Guitar

The guitar is a fretted and stringed musical instrument, used in a wide variety of musical styles, and is also widely known as a solo classical instrument. It is most recognised in popular culture as the primary instrument in blues, country, flamenco, pop, and rock music. more...

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The guitar usually has six strings, but guitars with seven, eight, ten, eleven, twelve, and eighteen strings also exist.

Usage

Guitar strings are strung parallel to the neck, whose surface is covered by the fingerboard (fretboard). By depressing a string against the fingerboard, the effective length of the string can be changed, which in turn changes the frequency at which the string will vibrate when plucked. Guitarists typically use one hand to pluck the strings and the other to depress the strings against the fretboard.

Traditionally the dominant hand is assigned the task of plucking or strumming the strings. For the majority of people this entails using the right hand. This is because musical expression (dynamics, tonal expression and colour etc) is largely determined by the plucking hand, whilst the fretting hand is assigned the lesser mechanical task of depressing and gripping the strings. This is similar to the convention of the violin family of instruments where the right hand controls the bow. A minority however believe that left-handed people should learn to play "conventional" guitars strung in the manner used by right-handed people, simply to standardise the instrument.

The strings may be plucked using either fingers or a plectrum (Guitar pick).The sound of the guitar is achieved either mechanically or electronically, forming two main categories of guitar: acoustic (mechanical amplification) and electric (electronic amplification).

In acoustic guitars, string vibration is transmitted through the bridge and saddle to the sound board. The sound board, typically made of a light springy wood such as spruce, vibrates the air, producing sound which is further shaped by the guitar body's resonant cavity.;

In electric guitars, transducers known as pickups convert string vibration to an electronic signal, which in turn is amplified and fed to speakers, which vibrate the air to produce the sound we hear.;

Guitars are made and repaired by people called luthiers.

History

Instruments similar to what we know as the guitar have been popular for at least 5,000 years. The guitar appears to be derived from earlier instruments known in ancient central Asia as the cithara. Instruments very similar to the guitar appear in ancient carvings and statues recovered from the old Iranian capitol of Susa. The modern word, guitar, was adopted into English from Spanish guitarra, derived from earlier Greek word kithara. Prospective sources for various names of musical instruments that guitar could be derived from appear to be a combination of two Indo-European roots: guit-, similar to Sanskrit sangeet meaning "music", and -tar a widely attested root meaning "chord" or "string".

Read more at Wikipedia.org