His guitars featured a broadened body, thinned belly and increased curve at the waist. He also replaced wooden tuning pegs with a machined heads. His innovative approach to body design and fan bracing, which is that system of wooden struts inside the instrument, gave his classical guitars their distinctive, rich voice.
At about this same time, Europeans brought a steel-stringed version of the Spanish instrument when they immigrated to America. There, the modern guitar took on a new shape and a new place in history, with the invention of the flat top, archtop and modern electric guitar. The flat top acoustic guitar remains the most popular form of acoustic guitar, nearly two centuries after its invention.
German-born American guitar maker, Christian Frederick Martin , created the flat top. Martin replaced the old-fashioned fan bracing with X-bracing to help the guitar body handle the extra stress of modern steel strings, which had posed a problem for the old Torres-style guitars. The tight steel strings of the flat top also required the guitarists to change their playing style and use picks more often, which fundamentally changed the type of music played on these instruments.
Melodies on classical guitars are precise and delicate, for example, while steel strings and picks created bright, chord-driven music. The common use of picks also triggered the evolution of the pickguard, now seen below the sound hole on most flat top guitars.
Many attribute Orville Gibson with the creation of the archtop guitar. This guitar features F-holes, arched top and back, and adjustable bridge, which increases the instruments tone and volume. Gibson created guitars that had bodies similar to cellos, which helped the instruments produce a louder sound. Jazz and country musicians quickly embraced these guitars; big bands and swing bands also used flat tops. George Beauchamp and his partner Adolph Rickenbacker won the first patent for the electric guitar in Many other inventors and guitar makers were working on electric versions of these old instruments at about the same time.
The Origins of the Acoustic Guitar The birth of the acoustic guitar. The beginnings of the acoustic guitar Although steel-stringed acoustic guitars are now used all over the world, the person who is thought to have created the first of these guitars was a German immigrant to the United States named Christian Frederick Martin Structure How a guitar makes sound Six strings, each with a higher pitch The rule of strings and pitch Key points in determining reverberation [Experiment1]Sound hole size [Experiment2]Changing the material of the top; [Experiment3]Changing the material of the saddle and nut.
How to Play Let's listen to the notes Time to master tuning Playing hints. The lute had a curved backed and came in a variety of shapes and sizes, had either 4 or 5 courses, and was often strummed with a quill feather. It was a popular instrument for hundreds of years and had passed from the Egyptians to the Greeks, then to the Romans who introduced it throughout Europe. It shared common ancestry with the stringed instruments of Europe, and like the lute, it had a rounded body, though it lacked frets and had a smaller neck.
Both the Moorish instrument itself and the Arabic style of playing left a significant mark on Medieval music, and ultimately, the history of the guitar as well. By the end of the Renaissance, the lute had evolved, and frequently had up to 20 or 30 strings, but it was slowly falling out of favor.
In Spain, fretted instruments with the familiar curved silhouette of the modern guitar began appearing around the 15th and 16th centuries. Eventually, the Baroque guitar replaced the lute as the most commonly played instrument, and refinements in the number of strings and in the ability to tune these early ancestors of the modern guitar using movable frets made it easier to play than its predecessors.
In Spain, an instrument was developed that had an hourglass curve to its body and was played with one hand in front of the hole in the body. Broadly, these instruments were called a vihuela , and are one of the final predecessors in the history of the guitar.
This is where guitar history really gets going, and the innovations start to speed up, eventually leading to the instruments we know and love today.
By the early 19th century, guitars looked very close to the six-stringed instruments of today but were smaller in size. With a broadened body, increased waist curve, thinned belly, and machined head which replaced wooden tuning pegs, his creations became particularly notable thanks to an innovative form of fan bracing and body design, which give classical guitars their distinct voicing and thick, heavy sound. Andres Segovia, another influential Spanish guitarist, took the classic guitar that Torres had created and established it as a concert instrument.
Meanwhile, European immigrants carried a steel-stringed version of the reshaped Spanish instrument with them to America, where the history of the guitar really started to take shape—and where the flat top, the archtop, and eventually, the modern electric guitar would be created.
Even today, almost two centuries after its invention, the flat top guitar continues to be the most popular form of the acoustic guitar. It was developed by Christian Frederick Martin, a German-born American luthier who made his first guitar in the United States in the s. Martin created an X-braced guitar body which was able to handle the extra stress generated by modern steel strings, which created too much tension for the Torres-style fan braced Spanish guitars.
The tight steel strings also resulted in a different style of playing that made use of a pick. This fundamentally changed the type of music that could be made on steel-stringed instruments, and the precise and delicate melodies of the classical guitar were replaced by brighter, chord-driven music. The common use of picks to play also led to the development of a pickguard, added below the soundhole on most models of the flat top guitar.
The creation of the archtop guitar is usually credited to Orville Gibson. The violin-like sound holes, or F-holes, arched top and back, and adjustable bridge were among the design features that gave the archtop increased volume and tone. Gibson found that, by constructing guitars with bodies that were more like a cello, the bridge exerted no torque on the top of the instrument, which allowed it to vibrate freely and produce a louder sound.
The guitars were soon adopted by jazz and country musicians and were later used by big bands and swing bands. Despite the 20th Century improvements to the steel stringed guitar and the use of picks when playing, musicians found that guitar was simply too quiet for many forms of modern music.
This meant that by the big band jazz era, the guitar was relegated to a second-tier instrument in many ensembles, and brass instruments and the saxophone took on a more prominent position in bands. The guitar became a rhythm instrument and seemed destined to disappear as a solo instrument, in mainstream music at least.
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