 1952. The guitar was closely associated with famed jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt, the strings pass over a moveable bridge and are gathered at the tail, as on a mandolin. Two mustache markers are fixed to the soundboard to help position the movable bridge, the top of the guitar is gently arched or domed—a feature achieved by bending a flat piece of wood rather than by the violin-style carving used in archtop guitars. The top is rather thin, at about 2 mm. It has a wide fretboard and a snake-shaped, slotted headstock. The back and top are both ladder-braced, which was the norm for French and Italian steel-string guitars of the time, other models can be more conventional in appearance and construction, with the Modèle Classique, for example, essentially being a standard fan-braced, flat-top classical guitar. The scale, at 640 mm, and fretting of the guitars was very similar to other contemporary guitars. Many of these guitars, produced during 1932 and 1933, were sold to the UK market via Selmers London showroom, Maccaferri designed the original guitars and oversaw their manufacture, but his involvement with Selmer ended after 18 months. Over the next few years, the design evolved without his input and, by 1936 and it was officially called the Modèle Jazz, but also known as the Petite Bouche or Oval Hole. These later guitars have revised internal bracing and a scale length of 670 mm. The vast bulk of guitars produced after the Maccaferri period were sold in Selmers native France, modern exponents of the style often amplify their instruments in concert, but may still play acoustically in small venues and jam sessions. Gypsy jazz players usually couple the guitar with light, silver-plated, copper-wound Argentine strings made by Savarez, today, the Selmer guitar is almost completely associated with Django Reinhardt and the gypsy jazz school of his followers. From the 1930s through to the 1950s, however, Selmers were used by all types of performer in France, the first Selmers sold to the UK market were used in the standard dance band context and were associated with performers such as Len Figgis and Al Bowlly. In France, the Selmer was the top professional guitar for many years, leading players ranged from Henri Crolla to Sacha Distel. More recently, the style of guitar has been associated with Enrico Macias, most of these other instruments featured Macaferris distinctive D-shaped soundhole and many contained the resonator. Production of all but the Modèle Jazz had ended by the mid-1930s, Selmer did not make large numbers of guitars, and the company stopped production altogether by 1952, so playable original Selmers are rare and command high prices
42.
Chitarra battente
–
The chitarra battente is a musical instrument, a chordophone of the guitar family. It is similar to the 5-course baroque guitar, but larger and typically strung with five strings, traditionally made of brass. It is considered an instrument, though it has its origins in the Italian court music in the early Baroque era. Musicologists refer to the historical as well as the folk chitarra battente, there are many extant historical 17th century instruments in museums. The chitarra battente comes in three sizes, the medium and large instruments are the most common. The instrument may have five or four courses of strings and these courses are typically double or triple, a“course” being a group of 2 or 3 strings plucked as a single unit. Thus chitarra battente is typically a five or four-course instrument, there is great variation in the size of the bouts, kinds of wood, shape of the back, decorations, number of frets, etc. The strings are tuned in what is called a system, that is, unlike a modern classical guitar. The instrument is played without a plectrum, and the fingers achieve a range of effects through plucking, strumming, beating the strings or the sound board. The chitarra battente is typically used to accompany singing or dancing, the most important center of production is in Bisignano in the province of Cosenza. Traditionally the instrument has been made locally in the region from which its characteristics derive, one notable virtuoso on chitarra battente is Marcello Vitale
43.
Slide guitar
–
Slide guitar is a particular method or technique for playing the guitar. Instead of altering the pitch of the strings in the manner, an object called a slide is placed upon the string to vary its vibrating length. This slide can then be moved along the string without lifting, creating smooth transitions in pitch and allowing wide, Slide guitar is most often played, With the guitar in the normal position, using a slide on one of the fingers of the left hand. This same technique is used to play steel guitar and the Dobro resonator guitar used in Bluegrass music. The technique of using a slide on a string has been traced to one-stringed African instruments similar to a Diddley bow, the technique was made popular by African American blues artists. The first musician recorded using the style was Sylvester Weaver, who recorded two solo pieces Guitar Blues and Guitar Rag in 1923, Blues legend Muddy Waters was also very influential, particularly in developing the electric Chicago blues slide guitar from the acoustic Mississippi Delta slide guitar. Texas blues musician Johnny Winter developed his style through years of touring with Waters. Slide player Roy Rogers honed his skills by touring with blues artist John Lee Hooker. John Lees cousin Earl Hooker may have been the first to use wah-wah, the sound has since become commonplace in country and Hawaiian music. The Rolling Stones featured a guitar as early as their 1963 recording of the John Lennon/Paul McCartney song I Wanna Be Your Man. Guitarist Brian Jones played slide in a very blues-oriented style, Jones was also one of the first English guitarists to play slide and during the bands early years, he was considered one of the best slide guitarists in the music world. His successors Mick Taylor and Ronnie Wood also displayed their own slide guitar skills while with the band, the album Let It Bleed features Keith Richards on slide guitar for the majority of the album, since the band were in-between guitarists during the making of the album. Rolling Stones vocalist Mick Jagger has also played guitar on occasion. Canned Heats Alan Wilson also helped bring slide guitar to music in the late 1960s. George Harrison experimented with slide guitar during the half of The Beatles career, first using the technique on an early outtake recording of Strawberry Fields Forever. The 1965 songs Drive My Car, and Run For Your Life have slide guitar, Harrison later used slide extensively in his solo career, on songs such as My Sweet Lord, Give Me Love, This Is Love, and Cheer Down. He played slide in the Traveling Wilburys as well as on The Beatles 1995 and 1996 reunion singles Free as a Bird, slides may be used on any guitar, but slides generally and steels in particular are often used on instruments specifically made to play in this manner. Often, the strings are raised a little higher off the fingerboard than they would be for conventional guitar playing—especially if the player isnt going to use the fingers for fretting
44.
Parlor guitar
–
Parlor or parlour guitar usually refers to a type of acoustic guitar smaller than a Size No.0 Concert Guitar by C. F. Martin & Company. The popularity of these guitars peaked from the late 19th century until the 1950s, many blues and folk musicians have used smaller-bodied guitars, which were often more affordable, mass production models. Parlor guitar has come to denote a style of American guitar music from the 19th. Noted composers include William Foden, Winslow Hayden, William Bateman, Justin Holland, the Scruggs style and its banjo rolls are based upon and contemporary with parlor-style guitar. Historical guitars smaller than Size No.0 In the 2000s, the guitar is enjoying a renaissance among players who like their midrangery tone, historic vibe. Modern luthiers are making parlor guitars in a variety of tonewoods. Takamine Guitars produces one made of cedar and koa, with a preamp powered by a 12AU7, fylde Guitars produces the Single Malt Ariel constructed from used whisky casks. F. Martin & Company — Martin defined the larger Size No.0 as Concert Guitar, in contrast to the smaller, Media related to Parlor guitar at Wikimedia Commons Media related to Parlor size guitars at Wikimedia Commons
45.
Lyre-guitar
–
A musical instrument of the chordophone family, the lyre-guitar was a type of guitar shaped like a lyre. It had six courses and was tuned like the modern classical guitar. The lyre-guitar nearly always had a built-in pedestal allowing it to stand upright when not in use and its decline coincided with the waning of the popularity of the guitar as a salon instrument, increasingly supplanted by the piano which benefitted from ongoing improvements to its keyboard action. The idea was to create an instrument which looked pretty and provided a visual accessory to help ladies of fashion to assume the pose of Greek “kithara” players. This visual likeness became a potent ingredient of the culture of the upper classes, although the lyre-guitar is rarely heard or recorded it is not extinct. A body of nearly forgotten repertoire exists often by highly notable guitarists of the age of the guitar. Today lyre-guitars can be made to order by luthiers and authentic examples exist in museums, Étoile charmante, between the 18th and 19th century by Eleonora Vulpiani Matanya, Ophee, The Story of the Lyre-Guitar, Soundboard, XIV/4 The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. Gordon & Son,1865 Carcassi, Matteo Fantaisie pour la guitare ou lyre http, //www. eleonoravulpiani. com/history. htm http, //www. harpguitars. net/history/org/org-lyres
46.
Harp guitar
–
The harp guitar is a guitar-based stringed instrument with a history of well over two centuries. The word harp is used in reference to its harp-like unstopped open strings, a harp guitar must have at least one unfretted string lying off the main fretboard, typically played as an open string. This family consists of varieties of instrument configurations. Most readily identified are American harp guitars with either hollow arms, double necks or harp-like frames for supporting extra bass strings, other harp guitars feature treble or mid-range floating strings, or various combinations of multiple floating string banks along with a standard guitar neck. While most players of harp guitars play on instruments, a few of them also work with electric instruments. Notable artists who played electric guitars are Tim Donahue and Michael Hedges. American musician William Eaton both designs and plays electric guitar and is considered one of the worlds great designers/builders of unique guitars. The Japanese noise band Solmania built their own harp guitars, yuri Landman has built a 17 string electric harp guitar for Finn Andrews of The Veils. The instrument has a movable bridge on the harp section allowing players to pitch the harp section higher or lower. Historical harp guitar players include the German composers and guitarists Adam Darr and Eduard Bayer and the Italian virtuosi Pasquale Taraffo, Mario Maccaferri, viennese and French virtuosos who often played instruments with extra, floating bass strings include Carulli, Coste, Giuliani, Mertz, Padovec and Sor. English guitarist John McLaughlin notably played a guitar, particularly with the group Shakti, often using the harp strings for Indian inspired drones. Michael Hedges was known for using a 1920s-era harp guitar. Andy McKee also plays a guitar in a few of his songs, such as Into The Ocean and The Friend I Never Met. Antoine Dufour also uses the instrument occasionally, such as in his song Paroxysm, oleg Timofeyev primarily uses a traditional Russian seven-string guitar with floating sub-bass strings. American harp-guitarist Gregg Miner owns the worlds largest collection of guitars and runs harpguitars. net. Alongside Stephen Bennett, he has organized, attended and documented every Harp Guitar Gathering since its inception, alfred Karnes was an Old Time Country and Southern Gospel singer and guitarist who recorded at the famous Bristol Sessions in 1927. He was known for such as Im Bound for the Promised Land. His records are the known use of the harp-guitar in Old Time Music
,_Matteo_Sellas,_The_Met,_NYC.jpg)
,_Kay_Kraft_guitar,_Museum_of_Making_Music.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
,_Museum_of_Making_Music.jpg)
Media related to Acoustic guitars at Wikimedia Commons