What Everybody Ought To Know About The History Of The Guitar [Part I] The instrument known today as the guitar evolved from dozens of ...
What Everybody Ought To Know About The History Of The Guitar [Part I]
The instrument known today as the guitar evolved from dozens of other similar instruments of the lute family. Lute instruments are defined as having strings and frets. During the baroque and renaissance periods, instruments of with varying numbers of strings migrated from the Near East and North Africa to Europe. In the mid-18th century the six string guitar was developed; probably in Italy. This instrument is what we today would think of as a classical or flamenco guitar. By the end of the 18th century the six string guitar would dominate Western Europe.
By the early twentieth century the guitar still had not become widely popular in the United States. (Don't believe the 
Hollywood westerns showing cowboys playing guitars.) Guitars were being played in the United States in the 19th century, but they were far less popular than other instruments. The type of guitars that were utilzied are
known parlor guitars (recognised by their small size and dramatic 
hour glass shape).
With the explosion of Jazz in the 1920s, the banjo playing- an instrument already widely used- sky rocketed. In an attempt the capture some of the banjo playing market, guitar manufacturs started producing tenor guitars. Tenor guitars were designed with cylindrical banjo like neck. In the early 1930s, the C.F. Martin company developed what most people today think of as an accoustic guitar. It was named the dreadnought after a class of WWI battleships (because it was a big guitar). This large guitar had six strings but still had a banjo like neck; the neck met the body at the 14th rather than the 12th fret. The dreadnought style of guitar became the popular standard for the blues, counrty, gosbel, bluegrass and even rock and roll. That is until the developement of electric guitars surpassed acoustics. The development of electric guitars will be the topic of Part II of this article
