The Guitar

The guitar is a stringed instrument, typically fretted, and most often has six or twelve strings. It is held against the player’s body and played by strumming or plucking the strings with one hand while the other hand presses strings against the frets. A pick can also be used. Sound is projected either acoustically through a hollow resonant chamber or electronically via a pickup and amplifier. As a chordophone, its sound comes from a vibrating string stretched between two fixed points. Historically, guitars were made of wood with catgut strings; steel strings appeared in the late 19th century in the United States, while nylon and steel strings became common after World War II. Its ancestors include the gittern, vihuela, four-course Renaissance guitar, and five-course baroque guitar, which led to the modern six-string instrument.

There are three main modern types: the classical (or Spanish) guitar, the steel-string acoustic or electric guitar, and the lap steel (or Hawaiian) guitar, played across the player’s lap. Traditional acoustic guitars include flat-top models with a large sound hole and archtop guitars, sometimes called jazz guitars. Acoustic tone comes from string vibration amplified by the hollow body. The classical Spanish guitar is often played solo using fingerstyle, where each string is plucked individually, while “finger-picking” also refers to a folk, blues, bluegrass, and country tradition in the United States.

Electric guitars, first patented in 1937, use a pickup and amplifier to produce loud sound, allowing solid wood bodies without a resonant chamber. Electronic effects like reverb and distortion became possible. Solid-body guitars, less prone to feedback, dominated the market in the 1960s and 1970s. Electric types include hollowbody, archtop (used in jazz, blues, and rockabilly), and solid-body guitars (common in rock). The amplified sound of the electric guitar has been key in blues and rock music, both as accompaniment (riffs and chords) and for solos, and in subgenres like heavy metal and punk rock. It has had a major influence on popular culture and is a primary instrument in genres such as blues, bluegrass, country, flamenco, folk, jazz, jota, ska, mariachi, metal, punk, funk, reggae, rock, grunge, soul, acoustic music, disco, new wave, new age, adult contemporary, and pop, and is occasionally sampled in hip-hop, dubstep, or trap music.

The word “guitar” and its predecessors have been used for many chordophones since classical times. English “guitar,” German “Gitarre,” and French “guitare” come from Spanish “guitarra,” from Andalusian Arabic “qīthārah” and Latin “cithara,” from Ancient Greek “kithára” (of uncertain origin). “Kithara” appears four times in the Bible, often translated as “harp.” The origins of the modern guitar are unknown. Before electric guitars and synthetic materials, a guitar was defined as having a long, fretted neck, flat wooden soundboard, ribs, and a flat back with incurved sides. The term refers to chordophones developed across Europe from the 12th century and later in the Americas. A 3,300-year-old Hittite stone carving of a bard playing a stringed instrument is the oldest known depiction of a chordophone, and Babylonian clay plaques show a lute-like instrument similar to the guitar.

Several influences are cited as antecedents. Though the earliest guitar’s development is lost to medieval Spanish history, two instruments are commonly claimed as predecessors: the four-string oud and the European lute. The oud was brought to Iberia by Moors in the 8th century. It is often assumed the guitar evolved from the lute or ancient Greek kithara, but many scholars see the lute as a separate line that did not significantly influence the guitar. By 1200, two instruments called “guitars” were used in Spain: the guitarra latina (with a single sound hole and narrow neck) and the guitarra morisca (with a rounded back, wide fingerboard, and several sound holes). By the 14th century, the qualifiers were dropped, and both were simply called guitars. The Spanish vihuela (Italian viola da mano), a guitar-like instrument from the 15th and 16th centuries, is widely considered a key predecessor.