The lute had evolved significantly by the end of the Renaissance — many lutes had up to 20 or 30 strings — but the lute-like shape of the instrument was fading in popularity. By the 15 th and 16 th centuries, musicians in Spain began to favor instruments featuring the familiar curved shape we now associate with guitars. These guitars, known as Baroque guitars , effectively replaced the lute as the go-to stringed instrument for musicians from about to Further refinements, such as five courses of gut strings and moveable frets, made these instruments easier to play.
The vihuela, which has incurving sides that give its body an hourglass shape, became popular in Spain, Portugal and Italy during that time too. Mariachi groups still use a version of the vihuela today. The evolution of Spanish guitars settled by the s; they had the standard body type and six courses of strings that resembles the modern guitar, but were smaller. Spanish musician and guitar maker Antonio de Torres Jurado changed all that in the mids, when he created the style of guitar that gave rise to all guitars to follow.
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. 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. Variations of the Persian chartar , a four-string instrument, are found in carvings and illuminated manuscripts throughout Europe dating from ancient Rome through the Middle Ages. The earliest known guitar music was written for the four-string chitarra in Spain in the 16 th century. Instead of four single strings, the chitarra had four courses of string a course is two or more adjacent strings that are closely spaced relative to the other strings, and typically played as a single string.
The Italian version from the same period had five courses. These instruments also had frets, typically eight frets after the body. By the Baroque period, many guitar styles had settled into a five-string course with movable frets. The repertoire of available music for the five-course guitar exploded. In the late 18 th century, the six-course vihuela a mano guitar from Spain was the primary style of guitar popular in Spain.
A book on guitars from Spain described the standard Spanish guitar as having 17 frets with six courses. Audiences today would recognize guitars from the early 19 th century as ones used today, albeit smaller in overall size and with a smaller waist.
However, the starting point for all contemporary guitars comes from the design of 19 th century Spanish musician, Antonio de Torres Jurado. He adjusted the proportions of the guitar, giving it a more pronounced waist and broader body.
He replaced wood pegs with mechanical ones. The culmination of these changes was that his guitars produced a louder, richer, thicker sound than previous guitars could. Due to the quality of the sound, luthiers from all over Europe began copying his design.
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