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INTRODUCTION

Hello steemians, we are back with the lessons, let me quickly highlight the history of guitar. If you would aspire to do well in a field, it becomes essential for you to know the genesis of such field. I remembered in our science classes back then in school, before we start out any new topic we were made to learn the history behind its invention.

The guitar is a very popular musical instrument, loved by many people because of its complex simplicity, I made that choice of words because mere looking at the guitar it look very simple and attractive but when you attempt to play, you begin to think otherwise.

WHAT IS A GUITAR?

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A guitar is a fretted musical instrument that has strings, usually six or more in rare cases, which produces sound that can be projected acoustically (i.e without the use of amplifier) using a hollow plastic or wooden box or projected by the aid of electric amplifier connected to a speaker.

Guitar can be played by finger picking, strumming or both simultaneously and other means that will be mentioned later. The fingers are pressed down on the strings and plucked to make sounds in musical keys. There are three broad categories of guitar namely: Acoustic guitar, Electric guitar and Semi-acoustic guitar. The categories mentioned has been treated in previous posts, you can go through them.

Guitars as it seems is one of the most ancient musical instrument, that has been able to be in existence for over 4000 years of all different types, size, shape, height, e.t.c. Here is a brief account of the history of one of the oldest musical instruments ever created.

HISTORY OF THE GUITAR

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From the moment first guitars appeared in ancient civilizations of Middle East, this intriguing instrument managed to capture attention of mankind. From that moment guitars traveled across entire world, achieving its final “classical acoustic guitar” form just little more than 100 years ago.

The electric guitar was a later invention after the acoustics and synthetic materials are used in making them. According to Wikipedia, in the 12th century and, later, in the Americas, 3,300-year-old stone carving of a Hittite bard playing a stringed instrument is the oldest iconographic representation of a chordophone and clay plaques from Babylonia show people playing an instrument that has a strong resemblance to the guitar, indicating a possible Babylonian origin for the guitar.

The modern word guitar, and its antecedents, has been applied to a wide variety of chordophones since classical times and as such causes confusion. The English word guitar, the German Gitarre, and the French guitare were all adopted from the Spanish guitarra, which comes from the Andalusian Arabic قيثارة (qīthārah) and the Latin cithara, which in turn came from the Ancient Greek κιθάρα (kithara). There were about two instruments called "guitars" in Spain by 1200: the guitarra latina (Latin guitar) and the so-called guitarra morisca (Moorish guitar) which had a rounded back, wide fingerboard, and several sound holes. The guitarra Latina had a single sound hole and a narrower neck. By the 14th century the qualifiers "moresca" or "morisca" and "latina" had been dropped, and these two cordophones were simply referred to as guitars.

GUITAR ANCESTORS

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However, there are many other guitar like instruments that preceeds the existence of guitar, I will just list them, you can check them up online yourself :

1. The Spanish vihuela, called in Italian the "viola da mano", a guitar-like instrument of the 15th and 16th centuries, is widely considered to have been the single most important influence in the development of the baroque guitar.

2. Bowl harps and tanburs are one of the earliest string instruments known. This string instruments "harps" can be traced to the ancient Sumerian, Babylonian, and Egyptian civilisations. Around 2500 - 2000 CE.

3. The Indian sitar

4. Persian Setar

That will be all the guitar ancestors I will mention just for the sake of this lesson, there are definitely more of them, you can browse for more detailed history, I will not like to bore my readers.

CONCLUSION

Conclusively ,Guitars didn’t just pop up out of thin air, but had undergone series of modifications and redesigns before having a stable and generally accepted guitar look. Now that you know the history of your favorite instrument lets start treating how to play our guitar.

See you at the next post
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