Electric guitar
Encyclopedia
An electric guitar is a guitar
that uses the principle of direct electromagnetic induction
to convert vibrations of its metal strings into electric audio signal
s. The signal generated by an electric guitar is too weak to drive a loudspeaker
, so it is amplified
before sending it to a loudspeaker. Since the output of an electric guitar is an electric signal, the signal may easily be altered using electronic circuits to add "color" to the sound. Often the signal is modified using effect
s such as reverb and distortion.
Invented in 1931, the electric guitar became a necessity as jazz musicians sought to amplify their sound. Since then, the electric guitar has become the most important instrument in popular music
. It has evolved into a stringed musical instrument that is capable of a multitude of sounds and styles. It served as a major component in the development of rock and roll
and countless other genres of music.
attached to the bridge
, however these detected vibration from the bridge on top of the instrument, resulting in a weak signal. With numerous people experimenting with electrical instruments in the 1920s and early 1930s, there are many claimants to have been the first to invent an electric guitar.
Electric guitars were originally designed by guitar makers and instrument manufacturers. Guitar innovator Les Paul
experimented with microphones attached to guitars. Some of the earliest electric guitars adapted hollow bodied
acoustic
instruments and used tungsten
pickups. The first electrically amplified guitar was invented by George Beauchamp
in 1931. Commercial production began in late summer of 1932 by the Ro-Pat-In Corporation (Electro-Patent-Instrument Company Los Angeles), a partnership of Beauchamp, Adolph Rickenbacker, and Paul Barth
. The wooden body of the prototype was built by Harry Watson
, a craftsman who had worked for the National Resophonic Guitar Company (where the men met). By 1934 the company was renamed Rickenbacker
Electro Stringed Instrument Company.
The need for the amplified guitar became apparent during the big band
era as orchestras increased in size, particularly when guitars had to compete with large brass sections. The first electric guitars used in jazz
were hollow archtop acoustic guitar bodies with electromagnetic transducer
s. By 1932 an electrically amplified guitar was commercially available. Early electric guitar manufacturers include: Rickenbacker
(first called Ro-Pat-In) in 1932, Dobro in 1933, National, AudioVox
and Volu-tone in 1934,Vega, Epiphone (Electrophone and Electar), and Gibson in 1935 and many others by 1936.
The solid body
electric guitar is made of solid wood, without functionally resonating air spaces. Rickenbacher offered a cast aluminum electric steel guitar, nicknamed "The Frying Pan
" or "The Pancake Guitar", developed in 1931 with production beginning in the summer of 1932. This guitar sounds quite modern and aggressive.
The first solid body "Spanish" standard guitar was offered by Vivi-Tone no later than 1934. An example of this model, featuring a guitar-shaped body of a single sheet of plywood affixed to a wood frame. Another early, substantially solid Spanish electric guitar, called Electro Spanish, was marketed by the "Rickenbacker" guitar company in 1935 and made of Bakelite. By 1936, the Slingerland company introduced a wooden solid body electric model.
The earliest documented performance with an electrically amplified guitar was in 1932, by Gage Brewer
. The Wichita, Kansas-based musician had an Electric Hawaiian A-25 (frypan, lap-steel) and a standard Electric Spanish from George Beauchamp
of Los Angeles, California. Brewer publicized his new instruments in an article in the Wichita Beacon of October 2, 1932 and through performances that month.
The first recordings using the electric guitar were by Hawaiian style players, in 1933. Bob Dunn of Milton Brown's
Musical Brownies introduced the electric Hawaiian guitar to Western Swing
with his January 1935 Decca recordings, departing almost entirely from Hawaiian musical influence and heading towards Jazz and Blues. Alvino Rey was an artist who took this instrument to a wide audience in a large orchestral setting and later developed the pedal steel guitar
for Gibson. An early proponent of the electric Spanish guitar was jazz guitarist George Barnes
who used the instrument in two songs recorded in Chicago on March 1, 1938, "Sweetheart Land" and "It's a Low-Down Dirty Shame". Some incorrectly attribute the first recording to Eddie Durham
, but his recording with the Kansas City Five was 15 days later. Durham introduced the instrument to a young Charlie Christian, who made the instrument famous in his brief life and would be a major influence on jazz guitarists for decades thereafter.
Gibson
's first production electric guitar, marketed in 1936, was the ES-150
model ("ES" for "Electric Spanish"; and "150" reflecting the $150 price of the instrument, along with a matching amplifier). The ES-150 guitar featured a single-coil, hexagonally shaped "bar" pickup, which was designed by Walt Fuller. It became known as the "Charlie Christian
" pickup (named for the great jazz guitarist who was among the first to perform with the ES-150 guitar). The ES-150 achieved some popularity, but was suffered from unequal loudness across the six strings.
At an Engineering Fair in 1940, first prize went to NC State University physics professor Sidney Wilson for his invention of the world's first fully electric guitar. Wilson's guitar was also the first to have single-string pick-up, which addressed the unequal loudness problem of the ES-150's single coil. Professor Wilson also disposed of the acoustical body, reasoning that it was not necessary for a fully electric instrument. He developed the guitar shown here and entered it in the annual engineering fair. Patents from academia were quite unusual in the 1940s, so Professor Wilson did not patent his invention. In 1949 Gibson incorporated both the individual string pick-up and the cut-away body in its model ES-175. The design was attributed to Ted McCarthy of Gibson Corporation, but the features were first conceived and implemented by NC State physicists.
Early proponents of the electric guitar on record include: Jack Miller
(Orville Knapp Orchestra), Alvino Rey
(Phil Spitalney Orchestra), Les Paul (Fred Waring
Orchestra), Danny Stewart (Andy Iona Orchestra), George Barnes
(under many aliases), Lonnie Johnson
, Floyd Smith
, Big Bill Broonzy
, T-Bone Walker
, George Van Eps
, Charlie Christian (Benny Goodman
Orchestra) Tampa Red
, Memphis Minnie
, and Arthur Crudup
.
A functionally solid body electric guitar was designed and built by Les Paul from an Epiphone acoustic archtop. His "log guitar" (so called because it consisted of a simple 4x4 wood post with a neck attached to it and homemade pickups and hardware, with two detachable Epiphone hollow body halves attached to the sides for appearance only) shares nothing in design or hardware with the solid body "Les Paul" model sold by Gibson. However, the feedback problem associated with hollow-bodied electric guitars was understood long before Paul's "log" was created in 1940; Gage Brewer's Ro-Pat-In of 1932 had a top so heavily reinforced that it essentially functioned as a solid-body instrument.
In 1945, Richard D. Bourgerie made an electric guitar pickup and amplifier for professional guitar player George Barnes. Bourgerie worked through World War II at Howard Radio Company making electronic equipment for the American military. Barnes showed the result to Les Paul, who then arranged for Bourgerie to have one made for him.
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While guitar construction has many variations, in terms of the materials used for the body, the shape of the body, and the configuration of the neck, bridge, and pickups, there are features which are found in most guitars. The photo below shows the different parts of an electric guitar. The headstock
(1) contains the metal machine heads, which are used for tuning; the nut (1.4), a thin fret-like strip of metal, plastic, graphite or bone which the strings pass over as they first go onto the fingerboard; the machine head
s (1.1), which are worm gears which the player turns to change the string tension and thus adjust the tuning; the frets (2.3), which are thin metal strips which stop the string at the correct pitch when a string is pressed down against the fingerboard; the truss rod
(1.2), a metal cylinder used for adjusting the tension on the neck (not found on all instruments); decorative inlay (2.2), a feature used to keep place of where the notes of the guitar are.
The neck and the fretboard (2.1) extend from the body; at the neck joint (2.4), the neck is either glued or bolted to the body; the body (3) of this instrument is made of wood which is painted and lacquered, but some guitar bodies are also made of polycarbonate or other materials; pickups
(3.1, 3.2), which are usually magnetic pickups, but which may also be piezoelectric transducer pickups; the control knobs (3.8) for the volume and tone potentiometer
s; a fixed bridge (3.4) -on some guitars, a spring-loaded hinged bridge called a "tremolo
system" is used instead, which allows players to "bend" notes or chords down in pitch or perform a vibrato embellishment; and a plastic pickguard
, a feature not found on all guitars, which is used to protect the body from scratches or cover the control cavity which holds most of the electric guitar's wiring.
The wood that the body (3) is made of is a very disputed subject considered by some to largely determine the sonic qualities of the guitar, while others believe that the sonic difference in a solid body guitar is very subtle between woods. In a solid body electric guitar, the tone is only affected by the type of wood used in construction, when playing the guitar without an amplifier. This is why a hollow aluminum body Fender Stratocaster's tone is identical to that of a swamp ash body Fender Stratocaster, equipped with the same electronics components, strings and pickups.
In acoustic and archtop guitars there is a more pronounced sonic definition caused by the type of wood used. Typical woods include alder
(brighter, but well rounded), swamp ash (similar to alder, but with more pronounced highs and lows), mahogany (dark, bassy, warm), poplar (similar to alder) and basswood (very neutral). Maple, a very bright tonewood, is also a popular body wood, but is very heavy. For this reason it is often placed as a 'cap' on a guitar made of primarily of another wood. Cheaper guitars are often made of cheaper woods, such as plywood, pine or agathis
, not true hardwoods, which can affect the durability and tone of the guitar.Although most guitars are made from wood, any material may be used in the construction of a guitar. Materials such as plastic or cardboard are examples of unusual but possible materials that affect the overall sound of the guitar.
The guitar output jack is typically designed for monaural function. On many guitars with active electronics a stereo jack may be installed but is wired for mono sound. The extra "ring" lug on the jack is then used to break the ground connection to the on-board battery thus preserving battery life when the guitar is unplugged. These guitars require use of a mono plug to close the internal switch and connect the battery to ground. Standard guitar cables are outfitted with a high impedance 1/4 inch (6.35 mm) mono plug. These utilize a tip and sleeve configuration referred to as a TS connector.
A few guitars are actually set up for stereo, for example Rickenbacker
guitars equipped with Rick-O-Sound. There are a variety of ways the "stereo" effect may be implemented. Commonly, but not exclusively, stereo guitars route the neck and bridge pickups to separate output buses on the guitar. A stereo cable can then route each pickup to its own signal chain or amplifier. For these applications, the most popular connector is a high impedance 1/4 inch plug with a tip, ring and sleeve configuration also known as a TRS connector
. Some studio instruments, notably certain models of Gibson Les Paul
, incorporate a low impedance 3-pin XLR connector
for balanced audio
. Many exotic arrangements and connectors are employed to support features such as midi and hexaphonic pickups.
s wrapped with coils of very fine wire.
That current is then sent through a cable to a guitar amplifier. The current induced is proportional to such factors as the density of the string or the amount of movement over these pickups. That vibration is, in turn, affected by several factors, such as the composition and shape of the body.
Some "hybrid" electric-acoustic guitars are equipped with additional microphone
s or piezoelectric pickups (transducer
s) that sense mechanical vibration from the body. Because in some cases it is desirable to isolate the pickups from the vibrations of the strings, a guitar's magnetic pickups will sometimes be embedded or "potted" in epoxy
or wax to prevent the pickup from having a microphonic effect.
Because of their natural inductive qualities, all magnetic pickups tend to pick up ambient and usually unwanted electromagnetic noises. The resulting noise, the so-called "hum", is particularly strong with single-coil pickups, and aggravated by the fact that very few guitars are correctly shielded against electromagnetic interference. The most frequent cause is the strong 50 or 60 Hz
component that is inherent in the generation of electricity in the local power transmission
system. As nearly all amplifiers and audio equipment associated with electrical guitars rely on this power, there is in theory little chance of completely eliminating the introduction of unwanted hum.
Double-coil or "humbucker
" pickups were invented as a way to reduce or counter the unwanted ambient hum sounds (known as 60 cycle hum). Humbuckers have two coils of opposite magnetic and electric polarity. This means that electromagnetic noise hitting both coils should cancel itself out. The two coils are wired in phase, so the signal picked up by each coil is added together. This high combined inductance
of the two coils leads to the richer, "fatter" tone associated with humbucking pickups. Optical pickups are a type of pickup which sense string and body vibrations using infrared LED
light.
or a portamento
effect. The name "tremolo bar" is somewhat misleading. It would be more accurate and appropriate to call it a vibrato bar. Tremolo is a fluctuation of volume. Vibrato is a fluctuation of pitch, which is what the whammy bar produces. Early vibrato systems, such as the Bigsby vibrato tailpiece, tended to be unreliable and cause the guitar to go out of tune quite easily, and also had a limited range. Later Fender designs were better, but Fender held the patent on these, so other companies used Bigsby-style vibrato for many years.
With the expiration of the Fender patent on the Stratocaster-style
vibrato, various improvements on this type of internal, multi-spring vibrato system are now available. Floyd Rose
introduced one of the first improvements on the vibrato system in many years when in the late 1970s he began to experiment with "locking" nuts and bridges which work to prevent the guitar from losing tuning even under the most heavy whammy bar acrobatics.
. While the scale length of the Les Paul has often claimed to be 24.75 inches, it has varied through the years by as much as a half inch. The frets are placed proportionally according to the scale length; thus, the shorter the scale length, the closer the spacing of the frets. Opinions vary regarding the effect of scale length on tone and feel. Generally, it is felt that longer scale length contributes to greater amplitude
. Reports of playing feel are greatly complicated by the many factors involved in this perception. String gauge and design, neck construction and relief, guitar setup, playing style and other factors contribute to the subjective impression of playability or feel.
Necks are described as bolt-on
, set-in
, or neck-through depending on how they are attached to the body. Set-in necks are glued to the body in the factory, and are said to have a warmer tone and greater sustain; this is the most traditional type of joint. Bolt-on necks were pioneered by Leo Fender
to facilitate easy adjustment and replacement of the guitar neck. Neck-through instruments extend the neck itself to form the center of the guitar body, and are known for long sustain and for being particularly sturdy. While a set neck can be carefully unglued by a skilled luthier
, and a bolt-on neck can simply be unscrewed, a neck-through design is difficult or even impossible to repair, depending on the damage. Historically, the bolt-on style has been more popular for ease of installation and adjustment; since bolt-on necks can be easily removed, there is an after-market in replacement bolt-on necks from companies such as Warmoth and Mighty Mite. Some instruments, notably most Gibson models, have continued to use set/glued necks. Neck-through bodies are somewhat more common in bass guitar
s.
The materials used in the manufacture of the neck, selected for dimensional stability and rigidity, are alleged to influence the tone of the instrument. Hardwoods are very much preferred, with maple
, mahogany
, and ash topping the list. The neck and fingerboard can be made from different materials, such as a maple neck with a rosewood
fingerboard. In the 1970s, exotic man-made materials such as aircraft grade aluminum, carbon fiber
, and ebonol began to be used by designers John Veleno
, Travis Bean
. Geoff Gould
, and Alembic
. Along with the engineering advantages, some have felt that in relation to the rising cost of rare 'tonewoods' man-made materials may be economically viable. However, artificial materials have not replaced the popularity of wood in production instruments, although they are sometimes used in conjunction with traditional materials. Vigier guitars
are one example. Vigier uses a wooden neck and reinforces it by embedding a light, carbon fiber rod to replace the heavier steel bar or adjustable steel truss rod typically employed. After-market necks made entirely from carbon fiber can be retrofitted to existing bolt-on instruments. Few, if any, extensive formal investigations have been widely published to confirm or refute claims over the effects of different woods or materials on an electric guitar's sound.
There are several different neck shapes used on guitars, including shapes known as C necks, U necks, and V necks. These refer to the cross-sectional shape of the neck (especially near the nut). There are also several sizes of fret wire available, with traditional players often preferring thin frets, and metal shredders liking thick frets. Thin frets are considered better for playing chords, while thick frets allow lead guitarists to bend notes with less effort. An electric guitar with a neck which folds back called the "Foldaxe" was designed and built for Chet Atkins by Roger C. Field
. Steinberger
guitars developed a line of exotic, carbon fiber instruments without headstocks, with tuning done on the bridge instead.
Just as neck shapes vary so do fingerboards. Fingerboards are the surface of the neck into which frets are set. This surface has a radius in cross section optimized to accommodate finger movement for different playing techniques. They typically range from nearly flat, a very large radius, to radically arched, a small radius. An example of a small radius, the vintage Fender Telecaster
typically has approximately a 7 inch radius fingerboard. Some manufacturers have experimented with fret design, fret layout, number of frets, and modification of the fingerboard surface for a variety of reasons. Some innovations were intended to improve playability by ergonomic means such as Warmoth Guitars
compound radius fingerboard. Scalloped fingerboards added enhanced microtonality
during fast legato runs. Fanned frets permit each string to have an optimal playing tension and enhanced musicality. Some guitars have no frets whatsoever and others, like the Gittler guitar
, have no neck in the traditional sense.
's sound is largely dependent on the vibration of the guitar's body and the air within it, the sound of an electric guitar is largely dependent on a magnetically induced electrical signal, generated by the vibration of metal strings near sensitive pickups. The signal is then "shaped
" on its path to the amplifier
by using a range of effect devices or circuits that modify the tone and characteristics of the signal. The amplifiers and speakers used also add (intentional) coloration to
the final sound.
depending on how near they are to the neck or bridge, with bridge pickups having a bright or trebly timbre,
and neck pickups being more warm or bassy. The type of pickup also affects tone, with dual-coil pickups
sounding warmer, thicker, perhaps even muddy, and single coil pickups sounding clear, bright, perhaps even biting.
Guitars do not have to be fitted with a uniform type of pickup: a common mixture is the "fat strat
" arrangement of one dual-coil at the bridge position, with single coils in the middle and neck positions.
Where there is more than one pickup, selector switching is fitted. These often allow the outputs of two or more pickups to be combined, so that two-pickup guitars have three-way switches, and three-pickup guitars have five-way switches. Further circuitry is sometimes provided to combine the pickups in different ways. For instance, phase switching places one pickup out of phase
with the other(s), leading to a "honky", "nasal", or "funky" sound. Individual pickups can also have their timbre altered by switches, typically coil tap
switch, which effectively short-circuits some of a dual-coil pickup's windings, giving a tone like a single coil pickup.
The final stages of on-board sound-shaping circuitry are the volume control (potentiometer
) and tone control (which "rolls off" the treble frequencies). Where there are individual volume controls for different pickups, and where pickup signals can be combined, they would affect the timbre of the final sound by adjusting the balance between pickups from a straight 50:50.
The strings fitted to the guitar also have an influence on tone. Rock musicians often prefer the lightest gauge of roundwound string
, which are easier to bend, while jazz musicians go for heavier, flatwound strings with a rich, dark sound.
Recent guitar designs may incorporate much more complex circuitry than described above: see
Digital and synthesizer guitars, below.
the sound of the instrument. To do this, they used overdrive — increasing the gain
, of the preamplifier beyond the level at which the signal could be faithfully reproduced, resulting in a "fuzzy" sound. This effect is called "clipping
" by sound engineers, because when viewed with an oscilloscope
, the wave forms of a distorted signal appear to have had their peaks "clipped off", approximating a square wave
. This was not actually a new development in the instrument, but rather a shift of aesthetics
, the sound having not been recognized as desirable previously.
Distortion achieved by overdrive necessarily involves high volumes and is therefore often combined with audio feedback
.
After distortion became popular, amplifier manufacturers included various provisions for it, making amps easier to overdrive, and providing separate "dirty" and "clean" channels so that distortion could easily be switched in and out. The distortion characteristics of vacuum tube
amplifiers are particularly sought-after, and various attempts have been made to emulate them without the disadvantages (fragility, low power, expense) of actual tubes.
Guitar amplifiers have long included at least a few effects, often tone controls and a spring reverb
unit. The use of offboard effects is assisted by the provision of effect loops, an arrangement that allows effects to be taken out of circuit when not required.
In the 1960s, the tonal palette
of the electric guitar was further modified by introducing an Effects unit
in its signal path. modifiers, wave-shaping circuits, voltage-controlled
oscillators, or digital delays. Effects units come in several formats, the most common of which are the stomp-box and the rack-mount unit. A "stomp box" (or "pedal") is a small metal or plastic box containing the circuitry which is placed on the floor in front of the musician and connected in line with the patch cord connected to the instrument. The box is typically controlled by one or more foot-pedal on-off switches and it typically contains only one or two effects. "Guitar pedalboard
s" are used by musicians who use multiple stomp-boxes; these may be a DIY project made with plywood
or a commercial pedalboard.
A rack-mount effects unit may contain the identical electronic circuit, but is mounted in a standard 19" equipment rack. Usually, however, rack-mount effects units contain several different types of effects. They are typically controlled by knobs or switches on the front panel, and often by a MIDI digital control interface.
Typical effects include:-
such as Tom Scholz' Power Soak as well as re-amplified dummy loads such as Eddie Van Halen's use of a variac, power resistor, post-power-tube effects, and a final solid-state amp driving the guitar speakers. A variac is one approach to power-supply based power attenuation, to make the sound of power-tube distortion more practically available.
Recent amplifiers may include digital technology similar to modern effects pedals, including the ability to model or emulate a variety of classic amps.
produced devices that were increasingly feature-laden. Multi-FX devices allow several of the effects to be used together, and most devices allow users to set "preset" combinations of different effects including distortion, chorus, reverb, compression, and so on. This allows musicians to have quick on-stage access to different effects combinations. Some multi-FX pedals contain modelled versions of well-known effects pedals or amplifiers.
Multi-effects devices have garnered a large share of the effects device market because they offer the user such a large variety of effects in a single package. A low-priced multi-effects pedal may provide 20 or more effects for the price of a regular single-effect pedal. More expensive multi-effect pedals may include 40 or more effects, amplifier modelling, and the ability to combine effects and/or modelled amp sounds in different combinations, as if the user was using multiple guitar amps. More expensive multi-effects pedals may also include more input and output jacks (e.g., an auxiliary input or a "dry" output), MIDI inputs and outputs, and an expression pedal, which can control volume or modify effect parameters (e.g., the rate of the simulated rotary speaker effect).
By the 1980s and 1990s, software effects became capable of replicating the analog effects used in the past. These new digital effects attempted to model the sound produced by analog effects and tube amps, to varying degrees of quality. There are many free guitar effects computer programs for computers that can be downloaded via the Internet. Now, computers with sound cards can be used as digital guitar effects processors. Although digital and software effects offer many advantages, many guitarists still use analog effects.
cable, eliminating cable-induced line noise. The guitar also provides independent signal processing for each individual string. Also, in 2003 amp
maker Line 6 released the Variax
guitar. It differs in some fundamental ways from conventional solid-body electrics. For example it uses piezoelectric pickups instead of the conventional electromagnetic ones, and has an on-board computer capable of modifying the sound of the guitar to model the sound of many instruments.
The sound of a guitar is not only adapted by electronic sound effects, but also heavily by all kinds of new techniques developed or becoming possible in combination with the electric amplification. This is called extended technique
.
Extended techniques include:-
Other techniques such as axial finger vibrato
, pull-off
s, hammer-on
s, palm muting, harmonics
and altered tunings are also used on the classical
and acoustic guitar
. Shred guitar
is a genre involving a number of extended techniques.
s. Solid body instruments depend on electric pickups and an amplifier
(or amp) and speaker
. The solid body ensures that the amplified sound will reproduce the string vibration alone, thus avoiding the "wolf tones" and unwanted feedback associated with amplified acoustic guitars prior to the introduction of the piezoelectric sensor
pickup
. These guitars are generally made up of hardwood with a polyester or lacquer finish. In large production facilities, the wood is stored for 3 to 6 months in a wood-drying kiln
before being cut to shape. Premium custom built guitars are frequently made with much older, hand selected wood.
One of the first solid body guitars was invented by Les Paul
. Gibson
did not present their 'Les Paul
' guitar prototypes to the public, as they did not believe it would catch on. The first mass-produced solid-body guitar was Fender's Broadcaster (later to become the 'Telecaster') first made in 1948, five years after Les Paul made his prototype
. The Gibson Les Paul appeared soon after to compete with the Broadcaster.
s screwed or glued into the holes.
The advantages of a string-through body mostly relate to improvements in a guitar's sustain
and timbre
. It is also by nature impossible to install a tremolo arm
and have the string ends anchored through the body without eliminating whatever tonal benefits provided by the string-through body system. Tremolo systems change string tension by changing the physical length of the string. This requires the end of the string to be anchored to the (tremolo) bridge unit directly, instead of to the wood of the body.
Examples of string-through bodies on guitars include the Fender Telecaster Thinline
, Telecaster Deluxe
, B.C.Rich IT Warlock and Mockingbird.
Supreme, the PRS
Singlecut, or the Fender Telecaster Thinline
among others, are built with hollows in the body. These hollows are designed specifically not to interfere with the critical bridge and string anchor point on the solid body. In the case of Gibson and PRS, these are called "chambered" bodies. The motivation for this may be to reduce weight, to achieve a semi-acoustic tone (see below) or both.
These guitars have a hollow body (similar in depth to a solid-body guitar) and electronic pickups mounted on the body. They work in a similar way to solid body electric guitars except that, because the hollow body also vibrates, the pickups convert a combination of string and body vibration into an electrical signal. Whereas chambered guitars are made, like solid-body guitars, from a single block of wood, semi-acoustic and full-hollowbody guitars bodies are made from thin sheets of wood. They do not provide enough acoustic volume to for live performance, but can be used "unplugged" for quiet practice. Semi-acoustics are noted for being able to provide a sweet, plaintive, or funky tone. They are used in many genres, including blues, funk
, sixties pop, and indie rock
. They generally have cello-style F-shaped sound holes. These can be blocked off to prevent feedback, as in B. B. King
's famous Lucille
. Feedback can also be reduced by making them with a solid block in the middle of the soundbox. Advocates of semi-hollow-body guitars argue that they have greater resonance and sustain than true solid-body guitars, as a solid wood body.
, and therefore of being used unplugged at intimate gigs. They qualify as electric guitars inasmuch as they have fitted pickups. Historically, archtop guitars
with retrofit
ted pickups were among the very earliest electric guitars. The instrument originated during the Jazz age
of the 1920s and 1930s, and are still considered the classic jazz guitar
(nicknamed "jazzbox"). Like semi-acoustic guitars, they often have f-shaped sound holes.
Having humbucker pickups (sometimes just a neck pickup) and usually strung heavlly, jazzboxes are noted for their warm, rich tone. A variation with single-coil pickups, and sometimes a Bigsby tremelo, has long been popular in country
and rockabilly
; these have a distinctly more "twangy", biting, tone than the classic jazzbox. The term "archtop" indicates a method of construction subtly different from the typical acoustic (or "folk" or "western" or "steel string" guitar): the top starts of as a moderately thick (1 inch or 2-3 cm) piece of wood,
which is then carved out into a thin (0.1in, 2-3mm) dome
d shape, whereas conventional acoustic guitars have a thin, flat top.
s are fitted with pickups purely as an alternative to using a separate microphone. They may also be fitted with a piezoelectric pickup under the bridge, attached to the bridge mounting plate, or with a low mass microphone
(usually a condenser mic) inside the body of the guitar that will convert the vibrations in the body into electronic signals, or even combinations of these types of pickups, with an integral mixer/preamp/graphic equalizer. These are called electric acoustic guitar
s, and are regarded as acoustic guitars rather than electric guitars because the pickups do not produce a signal directly from the vibration of the strings, but rather from the vibration of the guitar top or body.
These should not be confused with semi-acoustic guitar
s, which have pickups of the type found on solid body electric guitars, or solid-bodied hybrid guitar
s with piezoelectric pickups.
, where improvised folk instruments were popular in the 1930s and 1940s. Eddie "One String" Jones had some regional success with a Mississippi blues musician Lonnie Pitchford
played a similar, homemade instrument. In a more contemporary style, Little Willie Joe, the inventor of the Unitar
, had a rhythm and blues
instrumental
hit in the 1950s with "Twitchy", recorded with the Rene Hall Orchestra.
was Tiny Grimes
, who played on 52nd Street
with the bebop
pers and played a major role in the Prestige Blues Swingers. Grimes' guitar omitted the bottom two strings. Deron Miller
of CKY
only uses four strings, but plays a six string guitar with the two highest strings removed. Many banjo players use this tuning: DGBE, mostly in Dixieland. Guitar players find this an easier transition than learning plectrum or tenor tuning.
s exist designed for this tuning. A high "A" string above the high "E" instead of the low "B" is sometimes used. Another less common seven-string arrangement is a second G string situated beside the standard G string and tuned an octave higher, in the same manner as a twelve-stringed guitar (see below). Jazz guitarist
s using a seven-string include veteran jazz guitarists George Van Eps
, Lenny Breau
, Bucky Pizzarelli
and his son John Pizzarelli
.
Seven-string electric guitars were popularized among rock players in the 1980s by Steve Vai
. Along with the Japanese guitar company Ibanez
, Vai created the Universe
series seven string guitars in the 1980s, with a double locking tremolo system for a seven string guitar. These models were based on Vai's six string signature series, the Ibanez Jem
. Seven-string guitars experienced a resurgence in popularity in the 2000s, championed by Limp Bizkit
, Slayer
, KoRn
, Fear Factory
, Strapping Young Lad
, Nevermore
, Muse
and other hard rock
/metal
bands. Metal musicians often prefer the seven-string guitar for its extended lower range. The seven-string guitar has also played an essential role in progressive metal
rock, and is commonly used in bands such as Dream Theater
, Pain of Salvation
and by experimental guitarists such as Ben Levin.
, which was manufactured by Novax Guitars
, the largest manufacturer of 8- to 14-strings is Warr Guitars. Their models are also used by Trey Gunn
(ex King Crimson
) who has his own signature line from the company. Similarly, Mårten Hagström
and Fredrik Thordendal
of Meshuggah
used 8-string guitars made by Nevborn Guitars and now guitars by Ibanez
. Munky of the nu metal
band KoRn
is also known to use seven-string Ibanez guitars and it is rumored that he is planning to release a K8 eight-string guitar similar to his K7 seven-string guitar. Another Ibanez player is Tosin Abasi
, lead guitarist of the progressive metal
band Animals as Leaders
, who uses an Ibanez RG2228 to mix bright chords with very heavy low riffs on the 7 and 8th strings. Stephen Carpenter
of Deftones
also switched from 7 to 8 string in 2008 and released his signature STEF B-8 with ESP Guitars
. In 2008, Ibanez released the Ibanez RG2228-GK which is the first mass produced eight-string guitar. Jethro Tull
's first album uses a nine-string guitar on one track. Minarik Guitars manufactures the "Inferno V" 9 stringed guitar that has the top three strings doubled up with strings that are an octave higher, like 12 stringed guitars. Bill Kelliher
, guitarist for the heavy metal
group Mastodon
, worked with First Act
on a custom mass-produced nine-string guitar.
electric guitar known as the Bich, whose radical shape was specifically designed to allow the machine heads for the four secondary strings to be positioned on the body, avoiding the head-heaviness of many electric twelve-string guitars. However many players bought it for the body shape or electrics and simply removed the extra strings. The company recognized this and released six-string models of the Bich, but ten-string models also remain in production.
In October 2008, a ten-string electric jazz guitar
by Mike Shishkov was demonstrated at the 3rd International Ten String Guitar Festival. This instrument was based on the ten-string extended-range classical guitar.
music. Lead Belly is the folk artist most identified with the twelve-string guitar, usually acoustic with a pickup.
George Harrison
of The Beatles
and Roger McGuinn
of The Byrds
brought the electric twelve-string to notability in rock and roll
. During the Beatles' first trip to the US, in February 1964, Harrison received a new "360/12
" model guitar from the Rickenbacker
company, a 12-string electric made to look onstage like a 6-string. He began using the 360 in the studio on Lennon's "You Can't Do That" and other songs. Roger McGuinn began using electric 12-string guitars to create the jangly sound of The Byrds. Another notable guitarist to utilize electric 12-string guitars is Jimmy Page
, the guitarist with hard rock-heavy metal and rock group Led Zeppelin.
with an additional 3rd bridge. This can be a normal guitar with for instance a screwdriver placed under the strings, but can also be a custom made instrument. Lee Ranaldo
of Sonic Youth
plays with a 3rd bridge.
Double neck
(or, less commonly, "twin-neck") guitars enable guitarists to play guitar and bass guitar or, more commonly, a six-string and twelve-string. In the mid-1960s, one of the first players to use this type of guitar was Paul Revere & the Raiders
' guitarist Drake Levin
. Another early user was John McLaughlin
, but the double-neck guitar was popularized by Jimmy Page
, who used a custom-made Gibson EDS-1275
to perform "Stairway to Heaven
" and "The Song Remains the Same
", although "Stairway to Heaven" was actually recorded using a Fender Telecaster and a Fender XII electric twelve string. Don Felder
of the Eagles also used the Gibson EDS-1275 during the Hotel California
tour. Muse guitarist and vocalist Matthew Bellamy
uses a silver Manson Double Neck on his bands' The Resistance Tour
.
and rock groups often use the electric guitar in two roles: as a rhythm guitar
which provides the chord
sequence or "progression
" and sets out the "beat
" (as part of a rhythm section
), and a lead guitar
, which is used to perform melody
lines, melodic instrumental fill passages
, and guitar solo
s. In some rock or metal bands with two guitarists, the two performers may perform as a guitar tandem
, and trade off the lead guitar and rhythm guitar roles. In bands with a single guitarist, the guitarist may switch between these two roles, playing chords to accompany the singer's lyrics, and then playing a guitar solo in the middle of the song.
In the most commercially available and consumed pop and rock genres, electric guitars tend to dominate their acoustic
cousins in both the recording studio
and the live venue, especially in the "harder" genres such as heavy metal
and hard rock
. However the acoustic guitar
remains a popular choice in country
, western
and especially bluegrass music
, and it is widely used in folk music
.
playing styles include rhythm guitar
-style "comping
" (accompanying) with jazz chord voicings
(and in some cases, walking basslines) and "blowing" (improvising solos) over jazz chord progression
s with jazz-style phrasing and ornaments. The accompanying style for electric guitar in most jazz
styles differs from the way chordal instruments accompany in many popular styles of music. In rock and pop, the rhythm guitarist usually performs the chords in dense and regular fashion which sets out the beat of a tune. In contrast, in many modern jazz styles, the guitarist plays much more sparsely, intermingling periodic chords and delicate voicings into pauses in the melody or solo. Jazz chord voicings are usually rootless
and emphasize the 3rd and 7th notes of the chord.
When jazz guitar players improvise
, they use the scales, modes, and arpeggios associated with the chords in a tune's chord progression. Jazz guitarists have to learn how to use scales (whole tone scale, chromatic scale, etc.) to solo over chord progressions. Jazz guitar improvising is not merely the recitation of jazz scales and rapid arpeggios. Jazz guitarists often try to imbue their melodic phrasing with the sense of natural breathing and legato phrasing used by horn players such as saxophone players. As well, a jazz guitarists' solo improvisations have to have a rhythmic drive and "time feel" that creates a sense of "swing
" and "groove".
In addition to the traditional rhythm/comping and lead/blowing roles, some jazz guitarists use the electric instrument to play unaccompanied, combining harmony and melody to form a complete piece of music, like classical guitarists.
Most jazz guitarists play hollow body instruments, but solid body guitars are also used. Hollow body instruments were the first guitars used in jazz in the 1930s and 1940s. During the 1970s jazz fusion
era, many jazz guitarists switched to the solid body guitars that dominated the rock world.
was the only type of guitar favored by classical, or art music
composers. In the 1950s a few contemporary classical
composers began to use the electric guitar in their compositions. Examples of such works include Karlheinz Stockhausen
's Gruppen
(1955–57); Donald Erb
's String Trio (1966), Morton Feldman
's The Possibility of a New Work for Electric Guitar (1966); George Crumb
's Songs, Drones, and Refrains of Death (1968); Hans Werner Henze
's Versuch über Schweine (1968); Francis Thorne
's Sonar Plexus (1968) and Liebesrock (1968–69), Michael Tippett
's The Knot Garden
(1965–70); Leonard Bernstein
's MASS (1971) and Slava! (1977); Louis Andriessen
's De Staat (1972–76); Helmut Lachenmann
's Fassade, für grosses Orchester (1973, rev. 1987), Steve Reich
's Electric Counterpoint
(1987), Arvo Pärt
's Miserere (1989/92), György Kurtág
's Grabstein für Stephan (1989), and countless works composed for the quintet of Ástor Piazzolla
.
Alfred Schnittke
also used electric guitar in several works, like the "Requiem", "Concerto Grosso N°2" and "Symphony N°1".
In the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, a growing number of composers (many of them composer-performers who had grown up playing the instrument in rock bands) began writing contemporary classical music for the electric guitar. These include Frank Zappa
, Shawn Lane
, Steven Mackey
, Nick Didkovsky
, Scott Johnson
, Lois V Vierk
, Tim Brady
, Tristan Murail
, John Rogers
, and Randall Woolf.
Yngwie Malmsteen released his Concerto Suite for Electric Guitar and Orchestra
in 1998, and Steve Vai
released a double-live CD entitled Sound Theories
, of his work with the Netherlands Metropole Orchestra in June 2007. The American composers Rhys Chatham
and Glenn Branca
have written "symphonic" works for large ensembles of electric guitars, in some cases numbering up to 100 players, and the instrument is a core member of the Bang on a Can
All-Stars (played by Mark Stewart
). Still, like many electric and electronic instruments, the electric guitar remains primarily associated with rock and jazz music, rather than with classical compositions and performances. R. Prasanna
plays a style of Indian classical music (Carnatic music
) on the electric guitar.
In the 21st century, European avant garde composers like Richard Barrett
, Fausto Romitelli
, Peter Ablinger, Bernhard Lang
, Claude Ledoux and Karlheinz Essl
have used the electric guitar (together with extended playing techniques) in solo pieces or ensemble works. Probably the most ambitious and perhaps significant work to date is Ingwe (2003–2009) by Georges Lentz
(written for Australian guitarist Zane Banks
), a 60-minute work for solo electric guitar, exploring that composer's existential struggles and taking the instrument into realms previously unknown in a concert music setting.
Guitar
The guitar is a plucked string instrument, usually played with fingers or a pick. The guitar consists of a body with a rigid neck to which the strings, generally six in number, are attached. Guitars are traditionally constructed of various woods and strung with animal gut or, more recently, with...
that uses the principle of direct electromagnetic induction
Electromagnetic induction
Electromagnetic induction is the production of an electric current across a conductor moving through a magnetic field. It underlies the operation of generators, transformers, induction motors, electric motors, synchronous motors, and solenoids....
to convert vibrations of its metal strings into electric audio signal
Audio signal
An audio signal is an analog representation of sound, typically as an electrical voltage. Audio signals may be synthesized directly, or may originate at a transducer such as a microphone, musical instrument pickup, phonograph cartridge, or tape head. Loudspeakers or headphones convert an electrical...
s. The signal generated by an electric guitar is too weak to drive a loudspeaker
Loudspeaker
A loudspeaker is an electroacoustic transducer that produces sound in response to an electrical audio signal input. Non-electrical loudspeakers were developed as accessories to telephone systems, but electronic amplification by vacuum tube made loudspeakers more generally useful...
, so it is amplified
Guitar amplifier
A guitar amplifier is an electronic amplifier designed to make the signal of an electric or acoustic guitar louder so that it will produce sound through a loudspeaker...
before sending it to a loudspeaker. Since the output of an electric guitar is an electric signal, the signal may easily be altered using electronic circuits to add "color" to the sound. Often the signal is modified using effect
Effects unit
Effects units are electronic devices that alter how a musical instrument or other audio source sounds. Some effects subtly "color" a sound, while others transform it dramatically. Effects are used during live performances or in the studio, typically with electric guitar, keyboard and bass...
s such as reverb and distortion.
Invented in 1931, the electric guitar became a necessity as jazz musicians sought to amplify their sound. Since then, the electric guitar has become the most important instrument in popular music
Popular music
Popular music belongs to any of a number of musical genres "having wide appeal" and is typically distributed to large audiences through the music industry. It stands in contrast to both art music and traditional music, which are typically disseminated academically or orally to smaller, local...
. It has evolved into a stringed musical instrument that is capable of a multitude of sounds and styles. It served as a major component in the development of rock and roll
Rock and roll
Rock and roll is a genre of popular music that originated and evolved in the United States during the late 1940s and early 1950s, primarily from a combination of African American blues, country, jazz, and gospel music...
and countless other genres of music.
History
Various experiments at electrically amplifying the vibrations of a string instrument date back to the early part of the twentieth century. Patents from the 1910s show telephone transmitters adapted and placed inside violins and banjos to amplify the sound. Hobbyists in the 1920s used carbon button microphonesCarbon microphone
The carbon microphone, also known as a carbon button microphone or a carbon transmitter, is a sound-to-electrical signal transducer consisting of two metal plates separated by granules of carbon. One plate faces outward and acts as a diaphragm...
attached to the bridge
Bridge (instrument)
A bridge is a device for supporting the strings on a stringed instrument and transmitting the vibration of those strings to some other structural component of the instrument in order to transfer the sound to the surrounding air.- Explanation :...
, however these detected vibration from the bridge on top of the instrument, resulting in a weak signal. With numerous people experimenting with electrical instruments in the 1920s and early 1930s, there are many claimants to have been the first to invent an electric guitar.
Electric guitars were originally designed by guitar makers and instrument manufacturers. Guitar innovator Les Paul
Les Paul
Lester William Polsfuss —known as Les Paul—was an American jazz and country guitarist, songwriter and inventor. He was a pioneer in the development of the solid-body electric guitar which made the sound of rock and roll possible. He is credited with many recording innovations...
experimented with microphones attached to guitars. Some of the earliest electric guitars adapted hollow bodied
Semi-acoustic guitar
A semi-acoustic guitar or hollow-body electric is a type of electric guitar with both a sound box and one or more electric pickups. This is not the same as an electric acoustic guitar, which is an acoustic guitar with the addition of pickups or other means of amplification, either added by the...
acoustic
Steel-string acoustic guitar
A steel-string acoustic guitar is a modern form of guitar descended from the classical guitar, but strung with steel strings for a brighter, louder sound...
instruments and used tungsten
Tungsten (music)
A Tungsten or Tungs-Tone is a type of phonograph stylus. They are constructed from tungsten wire, which is held in a metal shank. Unlike a steel stylus, a tungsten stylus has a cylindrical rather than a conical shape, meaning that the cross-section of the stylus remains the same as the stylus wears...
pickups. The first electrically amplified guitar was invented by George Beauchamp
George Beauchamp
George Delmetia Beauchamp was an inventor of musical instruments and a co-founder of National Stringed Instrument Corporation and Rickenbacker guitars....
in 1931. Commercial production began in late summer of 1932 by the Ro-Pat-In Corporation (Electro-Patent-Instrument Company Los Angeles), a partnership of Beauchamp, Adolph Rickenbacker, and Paul Barth
Paul Barth
Paul Barth may refer to:* Paul Barth , German philosopher and sociological writer* Paul C. Barth , Mayor of Louisville, Kentucky* Paul Barth , Swiss fencer...
. The wooden body of the prototype was built by Harry Watson
Harry Watson
Harry Watson may refer to:*Harry Watson , amateur ice hockey player fl. 1920s*Harry Watson , professional ice hockey player fl. 1940s and 1950s*Harry Watson *Harry L. Watson, historian and author...
, a craftsman who had worked for the National Resophonic Guitar Company (where the men met). By 1934 the company was renamed Rickenbacker
Rickenbacker
Rickenbacker International Corporation, also known as Rickenbacker, is an electric and bass guitar manufacturer based in Santa Ana, California...
Electro Stringed Instrument Company.
The need for the amplified guitar became apparent during the big band
Big band
A big band is a type of musical ensemble associated with jazz and the Swing Era typically consisting of rhythm, brass, and woodwind instruments totaling approximately twelve to twenty-five musicians...
era as orchestras increased in size, particularly when guitars had to compete with large brass sections. The first electric guitars used in jazz
Jazz guitar
The term jazz guitar may refer to either a type of guitar or to the variety of guitar playing styles used in the various genres which are commonly termed "jazz"...
were hollow archtop acoustic guitar bodies with electromagnetic transducer
Transducer
A transducer is a device that converts one type of energy to another. Energy types include electrical, mechanical, electromagnetic , chemical, acoustic or thermal energy. While the term transducer commonly implies the use of a sensor/detector, any device which converts energy can be considered a...
s. By 1932 an electrically amplified guitar was commercially available. Early electric guitar manufacturers include: Rickenbacker
Rickenbacker
Rickenbacker International Corporation, also known as Rickenbacker, is an electric and bass guitar manufacturer based in Santa Ana, California...
(first called Ro-Pat-In) in 1932, Dobro in 1933, National, AudioVox
Audiovox
Audiovox Corporation is an American consumer electronics company founded in 1965 and headquartered in Hauppauge, New York.Among the domestic brands now owned by Audiovox are: Acoustic Research, Advent, Code Alarm, Invision, Jensen, Prestige, RCA, and Terk. The international brands they own include...
and Volu-tone in 1934,Vega, Epiphone (Electrophone and Electar), and Gibson in 1935 and many others by 1936.
The solid body
Solid body
A solid-body instrument is a string instrument such as a guitar, bass or violin built without its normal sound box and relying on an electric pickup system to directly receive the vibrations of the strings....
electric guitar is made of solid wood, without functionally resonating air spaces. Rickenbacher offered a cast aluminum electric steel guitar, nicknamed "The Frying Pan
Frying pan (guitar)
The "frying pan" was the first electric lap steel guitar ever produced. George Beauchamp created the instrument in 1931, and it was subsequently manufactured by Rickenbacker Electro...
" or "The Pancake Guitar", developed in 1931 with production beginning in the summer of 1932. This guitar sounds quite modern and aggressive.
The first solid body "Spanish" standard guitar was offered by Vivi-Tone no later than 1934. An example of this model, featuring a guitar-shaped body of a single sheet of plywood affixed to a wood frame. Another early, substantially solid Spanish electric guitar, called Electro Spanish, was marketed by the "Rickenbacker" guitar company in 1935 and made of Bakelite. By 1936, the Slingerland company introduced a wooden solid body electric model.
The earliest documented performance with an electrically amplified guitar was in 1932, by Gage Brewer
Gage Brewer
Gage Kelso Brewer was an American musician.He never recorded a commercially released record, published a hit song or performed at any length as part of a nationally famous musical organization. His only known recording was a direct-to-disk 78rpm record made in Denver, Colorado in the early 1930s...
. The Wichita, Kansas-based musician had an Electric Hawaiian A-25 (frypan, lap-steel) and a standard Electric Spanish from George Beauchamp
George Beauchamp
George Delmetia Beauchamp was an inventor of musical instruments and a co-founder of National Stringed Instrument Corporation and Rickenbacker guitars....
of Los Angeles, California. Brewer publicized his new instruments in an article in the Wichita Beacon of October 2, 1932 and through performances that month.
The first recordings using the electric guitar were by Hawaiian style players, in 1933. Bob Dunn of Milton Brown's
Milton Brown
Milton Brown was an American band leader and vocalist who co-founded the genre of Western swing. His band was the first to fuse hillbilly hokum, jazz, and pop together into a unique, distinctly American hybrid, thus giving him the nickname, "Father of Western Swing"...
Musical Brownies introduced the electric Hawaiian guitar to Western Swing
Western swing
Western swing music is a subgenre of American country music that originated in the late 1920s in the West and South among the region's Western string bands...
with his January 1935 Decca recordings, departing almost entirely from Hawaiian musical influence and heading towards Jazz and Blues. Alvino Rey was an artist who took this instrument to a wide audience in a large orchestral setting and later developed the pedal steel guitar
Pedal steel guitar
The pedal steel guitar is a type of electric guitar that uses a metal bar to "fret" or shorten the length of the strings, rather than fingers on strings as with a conventional guitar. Unlike other types of steel guitar, it also uses pedals and knee levers to affect the pitch, hence the name "pedal"...
for Gibson. An early proponent of the electric Spanish guitar was jazz guitarist George Barnes
George Barnes (musician)
George Barnes was a world-renowned swing jazz guitarist, who claimed he played the first electric guitar in 1931, preceding Charlie Christian by six years. George Barnes made the first recording of an electric guitar in 1938 in sessions with Big Bill Broonzy.-Biography:George Barnes was born in...
who used the instrument in two songs recorded in Chicago on March 1, 1938, "Sweetheart Land" and "It's a Low-Down Dirty Shame". Some incorrectly attribute the first recording to Eddie Durham
Eddie Durham
Eddie Durham was an American jazz guitarist, trombonist, composer and musical arranger of the swing music medium born in San Marcos, Texas, probably best known for his work with musicians like Cab Calloway, Willie Bryant, Andy Kirk, Glenn Miller, Jimmie Lunceford and Count Basie, among others...
, but his recording with the Kansas City Five was 15 days later. Durham introduced the instrument to a young Charlie Christian, who made the instrument famous in his brief life and would be a major influence on jazz guitarists for decades thereafter.
Gibson
Gibson Guitar Corporation
The Gibson Guitar Corporation, formerly of Kalamazoo, Michigan and currently of Nashville, Tennessee, manufactures guitars and other instruments which sell under a variety of brand names...
's first production electric guitar, marketed in 1936, was the ES-150
Gibson ES-150
The Gibson Guitar Corporation's ES-150 guitar is generally recognized as the world's first commercially successful Spanish-style electric guitar. The ES stands for Electric Spanish, and it was designated 150 because it cost $150, along with an EH-150 amplifier and a cable.After its introduction in...
model ("ES" for "Electric Spanish"; and "150" reflecting the $150 price of the instrument, along with a matching amplifier). The ES-150 guitar featured a single-coil, hexagonally shaped "bar" pickup, which was designed by Walt Fuller. It became known as the "Charlie Christian
Charlie Christian
Charles Henry "Charlie" Christian was an American swing and jazz guitarist.Christian was an important early performer on the electric guitar, and is cited as a key figure in the development of bebop and cool jazz. He gained national exposure as a member of the Benny Goodman Sextet and Orchestra...
" pickup (named for the great jazz guitarist who was among the first to perform with the ES-150 guitar). The ES-150 achieved some popularity, but was suffered from unequal loudness across the six strings.
At an Engineering Fair in 1940, first prize went to NC State University physics professor Sidney Wilson for his invention of the world's first fully electric guitar. Wilson's guitar was also the first to have single-string pick-up, which addressed the unequal loudness problem of the ES-150's single coil. Professor Wilson also disposed of the acoustical body, reasoning that it was not necessary for a fully electric instrument. He developed the guitar shown here and entered it in the annual engineering fair. Patents from academia were quite unusual in the 1940s, so Professor Wilson did not patent his invention. In 1949 Gibson incorporated both the individual string pick-up and the cut-away body in its model ES-175. The design was attributed to Ted McCarthy of Gibson Corporation, but the features were first conceived and implemented by NC State physicists.
Early proponents of the electric guitar on record include: Jack Miller
Jack Miller
Jack Richard Miller was a Republican United States Senator from Iowa who served two terms from 1961 to 1973, and then a federal appellate judge....
(Orville Knapp Orchestra), Alvino Rey
Alvino Rey
Alvin McBurney , known by his stage name Alvino Rey, was an American swing era musician and pioneer, often credited as the father of the pedal steel guitar...
(Phil Spitalney Orchestra), Les Paul (Fred Waring
Fred Waring
Fredrick Malcolm Waring was a popular musician, bandleader and radio-television personality, sometimes referred to as "America's Singing Master" and "The Man Who Taught America How to Sing." He was also a promoter, financial backer and namesake of the Waring Blendor, the first modern electric...
Orchestra), Danny Stewart (Andy Iona Orchestra), George Barnes
George Barnes (musician)
George Barnes was a world-renowned swing jazz guitarist, who claimed he played the first electric guitar in 1931, preceding Charlie Christian by six years. George Barnes made the first recording of an electric guitar in 1938 in sessions with Big Bill Broonzy.-Biography:George Barnes was born in...
(under many aliases), Lonnie Johnson
Lonnie Johnson
Alonzo "Lonnie" Johnson was an American blues and jazz singer/guitarist and songwriter who pioneered the role of jazz guitar and is recognized as the first to play single-string guitar solos...
, Floyd Smith
Floyd Smith (musician)
Floyd Smith was an American jazz guitarist.Born in St. Louis, Missouri, Smith studied music theory as a teenager and leared ukelele as a child before taking up guitar...
, Big Bill Broonzy
Big Bill Broonzy
Big Bill Broonzy was a prolific American blues singer, songwriter and guitarist. His career began in the 1920s when he played country blues to mostly black audiences. Through the ‘30s and ‘40s he successfully navigated a transition in style to a more urban blues sound popular with white audiences...
, T-Bone Walker
T-Bone Walker
Aaron Thibeaux "T-Bone" Walker was a critically acclaimed American blues guitarist, singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist, who was one of the most influential pioneers and innovators of the jump blues and electric blues sound. He is the first musician recorded playing blues with the...
, George Van Eps
George Van Eps
George Van Eps was an American swing and Mainstream jazz guitarist noted both for his recordings as a leader, and for his work as a session musician. He was also the author of instructional books that explored his approach to guitar-based harmony...
, Charlie Christian (Benny Goodman
Benny Goodman
Benjamin David “Benny” Goodman was an American jazz and swing musician, clarinetist and bandleader; widely known as the "King of Swing".In the mid-1930s, Benny Goodman led one of the most popular musical groups in America...
Orchestra) Tampa Red
Tampa Red
Tampa Red , born Hudson Woodbridge but known from childhood as Hudson Whittaker, was an American Chicago blues musician....
, Memphis Minnie
Memphis Minnie
Memphis Minnie was an American blues guitarist, vocalist, and songwriter. She was the only female blues artist considered a match to male contemporaries as both a singer and an instrumentalist.-Career:...
, and Arthur Crudup
Arthur Crudup
Arthur "Big Boy" Crudup was an American Delta blues singer, songwriter and guitarist. He is best known outside blues circles for writing songs such as "That's All Right" , "My Baby Left Me" and "So Glad You're Mine", later covered by Elvis Presley and dozens of other artists.-Career:Arthur Crudup...
.
A functionally solid body electric guitar was designed and built by Les Paul from an Epiphone acoustic archtop. His "log guitar" (so called because it consisted of a simple 4x4 wood post with a neck attached to it and homemade pickups and hardware, with two detachable Epiphone hollow body halves attached to the sides for appearance only) shares nothing in design or hardware with the solid body "Les Paul" model sold by Gibson. However, the feedback problem associated with hollow-bodied electric guitars was understood long before Paul's "log" was created in 1940; Gage Brewer's Ro-Pat-In of 1932 had a top so heavily reinforced that it essentially functioned as a solid-body instrument.
In 1945, Richard D. Bourgerie made an electric guitar pickup and amplifier for professional guitar player George Barnes. Bourgerie worked through World War II at Howard Radio Company making electronic equipment for the American military. Barnes showed the result to Les Paul, who then arranged for Bourgerie to have one made for him.
Construction
Headstock
Headstock or peghead is a part of guitar or similar stringed instrument. The main function of a headstock is holding the instrument's strings. Strings go from the bridge past the nut and are usually fixed on machine heads on headstock...
(1) contains the metal machine heads, which are used for tuning; the nut (1.4), a thin fret-like strip of metal, plastic, graphite or bone which the strings pass over as they first go onto the fingerboard; the machine head
Machine head
A machine head is part of a string instrument ranging from guitars to double basses, a geared apparatus for applying tension and thereby tuning a string, usually located at the headstock. A headstock has several machine heads, one per string...
s (1.1), which are worm gears which the player turns to change the string tension and thus adjust the tuning; the frets (2.3), which are thin metal strips which stop the string at the correct pitch when a string is pressed down against the fingerboard; the truss rod
Truss rod
The truss rod is part of a guitar or banjo used to stabilize and adjust the lengthwise forward curvature , of the neck. Usually it is a steel rod that runs inside the neck and has a bolt that can be used to adjust its tension...
(1.2), a metal cylinder used for adjusting the tension on the neck (not found on all instruments); decorative inlay (2.2), a feature used to keep place of where the notes of the guitar are.
The neck and the fretboard (2.1) extend from the body; at the neck joint (2.4), the neck is either glued or bolted to the body; the body (3) of this instrument is made of wood which is painted and lacquered, but some guitar bodies are also made of polycarbonate or other materials; pickups
Pickup (music technology)
A pickup device is a transducer that captures mechanical vibrations, usually from suitably equipped stringed instruments such as the electric guitar, electric bass guitar, Chapman Stick, or electric violin, and converts them to an electrical signal that is amplified, recorded, or broadcast.-...
(3.1, 3.2), which are usually magnetic pickups, but which may also be piezoelectric transducer pickups; the control knobs (3.8) for the volume and tone potentiometer
Potentiometer
A potentiometer , informally, a pot, is a three-terminal resistor with a sliding contact that forms an adjustable voltage divider. If only two terminals are used , it acts as a variable resistor or rheostat. Potentiometers are commonly used to control electrical devices such as volume controls on...
s; a fixed bridge (3.4) -on some guitars, a spring-loaded hinged bridge called a "tremolo
Tremolo
Tremolo, or tremolando, is a musical term that describes various trembling effects, falling roughly into two types. The first is a rapid reiteration...
system" is used instead, which allows players to "bend" notes or chords down in pitch or perform a vibrato embellishment; and a plastic pickguard
Pickguard
A pickguard is a piece of plastic or other laminated material that is placed under the strings on the body of a guitar, mandolin or similar plucked string instrument...
, a feature not found on all guitars, which is used to protect the body from scratches or cover the control cavity which holds most of the electric guitar's wiring.
The wood that the body (3) is made of is a very disputed subject considered by some to largely determine the sonic qualities of the guitar, while others believe that the sonic difference in a solid body guitar is very subtle between woods. In a solid body electric guitar, the tone is only affected by the type of wood used in construction, when playing the guitar without an amplifier. This is why a hollow aluminum body Fender Stratocaster's tone is identical to that of a swamp ash body Fender Stratocaster, equipped with the same electronics components, strings and pickups.
In acoustic and archtop guitars there is a more pronounced sonic definition caused by the type of wood used. Typical woods include alder
Alder
Alder is the common name of a genus of flowering plants belonging to the birch family . The genus comprises about 30 species of monoecious trees and shrubs, few reaching large size, distributed throughout the North Temperate Zone and in the Americas along the Andes southwards to...
(brighter, but well rounded), swamp ash (similar to alder, but with more pronounced highs and lows), mahogany (dark, bassy, warm), poplar (similar to alder) and basswood (very neutral). Maple, a very bright tonewood, is also a popular body wood, but is very heavy. For this reason it is often placed as a 'cap' on a guitar made of primarily of another wood. Cheaper guitars are often made of cheaper woods, such as plywood, pine or agathis
Agathis
The genus Agathis, commonly known as kauri or dammar, is a relatively small genus of 21 species of evergreen tree. The genus is part of the ancient Araucariaceae family of conifers, a group once widespread during the Jurassic period, but now largely restricted to the Southern Hemisphere except for...
, not true hardwoods, which can affect the durability and tone of the guitar.Although most guitars are made from wood, any material may be used in the construction of a guitar. Materials such as plastic or cardboard are examples of unusual but possible materials that affect the overall sound of the guitar.
The guitar output jack is typically designed for monaural function. On many guitars with active electronics a stereo jack may be installed but is wired for mono sound. The extra "ring" lug on the jack is then used to break the ground connection to the on-board battery thus preserving battery life when the guitar is unplugged. These guitars require use of a mono plug to close the internal switch and connect the battery to ground. Standard guitar cables are outfitted with a high impedance 1/4 inch (6.35 mm) mono plug. These utilize a tip and sleeve configuration referred to as a TS connector.
A few guitars are actually set up for stereo, for example Rickenbacker
Rickenbacker
Rickenbacker International Corporation, also known as Rickenbacker, is an electric and bass guitar manufacturer based in Santa Ana, California...
guitars equipped with Rick-O-Sound. There are a variety of ways the "stereo" effect may be implemented. Commonly, but not exclusively, stereo guitars route the neck and bridge pickups to separate output buses on the guitar. A stereo cable can then route each pickup to its own signal chain or amplifier. For these applications, the most popular connector is a high impedance 1/4 inch plug with a tip, ring and sleeve configuration also known as a TRS connector
TRS connector
A TRS connector is a common family of connector typically used for analog signals including audio. It is cylindrical in shape, typically with three contacts, although sometimes with two or four . It is also called an audio jack, phone jack, phone plug, and jack plug...
. Some studio instruments, notably certain models of Gibson Les Paul
Gibson Les Paul
The Gibson Les Paul was the result of a design collaboration between Gibson Guitar Corporation and the late jazz guitarist and electronics inventor Les Paul. In 1950, with the introduction of the Fender Telecaster to the musical market, electric guitars became a public craze. In reaction, Gibson...
, incorporate a low impedance 3-pin XLR connector
XLR connector
The XLR connector is a style of electrical connector, primarily found on professional audio, video, and stage lighting equipment. The connectors are circular in design and have between 3 and 7 pins...
for balanced audio
Balanced audio
Balanced audio is a method of interconnecting audio equipment using impedance-balanced lines. This type of connection is very important in sound recording and production because it allows for the use of long cables while reducing susceptibility to external noise.Balanced connections use...
. Many exotic arrangements and connectors are employed to support features such as midi and hexaphonic pickups.
Pickups
Compared to an acoustic guitar, which has a hollow body, electric guitars make comparatively little audible sound simply by having their strings plucked, and so electric guitars are normally plugged into a guitar amplifier, which makes the sound louder. When an electric guitar is strummed, the movement of the strings generates (i.e., "induces") a very small electric current in the magnetic pickups, which are magnetMagnet
A magnet is a material or object that produces a magnetic field. This magnetic field is invisible but is responsible for the most notable property of a magnet: a force that pulls on other ferromagnetic materials, such as iron, and attracts or repels other magnets.A permanent magnet is an object...
s wrapped with coils of very fine wire.
That current is then sent through a cable to a guitar amplifier. The current induced is proportional to such factors as the density of the string or the amount of movement over these pickups. That vibration is, in turn, affected by several factors, such as the composition and shape of the body.
Microphone
A microphone is an acoustic-to-electric transducer or sensor that converts sound into an electrical signal. In 1877, Emile Berliner invented the first microphone used as a telephone voice transmitter...
s or piezoelectric pickups (transducer
Transducer
A transducer is a device that converts one type of energy to another. Energy types include electrical, mechanical, electromagnetic , chemical, acoustic or thermal energy. While the term transducer commonly implies the use of a sensor/detector, any device which converts energy can be considered a...
s) that sense mechanical vibration from the body. Because in some cases it is desirable to isolate the pickups from the vibrations of the strings, a guitar's magnetic pickups will sometimes be embedded or "potted" in epoxy
Epoxy
Epoxy, also known as polyepoxide, is a thermosetting polymer formed from reaction of an epoxide "resin" with polyamine "hardener". Epoxy has a wide range of applications, including fiber-reinforced plastic materials and general purpose adhesives....
or wax to prevent the pickup from having a microphonic effect.
Because of their natural inductive qualities, all magnetic pickups tend to pick up ambient and usually unwanted electromagnetic noises. The resulting noise, the so-called "hum", is particularly strong with single-coil pickups, and aggravated by the fact that very few guitars are correctly shielded against electromagnetic interference. The most frequent cause is the strong 50 or 60 Hz
Hertz
The hertz is the SI unit of frequency defined as the number of cycles per second of a periodic phenomenon. One of its most common uses is the description of the sine wave, particularly those used in radio and audio applications....
component that is inherent in the generation of electricity in the local power transmission
Electric power transmission
Electric-power transmission is the bulk transfer of electrical energy, from generating power plants to Electrical substations located near demand centers...
system. As nearly all amplifiers and audio equipment associated with electrical guitars rely on this power, there is in theory little chance of completely eliminating the introduction of unwanted hum.
Double-coil or "humbucker
Humbucker
A humbucker is a type of electric guitar pickup, first patented by Seth Lover and the Gibson company, that uses two coils, both generating string signal. Humbuckers have higher output than a single coil pickup since both coils are connected in series...
" pickups were invented as a way to reduce or counter the unwanted ambient hum sounds (known as 60 cycle hum). Humbuckers have two coils of opposite magnetic and electric polarity. This means that electromagnetic noise hitting both coils should cancel itself out. The two coils are wired in phase, so the signal picked up by each coil is added together. This high combined inductance
Inductance
In electromagnetism and electronics, inductance is the ability of an inductor to store energy in a magnetic field. Inductors generate an opposing voltage proportional to the rate of change in current in a circuit...
of the two coils leads to the richer, "fatter" tone associated with humbucking pickups. Optical pickups are a type of pickup which sense string and body vibrations using infrared LED
LEd
LEd is a TeX/LaTeX editing software working under Microsoft Windows. It is a freeware product....
light.
Vibrato arms
Some electric guitars have a tremolo arm (sometimes called a "whammy bar" or "vibrato arm" and occasionally abbreviated as trem. Technically, "vibrato arm" is correct, since moving the arm creates vibrato, not tremolo.), a lever attached to the bridge which can slacken or tighten the strings temporarily, changing the pitch, thereby creating a vibratoVibrato
Vibrato is a musical effect consisting of a regular, pulsating change of pitch. It is used to add expression to vocal and instrumental music. Vibrato is typically characterised in terms of two factors: the amount of pitch variation and the speed with which the pitch is varied .-Vibrato and...
or a portamento
Portamento
Portamento is a musical term originated from the Italian expression "portamento della voce" , denoting from the beginning of the 17th century a vocal slide between two pitches and its emulation by members of the violin family and certain wind instruments, and is sometimes used...
effect. The name "tremolo bar" is somewhat misleading. It would be more accurate and appropriate to call it a vibrato bar. Tremolo is a fluctuation of volume. Vibrato is a fluctuation of pitch, which is what the whammy bar produces. Early vibrato systems, such as the Bigsby vibrato tailpiece, tended to be unreliable and cause the guitar to go out of tune quite easily, and also had a limited range. Later Fender designs were better, but Fender held the patent on these, so other companies used Bigsby-style vibrato for many years.
vibrato, various improvements on this type of internal, multi-spring vibrato system are now available. Floyd Rose
Floyd Rose
The Floyd Rose Locking Tremolo, or simply Floyd Rose, is a type of locking vibrato arm for a guitar. The first of its kind, Floyd D. Rose invented the locking vibrato in 1977, and it is now manufactured by a company of the same name...
introduced one of the first improvements on the vibrato system in many years when in the late 1970s he began to experiment with "locking" nuts and bridges which work to prevent the guitar from losing tuning even under the most heavy whammy bar acrobatics.
Guitar necks
Electric guitar necks can vary according to composition as well as shape. The primary metric used to describe a guitar neck is the scale length, which is the overall length of the strings from the nut to the bridge. A typical Fender guitar uses a 25.5 inch scale length, while Gibson uses a 24.75 inch scale length in their Les PaulGibson Les Paul
The Gibson Les Paul was the result of a design collaboration between Gibson Guitar Corporation and the late jazz guitarist and electronics inventor Les Paul. In 1950, with the introduction of the Fender Telecaster to the musical market, electric guitars became a public craze. In reaction, Gibson...
. While the scale length of the Les Paul has often claimed to be 24.75 inches, it has varied through the years by as much as a half inch. The frets are placed proportionally according to the scale length; thus, the shorter the scale length, the closer the spacing of the frets. Opinions vary regarding the effect of scale length on tone and feel. Generally, it is felt that longer scale length contributes to greater amplitude
Amplitude
Amplitude is the magnitude of change in the oscillating variable with each oscillation within an oscillating system. For example, sound waves in air are oscillations in atmospheric pressure and their amplitudes are proportional to the change in pressure during one oscillation...
. Reports of playing feel are greatly complicated by the many factors involved in this perception. String gauge and design, neck construction and relief, guitar setup, playing style and other factors contribute to the subjective impression of playability or feel.
Necks are described as bolt-on
Bolt-on neck
Bolt-on neck is a method of guitar construction that involves joining a guitar neck and body using screws as opposed to glue as with set-in neck joints. The term is a misnomer, introduced mostly by Fender whose guitars traditionally had "bolt-on necks". Real bolted joints are uncommon in guitar...
, set-in
Set-in neck
Set-in neck is a method of guitar construction that involves joining guitar neck and body with a tightly fitted mortise-and-tenon or dovetail joint, secured using some sort of adhesive...
, or neck-through depending on how they are attached to the body. Set-in necks are glued to the body in the factory, and are said to have a warmer tone and greater sustain; this is the most traditional type of joint. Bolt-on necks were pioneered by Leo Fender
Leo Fender
Clarence Leonidas "Leo" Fender was an American inventor who founded Fender Electric Instrument Manufacturing Company, or "Fender" for short...
to facilitate easy adjustment and replacement of the guitar neck. Neck-through instruments extend the neck itself to form the center of the guitar body, and are known for long sustain and for being particularly sturdy. While a set neck can be carefully unglued by a skilled luthier
Luthier
A luthier is someone who makes or repairs lutes and other string instruments. In the United States, the term is used interchangeably with a term for the specialty of each maker, such as violinmaker, guitar maker, lute maker, etc...
, and a bolt-on neck can simply be unscrewed, a neck-through design is difficult or even impossible to repair, depending on the damage. Historically, the bolt-on style has been more popular for ease of installation and adjustment; since bolt-on necks can be easily removed, there is an after-market in replacement bolt-on necks from companies such as Warmoth and Mighty Mite. Some instruments, notably most Gibson models, have continued to use set/glued necks. Neck-through bodies are somewhat more common in bass guitar
Bass guitar
The bass guitar is a stringed instrument played primarily with the fingers or thumb , or by using a pick....
s.
The materials used in the manufacture of the neck, selected for dimensional stability and rigidity, are alleged to influence the tone of the instrument. Hardwoods are very much preferred, with maple
Maple
Acer is a genus of trees or shrubs commonly known as maple.Maples are variously classified in a family of their own, the Aceraceae, or together with the Hippocastanaceae included in the family Sapindaceae. Modern classifications, including the Angiosperm Phylogeny Group system, favour inclusion in...
, mahogany
Mahogany
The name mahogany is used when referring to numerous varieties of dark-colored hardwood. It is a native American word originally used for the wood of the species Swietenia mahagoni, known as West Indian or Cuban mahogany....
, and ash topping the list. The neck and fingerboard can be made from different materials, such as a maple neck with a rosewood
Rosewood
Rosewood refers to any of a number of richly hued timbers, often brownish with darker veining, but found in many different hues. All rosewoods are strong and heavy, taking an excellent polish, being suitable for guitars, marimbas, turnery , handles, furniture, luxury flooring, etc.In general,...
fingerboard. In the 1970s, exotic man-made materials such as aircraft grade aluminum, carbon fiber
Carbon fiber
Carbon fiber, alternatively graphite fiber, carbon graphite or CF, is a material consisting of fibers about 5–10 μm in diameter and composed mostly of carbon atoms. The carbon atoms are bonded together in crystals that are more or less aligned parallel to the long axis of the fiber...
, and ebonol began to be used by designers John Veleno
Veleno (guitar)
The Veleno guitar is a highly-regarded series of aluminum guitars built by metal craftsman John Veleno. The first guitars were built in 1972. Veleno guitars are known for their unique sound quality. Public Image Ltd...
, Travis Bean
Travis Bean
Clifford Travis Bean was an American luthier and machinist from California.In 1974, he partnered with Marc McElwee and Gary Kramer to start Travis Bean Guitars, which made high-end electric guitars and basses featuring machined aluminum necks. This was an unusual design, departing from more...
. Geoff Gould
Modulus Guitars
Modulus Guitars is an American manufacturer of musical instruments, most notably bass guitars built with carbon fiber necks. The company, originally called Modulus Graphite, was founded in part by Geoff Gould, a bassist who also worked for an aerospace company in Palo Alto, California.The name may...
, and Alembic
Alembic Inc
Alembic was founded in 1969 and is a manufacturer of high-end electric basses, guitars and preamps.-History:Ron and Susan Wickersham founded Alembic, Inc. in 1969...
. Along with the engineering advantages, some have felt that in relation to the rising cost of rare 'tonewoods' man-made materials may be economically viable. However, artificial materials have not replaced the popularity of wood in production instruments, although they are sometimes used in conjunction with traditional materials. Vigier guitars
Vigier Guitars
-History:1978: Patrice Vigier sets up as an independent luthier.1980: Exhibits at his first music show in Paris introducing the Arpege series and the following: A/ Trapezoid through body neck B/ Metallic reinforcement under the fretboard...
are one example. Vigier uses a wooden neck and reinforces it by embedding a light, carbon fiber rod to replace the heavier steel bar or adjustable steel truss rod typically employed. After-market necks made entirely from carbon fiber can be retrofitted to existing bolt-on instruments. Few, if any, extensive formal investigations have been widely published to confirm or refute claims over the effects of different woods or materials on an electric guitar's sound.
There are several different neck shapes used on guitars, including shapes known as C necks, U necks, and V necks. These refer to the cross-sectional shape of the neck (especially near the nut). There are also several sizes of fret wire available, with traditional players often preferring thin frets, and metal shredders liking thick frets. Thin frets are considered better for playing chords, while thick frets allow lead guitarists to bend notes with less effort. An electric guitar with a neck which folds back called the "Foldaxe" was designed and built for Chet Atkins by Roger C. Field
Roger C. Field
Roger C. Field is an inventor with over 100 patents, an award winning industrial designer and a guitarist.He is best known as the inventor of the Foldaxe folding electric guitar. He has also been written about in Playboy magazine in ten countries and in Penthouse magazine four times in Europe...
. Steinberger
Steinberger
Steinberger refers to a series of distinctive electric guitars and bass guitars, designed and originally manufactured by Ned Steinberger. The word Steinberger can be used to refer to either the instruments themselves or the company that produced them...
guitars developed a line of exotic, carbon fiber instruments without headstocks, with tuning done on the bridge instead.
Just as neck shapes vary so do fingerboards. Fingerboards are the surface of the neck into which frets are set. This surface has a radius in cross section optimized to accommodate finger movement for different playing techniques. They typically range from nearly flat, a very large radius, to radically arched, a small radius. An example of a small radius, the vintage Fender Telecaster
Fender Telecaster
The Fender Telecaster, colloquially known as the Tele , is typically a dual-pickup, solid-body electric guitar made by Fender.Its simple yet effective design and revolutionary sound broke ground and set trends in electric guitar manufacturing and popular music...
typically has approximately a 7 inch radius fingerboard. Some manufacturers have experimented with fret design, fret layout, number of frets, and modification of the fingerboard surface for a variety of reasons. Some innovations were intended to improve playability by ergonomic means such as Warmoth Guitars
Warmoth Guitars
Warmoth Guitar Products, Inc. is an American manufacturer and distributor of electric guitar and bass parts, catering particularly to small scale manufacturers, custom builders, amateur constructors, and professional artists such as Rivers Cuomo and Matt Sharp of Weezer and Jeff Loomis...
compound radius fingerboard. Scalloped fingerboards added enhanced microtonality
Microtonal music
Microtonal music is music using microtones—intervals of less than an equally spaced semitone. Microtonal music can also refer to music which uses intervals not found in the Western system of 12 equal intervals to the octave.-Terminology:...
during fast legato runs. Fanned frets permit each string to have an optimal playing tension and enhanced musicality. Some guitars have no frets whatsoever and others, like the Gittler guitar
Gittler guitar
A Gittler Guitar is an experimental designed guitar created by Allan Gittler . Gittler felt that sentimental design references to acoustic guitars are unnecessary in an electronically amplified guitar, and designed his instrument with the objective of reducing the electric guitar to the most...
, have no neck in the traditional sense.
Sound and effects
While an acoustic guitarSteel-string acoustic guitar
A steel-string acoustic guitar is a modern form of guitar descended from the classical guitar, but strung with steel strings for a brighter, louder sound...
's sound is largely dependent on the vibration of the guitar's body and the air within it, the sound of an electric guitar is largely dependent on a magnetically induced electrical signal, generated by the vibration of metal strings near sensitive pickups. The signal is then "shaped
Shaping
Shaping can refer to:* In electricity generation, maintaining reliable delivery, for example by use of pumped storage hydroelectricity* Shaping , the reinforcement of successive approximations to train a type of behavior...
" on its path to the amplifier
Amplifier
Generally, an amplifier or simply amp, is a device for increasing the power of a signal.In popular use, the term usually describes an electronic amplifier, in which the input "signal" is usually a voltage or a current. In audio applications, amplifiers drive the loudspeakers used in PA systems to...
by using a range of effect devices or circuits that modify the tone and characteristics of the signal. The amplifiers and speakers used also add (intentional) coloration to
the final sound.
Built-in sound shaping
Electric guitars usually have up to three magnetic pickups. Identical pickups will have different tonesdepending on how near they are to the neck or bridge, with bridge pickups having a bright or trebly timbre,
and neck pickups being more warm or bassy. The type of pickup also affects tone, with dual-coil pickups
sounding warmer, thicker, perhaps even muddy, and single coil pickups sounding clear, bright, perhaps even biting.
Guitars do not have to be fitted with a uniform type of pickup: a common mixture is the "fat strat
Fat Strat
A Fat Strat is a name for a design of electric guitars that are based on the Fender Stratocaster, but have a humbucking pickup at the bridge position instead of a single-coil pickup...
" arrangement of one dual-coil at the bridge position, with single coils in the middle and neck positions.
Where there is more than one pickup, selector switching is fitted. These often allow the outputs of two or more pickups to be combined, so that two-pickup guitars have three-way switches, and three-pickup guitars have five-way switches. Further circuitry is sometimes provided to combine the pickups in different ways. For instance, phase switching places one pickup out of phase
Phase (waves)
Phase in waves is the fraction of a wave cycle which has elapsed relative to an arbitrary point.-Formula:The phase of an oscillation or wave refers to a sinusoidal function such as the following:...
with the other(s), leading to a "honky", "nasal", or "funky" sound. Individual pickups can also have their timbre altered by switches, typically coil tap
Coil tap
A coil tap is a wiring feature found on some electrical transformers, inductors and coil pickups, all of which are sets of wire coils. The coil tap are points in a wire coil where a conductive patch has been exposed .When the coil taps are disconnected, the coil operates as normal...
switch, which effectively short-circuits some of a dual-coil pickup's windings, giving a tone like a single coil pickup.
The final stages of on-board sound-shaping circuitry are the volume control (potentiometer
Potentiometer
A potentiometer , informally, a pot, is a three-terminal resistor with a sliding contact that forms an adjustable voltage divider. If only two terminals are used , it acts as a variable resistor or rheostat. Potentiometers are commonly used to control electrical devices such as volume controls on...
) and tone control (which "rolls off" the treble frequencies). Where there are individual volume controls for different pickups, and where pickup signals can be combined, they would affect the timbre of the final sound by adjusting the balance between pickups from a straight 50:50.
The strings fitted to the guitar also have an influence on tone. Rock musicians often prefer the lightest gauge of roundwound string
Strings (music)
A string is the vibrating element that produces sound in string instruments, such as the guitar, harp, piano, and members of the violin family. Strings are lengths of a flexible material kept under tension so that they may vibrate freely, but controllably. Strings may be "plain"...
, which are easier to bend, while jazz musicians go for heavier, flatwound strings with a rich, dark sound.
Recent guitar designs may incorporate much more complex circuitry than described above: see
Digital and synthesizer guitars, below.
Classic amplifier sounds
In the 1960s, some guitarists began exploring a wider range of tonal effects by distortingDistortion (guitar)
Distortion effects create "warm", "dirty" and "fuzzy" sounds by compressing the peaks of a musical instrument's sound wave and adding overtones. The three principal types of distortion effects are overdrive, distortion and fuzz. Distortion effects are sometimes called “gain” effects, as distorted...
the sound of the instrument. To do this, they used overdrive — increasing the gain
Gain
In electronics, gain is a measure of the ability of a circuit to increase the power or amplitude of a signal from the input to the output. It is usually defined as the mean ratio of the signal output of a system to the signal input of the same system. It may also be defined on a logarithmic scale,...
, of the preamplifier beyond the level at which the signal could be faithfully reproduced, resulting in a "fuzzy" sound. This effect is called "clipping
Clipping (audio)
Clipping is a form of waveform distortion that occurs when an amplifier is overdriven and attempts to deliver an output voltage or current beyond its maximum capability...
" by sound engineers, because when viewed with an oscilloscope
Oscilloscope
An oscilloscope is a type of electronic test instrument that allows observation of constantly varying signal voltages, usually as a two-dimensional graph of one or more electrical potential differences using the vertical or 'Y' axis, plotted as a function of time,...
, the wave forms of a distorted signal appear to have had their peaks "clipped off", approximating a square wave
Square wave
A square wave is a kind of non-sinusoidal waveform, most typically encountered in electronics and signal processing. An ideal square wave alternates regularly and instantaneously between two levels...
. This was not actually a new development in the instrument, but rather a shift of aesthetics
Aesthetics
Aesthetics is a branch of philosophy dealing with the nature of beauty, art, and taste, and with the creation and appreciation of beauty. It is more scientifically defined as the study of sensory or sensori-emotional values, sometimes called judgments of sentiment and taste...
, the sound having not been recognized as desirable previously.
Distortion achieved by overdrive necessarily involves high volumes and is therefore often combined with audio feedback
Audio feedback
Audio feedback is a special kind of positive feedback which occurs when a sound loop exists between an audio input and an audio output...
.
After distortion became popular, amplifier manufacturers included various provisions for it, making amps easier to overdrive, and providing separate "dirty" and "clean" channels so that distortion could easily be switched in and out. The distortion characteristics of vacuum tube
Vacuum tube
In electronics, a vacuum tube, electron tube , or thermionic valve , reduced to simply "tube" or "valve" in everyday parlance, is a device that relies on the flow of electric current through a vacuum...
amplifiers are particularly sought-after, and various attempts have been made to emulate them without the disadvantages (fragility, low power, expense) of actual tubes.
Guitar amplifiers have long included at least a few effects, often tone controls and a spring reverb
Spring Reverb
Spring Reverb is the third studio album released by the rock and roll jam band The Big Wu. This was the last album recorded with former member Jason Fladager before he departed the band.-Track listing:# "Break of Day"# "SPMC"# "Make Believers"...
unit. The use of offboard effects is assisted by the provision of effect loops, an arrangement that allows effects to be taken out of circuit when not required.
Effects units
Timbre
In music, timbre is the quality of a musical note or sound or tone that distinguishes different types of sound production, such as voices and musical instruments, such as string instruments, wind instruments, and percussion instruments. The physical characteristics of sound that determine the...
of the electric guitar was further modified by introducing an Effects unit
Effects unit
Effects units are electronic devices that alter how a musical instrument or other audio source sounds. Some effects subtly "color" a sound, while others transform it dramatically. Effects are used during live performances or in the studio, typically with electric guitar, keyboard and bass...
in its signal path. modifiers, wave-shaping circuits, voltage-controlled
Voltage
Voltage, otherwise known as electrical potential difference or electric tension is the difference in electric potential between two points — or the difference in electric potential energy per unit charge between two points...
oscillators, or digital delays. Effects units come in several formats, the most common of which are the stomp-box and the rack-mount unit. A "stomp box" (or "pedal") is a small metal or plastic box containing the circuitry which is placed on the floor in front of the musician and connected in line with the patch cord connected to the instrument. The box is typically controlled by one or more foot-pedal on-off switches and it typically contains only one or two effects. "Guitar pedalboard
Guitar pedalboard
A guitar pedalboard is a flat board or panel which serves as a container, patch bay and power supply for effects pedals for the electric guitar. Some pedalboards contain their own transformer and power cables, in order to power a number of different pedals. Pedalboards assist the player in...
s" are used by musicians who use multiple stomp-boxes; these may be a DIY project made with plywood
Plywood
Plywood is a type of manufactured timber made from thin sheets of wood veneer. It is one of the most widely used wood products. It is flexible, inexpensive, workable, re-usable, and can usually be locally manufactured...
or a commercial pedalboard.
A rack-mount effects unit may contain the identical electronic circuit, but is mounted in a standard 19" equipment rack. Usually, however, rack-mount effects units contain several different types of effects. They are typically controlled by knobs or switches on the front panel, and often by a MIDI digital control interface.
Typical effects include:-
- Effects such as stereo chorusChorus effectIn music, a chorus effect occurs when individual sounds with roughly the same timbre and nearly the same pitch converge and are perceived as one...
, phaserPhaser (effect)A phaser is an audio signal processing technique used to filter a signal by creating a series of peaks and troughs in the frequency spectrum. The position of the peaks and troughs is typically modulated so that they vary over time, creating a sweeping effect...
s and flangers which shift the pitch of the signal by a small and varying amount, creating swirling, shimmering and whooshing noises. - Effects such as octavers, which displace pitch by an exact musical interval.
- Distortion, such as transistorTransistorA transistor is a semiconductor device used to amplify and switch electronic signals and power. It is composed of a semiconductor material with at least three terminals for connection to an external circuit. A voltage or current applied to one pair of the transistor's terminals changes the current...
-style fuzz, or effects incorporating or emulating vacuum tubeVacuum tubeIn electronics, a vacuum tube, electron tube , or thermionic valve , reduced to simply "tube" or "valve" in everyday parlance, is a device that relies on the flow of electric current through a vacuum...
distortion. - FilterElectronic filterElectronic filters are electronic circuits which perform signal processing functions, specifically to remove unwanted frequency components from the signal, to enhance wanted ones, or both...
s such as wah-wahWah-wah pedalA wah-wah pedal is a type of guitar effects pedal that alters the tone of the signal to create a distinctive effect, mimicking the human voice... - Envelope shapers, such as compression/sustainCompression (electric guitar)Compression is a subtle effect primarily for electric guitar where the highest and lowest points of the sound wave are "limited". This boosts the volume of softer picked notes, while capping the louder ones, giving a more even level of volume...
or volume/swell. - Time-shift effects such as delayDelay (audio effect)Delay is an audio effect which records an input signal to an audio storage medium, and then plays it back after a period of time. The delayed signal may either be played back multiple times, or played back into the recording again, to create the sound of a repeating, decaying echo.-Early delay...
and reverbReverberationReverberation is the persistence of sound in a particular space after the original sound is removed. A reverberation, or reverb, is created when a sound is produced in an enclosed space causing a large number of echoes to build up and then slowly decay as the sound is absorbed by the walls and air...
.
Modern amplifier techniques
In the 1970s, as effects pedals proliferated, their sounds were combined with tube amp distortion at lower, more controlled volumes by using power attenuatorsAttenuator (electronics)
An attenuator is an electronic device that reduces the amplitude or power of a signal without appreciably distorting its waveform.An attenuator is effectively the opposite of an amplifier, though the two work by different methods...
such as Tom Scholz' Power Soak as well as re-amplified dummy loads such as Eddie Van Halen's use of a variac, power resistor, post-power-tube effects, and a final solid-state amp driving the guitar speakers. A variac is one approach to power-supply based power attenuation, to make the sound of power-tube distortion more practically available.
Recent amplifiers may include digital technology similar to modern effects pedals, including the ability to model or emulate a variety of classic amps.
Digital and software-based effects
A multi-effects device (also called a "multi-FX" device) is a single electronics effects pedal or rackmount device that contains many different electronic effects. In the late 1990s and throughout the 2000s, multi-FX manufacturers such as Zoom and KorgKorg
is a Japanese multinational corporation that manufactures electronic musical instruments, audio processors and guitar pedals, recording equipment, and electronic tuners...
produced devices that were increasingly feature-laden. Multi-FX devices allow several of the effects to be used together, and most devices allow users to set "preset" combinations of different effects including distortion, chorus, reverb, compression, and so on. This allows musicians to have quick on-stage access to different effects combinations. Some multi-FX pedals contain modelled versions of well-known effects pedals or amplifiers.
By the 1980s and 1990s, software effects became capable of replicating the analog effects used in the past. These new digital effects attempted to model the sound produced by analog effects and tube amps, to varying degrees of quality. There are many free guitar effects computer programs for computers that can be downloaded via the Internet. Now, computers with sound cards can be used as digital guitar effects processors. Although digital and software effects offer many advantages, many guitarists still use analog effects.
Synthesizer and digital guitars
In 2002, Gibson announced the first digital guitar, which performs analog-to-digital conversion internally. The resulting digital signal is delivered over a standard EthernetEthernet
Ethernet is a family of computer networking technologies for local area networks commercially introduced in 1980. Standardized in IEEE 802.3, Ethernet has largely replaced competing wired LAN technologies....
cable, eliminating cable-induced line noise. The guitar also provides independent signal processing for each individual string. Also, in 2003 amp
Instrument amplifier
An instrument amplifier is an electronic amplifier that converts the often barely audible or purely electronic signal from musical instruments such as an electric guitar, an electric bass, or an electric keyboard into an electronic signal capable of driving a loudspeaker that can be heard by the...
maker Line 6 released the Variax
Variax
Variax is a line of modeling guitars marketed and developed by Line 6. It claims to be the first guitar able to emulate the tones of other notable electric and acoustic guitars. It also has a banjo and a sitar tone...
guitar. It differs in some fundamental ways from conventional solid-body electrics. For example it uses piezoelectric pickups instead of the conventional electromagnetic ones, and has an on-board computer capable of modifying the sound of the guitar to model the sound of many instruments.
Playing techniques
Extended technique
Extended techniques are performance techniques used in music to describe unconventional, unorthodox, or non-traditional techniques of singing, or of playing musical instruments to obtain unusual sounds or instrumental timbres....
.
Extended techniques include:-
- String bending (or radial finger vibratoFinger vibratoFinger vibrato is vibrato produced on a string instrument by cyclic hand movements. Despite the name, normally the entire hand moves, and sometimes the entire upper arm. It can also refer to vibrato on some woodwind instruments, achieved by lowering one or more fingers over one of the uncovered...
.). This is not quite unique to the electric instrument, but is greatly facilitated by the light strings typically used on solid body guitars. - Neck bending, by holding the upper arm on the guitar body and bending the neck either to the front or pulling it back. This is used as a substitute for a tremolo bar, although not as effective and too powerful of force use could snap the guitar neck.
- The use of the whammy bar or "tremolo" arm, including the extreme technique of dive bombDive bombDive bomb is a guitar technique in which the tremolo bar is used to rapidly lower the pitch of a note, creating a sound considered to be similar to a bomb dropping. One of the most recognized pioneers of this technique is Jimi Hendrix. Other notable musicians who are widely known for using this...
ing. - TappingTappingTapping is a guitar playing technique, where a string is fretted and set into vibration as part of a single motion of being pushed onto the fretboard, as opposed to the standard technique being fretted with one hand and picked with the other...
, in which both hands are applied to the fretboard. - Pinch harmonics, sometimes called "squealies".
- Volume swells, in which the volume knob is repeatedly rolled to create a violin-like sound. Note that the same result can also be accomplished through the use of an external swell pedal, although the knob technique can enhance showmanship and conveniently eliminate the need for another pedal.
- Use of audio feedbackAudio feedbackAudio feedback is a special kind of positive feedback which occurs when a sound loop exists between an audio input and an audio output...
to enhance sustain and change timbre. - Substitution of another device for the plectrumPlectrumA plectrum is a small flat tool used to pluck or strum a stringed instrument. For hand-held instruments such as guitars and mandolins, the plectrum is often called a pick, and is a separate tool held in the player's hand...
, for instance the cello bow (as famously used by Jimmy PageJimmy PageJames Patrick "Jimmy" Page, OBE is an English multi-instrumentalist, songwriter, and record producer. He began his career as a studio session guitarist in London and was subsequently a member of The Yardbirds from 1966 to 1968, after which he founded the English rock band Led Zeppelin.Jimmy Page...
) and the e-bowE-BowThe EBow or ebow is a hand-held, battery-powered electronic device for playing the electric guitar, invented by Greg Heet in 1969...
, (a device using electromagnetic feedbackFeedbackFeedback describes the situation when output from an event or phenomenon in the past will influence an occurrence or occurrences of the same Feedback describes the situation when output from (or information about the result of) an event or phenomenon in the past will influence an occurrence or...
to vibrate strings without direct contact). Like feedback, these techniques increase sustain, bring out harmonics and change the acoustic envelope. - Sustainers built into the guitar itself.
- Use of slideSlide (guitar technique)A slide is a legato guitar technique where the player sounds one note, and then moves their finger up or down the fretboard to another fret. If done properly, the other note should also sound....
or bottlenecks. - Sometimes guitars are even adapted with extra modifications to alter the sound, such as Prepared guitarPrepared guitarA prepared guitar is a guitar that has had its timbre altered by placing various objects on or between the instrument's strings, including other extended techniques...
and 3rd bridge3rd BridgeThe 3rd bridge is an extended playing technique used on some string instruments , that allows a musician to produce distinctive timbres and overtones that are unavailable on a conventional string instrument with two bridges...
.
Other techniques such as axial finger vibrato
Finger vibrato
Finger vibrato is vibrato produced on a string instrument by cyclic hand movements. Despite the name, normally the entire hand moves, and sometimes the entire upper arm. It can also refer to vibrato on some woodwind instruments, achieved by lowering one or more fingers over one of the uncovered...
, pull-off
Pull-off
A pull-off is a stringed instrument technique performed by plucking a string by "pulling" the string off the fingerboard with one of the fingers being used to fret the note.-Performance and effect:...
s, hammer-on
Hammer-on
Hammer-on is a stringed instrument playing technique performed by sharply bringing a fretting-hand finger down on the fingerboard behind a fret, causing a note to sound. This technique is the opposite of the pull-off...
s, palm muting, harmonics
Guitar harmonics
A guitar harmonic is a musical note played by preventing or amplifying vibration of certain overtones of a guitar string. Music using harmonics can contain very high pitch notes difficult or impossible to reach by fretting...
and altered tunings are also used on the classical
Classical guitar
The classical guitar is a 6-stringed plucked string instrument from the family of instruments called chordophones...
and acoustic guitar
Acoustic guitar
An acoustic guitar is a guitar that uses only an acoustic sound board. The air in this cavity resonates with the vibrational modes of the string and at low frequencies, which depend on the size of the box, the chamber acts like a Helmholtz resonator, increasing or decreasing the volume of the sound...
. Shred guitar
Shred guitar
Shred guitar or shredding is lead electric guitar playing that relies heavily on fast guitar solos. While some critics argue that shred guitar is associated with "... sweep-picked arpeggios, diminished and harmonic minor scales, finger-tapping and ... whammy-bar abuse", several guitar...
is a genre involving a number of extended techniques.
Solid body
Solid body electric guitars have no vibrating soundboard to amplify string vibration as is the case with acoustic guitarAcoustic guitar
An acoustic guitar is a guitar that uses only an acoustic sound board. The air in this cavity resonates with the vibrational modes of the string and at low frequencies, which depend on the size of the box, the chamber acts like a Helmholtz resonator, increasing or decreasing the volume of the sound...
s. Solid body instruments depend on electric pickups and an amplifier
Amplifier
Generally, an amplifier or simply amp, is a device for increasing the power of a signal.In popular use, the term usually describes an electronic amplifier, in which the input "signal" is usually a voltage or a current. In audio applications, amplifiers drive the loudspeakers used in PA systems to...
(or amp) and speaker
Computer speaker
Computer speakers, or multimedia speakers, are speakers external to a computer, that disable the lower fidelity built-in speaker. They often have a low-power internal amplifier. The standard audio connection is a 3.5 mm stereo jack plug often color-coded lime green for computer sound cards...
. The solid body ensures that the amplified sound will reproduce the string vibration alone, thus avoiding the "wolf tones" and unwanted feedback associated with amplified acoustic guitars prior to the introduction of the piezoelectric sensor
Piezoelectric sensor
A piezoelectric sensor is a device that uses the piezoelectric effect to measure pressure, acceleration, strain or force by converting them to an electrical charge.-Applications:...
pickup
Pickup
Pickup, Pick up or Pick-up may refer to:-Technology:*Magnetic cartridge, also known as pickup, a transducer used for the playback of gramophone records on a turntable or phonograph...
. These guitars are generally made up of hardwood with a polyester or lacquer finish. In large production facilities, the wood is stored for 3 to 6 months in a wood-drying kiln
Kiln
A kiln is a thermally insulated chamber, or oven, in which a controlled temperature regime is produced. Uses include the hardening, burning or drying of materials...
before being cut to shape. Premium custom built guitars are frequently made with much older, hand selected wood.
One of the first solid body guitars was invented by Les Paul
Les Paul
Lester William Polsfuss —known as Les Paul—was an American jazz and country guitarist, songwriter and inventor. He was a pioneer in the development of the solid-body electric guitar which made the sound of rock and roll possible. He is credited with many recording innovations...
. Gibson
Gibson Guitar Corporation
The Gibson Guitar Corporation, formerly of Kalamazoo, Michigan and currently of Nashville, Tennessee, manufactures guitars and other instruments which sell under a variety of brand names...
did not present their 'Les Paul
Gibson Les Paul
The Gibson Les Paul was the result of a design collaboration between Gibson Guitar Corporation and the late jazz guitarist and electronics inventor Les Paul. In 1950, with the introduction of the Fender Telecaster to the musical market, electric guitars became a public craze. In reaction, Gibson...
' guitar prototypes to the public, as they did not believe it would catch on. The first mass-produced solid-body guitar was Fender's Broadcaster (later to become the 'Telecaster') first made in 1948, five years after Les Paul made his prototype
Prototype
A prototype is an early sample or model built to test a concept or process or to act as a thing to be replicated or learned from.The word prototype derives from the Greek πρωτότυπον , "primitive form", neutral of πρωτότυπος , "original, primitive", from πρῶτος , "first" and τύπος ,...
. The Gibson Les Paul appeared soon after to compete with the Broadcaster.
String-through body
When discussing electric guitar construction, the term string-through body is used to describe a type of solid body electric guitar body in which the strings are threaded through holes drilled into the bottom of the guitar body. The strings are typically held in place using metal ferruleFerrule
A ferrule is a name for types of metal objects, generally used for fastening, joining, or reinforcement...
s screwed or glued into the holes.
The advantages of a string-through body mostly relate to improvements in a guitar's sustain
Sustain
In music, sustain is a parameter of musical sound over time. As its name implies, it denotes the period of time during which the sound remains before it becomes inaudible, or silent.Additionally, sustain is the third of the four segments in an ADSR envelope...
and timbre
Timbre
In music, timbre is the quality of a musical note or sound or tone that distinguishes different types of sound production, such as voices and musical instruments, such as string instruments, wind instruments, and percussion instruments. The physical characteristics of sound that determine the...
. It is also by nature impossible to install a tremolo arm
Tremolo arm
A whammy bar, tremolo arm/bar, or vibrato arm/bar is a component of a guitar, used to add vibrato to the sound by changing the tension of the strings, typically at the bridge or tailpiece...
and have the string ends anchored through the body without eliminating whatever tonal benefits provided by the string-through body system. Tremolo systems change string tension by changing the physical length of the string. This requires the end of the string to be anchored to the (tremolo) bridge unit directly, instead of to the wood of the body.
Examples of string-through bodies on guitars include the Fender Telecaster Thinline
Fender Telecaster Thinline
The Fender Telecaster Thinline is an electric guitar made by the Fender company. It is a Telecaster with body cavities. Designed by German luthier Roger Rossmeisl in 1968, it was introduced in 1969 and updated with a pair of Fender Wide Range humbucking pickups, Bullet truss-rod and 3-bolt neck...
, Telecaster Deluxe
Fender Telecaster Deluxe
The Fender Telecaster Deluxe is a solid-body electric guitar originally produced from 1972 to 1981, and since re-issued by Fender in 2004 as the '72 Telecaster Deluxe.-History:...
, B.C.Rich IT Warlock and Mockingbird.
Chambered bodies
Some solid-bodied guitars, such as the Gibson Les PaulGibson Les Paul
The Gibson Les Paul was the result of a design collaboration between Gibson Guitar Corporation and the late jazz guitarist and electronics inventor Les Paul. In 1950, with the introduction of the Fender Telecaster to the musical market, electric guitars became a public craze. In reaction, Gibson...
Supreme, the PRS
PRS Guitars
PRS Guitars is an American guitar manufacturer headquartered in Stevensville, Maryland. PRS Guitars was founded by guitarist and luthier Paul Reed Smith in 1985. The company is one of the leading manufacturers of high-end electric guitars.-Materials:...
Singlecut, or the Fender Telecaster Thinline
Fender Telecaster Thinline
The Fender Telecaster Thinline is an electric guitar made by the Fender company. It is a Telecaster with body cavities. Designed by German luthier Roger Rossmeisl in 1968, it was introduced in 1969 and updated with a pair of Fender Wide Range humbucking pickups, Bullet truss-rod and 3-bolt neck...
among others, are built with hollows in the body. These hollows are designed specifically not to interfere with the critical bridge and string anchor point on the solid body. In the case of Gibson and PRS, these are called "chambered" bodies. The motivation for this may be to reduce weight, to achieve a semi-acoustic tone (see below) or both.
Semi-acoustic
Funk
Funk is a music genre that originated in the mid-late 1960s when African American musicians blended soul music, jazz and R&B into a rhythmic, danceable new form of music. Funk de-emphasizes melody and harmony and brings a strong rhythmic groove of electric bass and drums to the foreground...
, sixties pop, and indie rock
Indie rock
Indie rock is a genre of alternative rock that originated in the United Kingdom and the United States in the 1980s. Indie rock is extremely diverse, with sub-genres that include lo-fi, post-rock, math rock, indie pop, dream pop, noise rock, space rock, sadcore, riot grrrl and emo, among others...
. They generally have cello-style F-shaped sound holes. These can be blocked off to prevent feedback, as in B. B. King
B. B. King
Riley B. King , known by the stage name B.B. King, is an American blues guitarist and singer-songwriter.Rolling Stone magazine ranked him at No.3 on its list of the 100 greatest guitarists of all time. According to Edward M...
's famous Lucille
Lucille (guitar)
Lucille is the name given to B.B. King's guitars. They are usually black Gibson guitars similar to the ES-355.-The story of Lucille:In the winter of 1949, King played at a dance hall in Twist, Arkansas. In order to heat the hall, a barrel half-filled with kerosene was lit, a fairly common practice...
. Feedback can also be reduced by making them with a solid block in the middle of the soundbox. Advocates of semi-hollow-body guitars argue that they have greater resonance and sustain than true solid-body guitars, as a solid wood body.
Full hollowbody guitars
Full hollowbody guitars have large, deep bodies made of glued-together sheets or "plates" of wood, and are often capable of being played at the same volume as an acoustic guitarAcoustic guitar
An acoustic guitar is a guitar that uses only an acoustic sound board. The air in this cavity resonates with the vibrational modes of the string and at low frequencies, which depend on the size of the box, the chamber acts like a Helmholtz resonator, increasing or decreasing the volume of the sound...
, and therefore of being used unplugged at intimate gigs. They qualify as electric guitars inasmuch as they have fitted pickups. Historically, archtop guitars
with retrofit
Retrofit
Retrofitting refers to the addition of new technology or features to older systems.* power plant retrofit, improving power plant efficiency / increasing output / reducing emissions...
ted pickups were among the very earliest electric guitars. The instrument originated during the Jazz age
Jazz Age
The Jazz Age was a movement that took place during the 1920s or the Roaring Twenties from which jazz music and dance emerged. The movement came about with the introduction of mainstream radio and the end of the war. This era ended in the 1930s with the beginning of The Great Depression but has...
of the 1920s and 1930s, and are still considered the classic jazz guitar
Jazz guitar
The term jazz guitar may refer to either a type of guitar or to the variety of guitar playing styles used in the various genres which are commonly termed "jazz"...
(nicknamed "jazzbox"). Like semi-acoustic guitars, they often have f-shaped sound holes.
Having humbucker pickups (sometimes just a neck pickup) and usually strung heavlly, jazzboxes are noted for their warm, rich tone. A variation with single-coil pickups, and sometimes a Bigsby tremelo, has long been popular in country
Country music
Country music is a popular American musical style that began in the rural Southern United States in the 1920s. It takes its roots from Western cowboy and folk music...
and rockabilly
Rockabilly
Rockabilly is one of the earliest styles of rock and roll music, dating to the early 1950s.The term rockabilly is a portmanteau of rock and hillbilly, the latter a reference to the country music that contributed strongly to the style's development...
; these have a distinctly more "twangy", biting, tone than the classic jazzbox. The term "archtop" indicates a method of construction subtly different from the typical acoustic (or "folk" or "western" or "steel string" guitar): the top starts of as a moderately thick (1 inch or 2-3 cm) piece of wood,
which is then carved out into a thin (0.1in, 2-3mm) dome
Dome
A dome is a structural element of architecture that resembles the hollow upper half of a sphere. Dome structures made of various materials have a long architectural lineage extending into prehistory....
d shape, whereas conventional acoustic guitars have a thin, flat top.
Electric acoustic
Some steel-string acoustic guitarSteel-string acoustic guitar
A steel-string acoustic guitar is a modern form of guitar descended from the classical guitar, but strung with steel strings for a brighter, louder sound...
s are fitted with pickups purely as an alternative to using a separate microphone. They may also be fitted with a piezoelectric pickup under the bridge, attached to the bridge mounting plate, or with a low mass microphone
Microphone
A microphone is an acoustic-to-electric transducer or sensor that converts sound into an electrical signal. In 1877, Emile Berliner invented the first microphone used as a telephone voice transmitter...
(usually a condenser mic) inside the body of the guitar that will convert the vibrations in the body into electronic signals, or even combinations of these types of pickups, with an integral mixer/preamp/graphic equalizer. These are called electric acoustic guitar
Electric acoustic guitar
An Acoustic-electric guitar is an acoustic guitar fitted with pickups, a microphone or transducers. In acoustic-electric guitars, the transducers and microphones are always used because conventional pickups are not capable of picking up vibrations of non-magnetic materials...
s, and are regarded as acoustic guitars rather than electric guitars because the pickups do not produce a signal directly from the vibration of the strings, but rather from the vibration of the guitar top or body.
These should not be confused with semi-acoustic guitar
Semi-acoustic guitar
A semi-acoustic guitar or hollow-body electric is a type of electric guitar with both a sound box and one or more electric pickups. This is not the same as an electric acoustic guitar, which is an acoustic guitar with the addition of pickups or other means of amplification, either added by the...
s, which have pickups of the type found on solid body electric guitars, or solid-bodied hybrid guitar
Hybrid guitar
A hybrid guitar is an electric guitar with the ability to produce a signal with the tonal quality of an acoustic guitar in addition to a typical electric signal from a magnetic pickup, allowing a wide tonal pallette performers with a varied repertoire...
s with piezoelectric pickups.
One-string
Although rare, the one-string guitar is sometimes heard, particularly in Delta bluesDelta blues
The Delta blues is one of the earliest styles of blues music. It originated in the Mississippi Delta, a region of the United States that stretches from Memphis, Tennessee in the north to Vicksburg, Mississippi in the south, Helena, Arkansas in the west to the Yazoo River on the east. The...
, where improvised folk instruments were popular in the 1930s and 1940s. Eddie "One String" Jones had some regional success with a Mississippi blues musician Lonnie Pitchford
Lonnie Pitchford
Lonnie Pitchford was an American blues musician and instrument maker from Lexington, Mississippi. He was notable in that he was one of only a handful of young African American musicians from Mississippi who had learned and was continuing the Delta blues and country blues traditions of the older...
played a similar, homemade instrument. In a more contemporary style, Little Willie Joe, the inventor of the Unitar
UNITAR
The acronym UNITAR may refer to:* the United Nations Institute for Training and Research.* Universiti Tun Abdul Razak, an institution of tertiary education in Malaysia.In music:*The unitar, a one stringed guitar...
, had a rhythm and blues
Rhythm and blues
Rhythm and blues, often abbreviated to R&B, is a genre of popular African American music that originated in the 1940s. The term was originally used by record companies to describe recordings marketed predominantly to urban African Americans, at a time when "urbane, rocking, jazz based music with a...
instrumental
Instrumental
An instrumental is a musical composition or recording without lyrics or singing, although it might include some non-articulate vocal input; the music is primarily or exclusively produced by musical instruments....
hit in the 1950s with "Twitchy", recorded with the Rene Hall Orchestra.
Four-string
The best-known exponent of the four-string guitar, often called the tenor guitarTenor guitar
1932 Martin 0-18 T Sunburst Tenor Guitar|thumb|rightThe tenor guitar or four-string guitar is a slightly smaller, four-string relative of the steel-string acoustic guitar or electric guitar. The instrument was developed so that players of the four-string tenor banjo could double on the guitar...
was Tiny Grimes
Tiny Grimes
Lloyd "Tiny" Grimes was an American jazz and R&B guitarist. He was a member of the Art Tatum Trio from 1943 to 1944, was a backing musician on recording sessions, and later led his own bands, including a recording session with Charlie Parker...
, who played on 52nd Street
52nd Street (Manhattan)
52nd Street is a long one-way street traveling west to east across Midtown Manhattan.-Jazz center:The blocks of 52nd Street between Fifth Avenue and Seventh Avenue were renowned in the mid-20th century for the abundance of jazz clubs and lively street life...
with the bebop
Bebop
Bebop differed drastically from the straightforward compositions of the swing era, and was instead characterized by fast tempos, asymmetrical phrasing, intricate melodies, and rhythm sections that expanded on their role as tempo-keepers...
pers and played a major role in the Prestige Blues Swingers. Grimes' guitar omitted the bottom two strings. Deron Miller
Deron Miller
Deron John Miller is the lead singer, guitarist and songwriter for World Under Blood and CKY , which has been through various incarnations since being founded in 1998. CKY's most recent release was 2009's Carver City....
of CKY
CKY (band)
CKY is an American alternative metal band that formed in West Chester, Pennsylvania in 1998. Centred around core members Deron Miller , Chad I Ginsburg and Jess Margera , the band shares its name with a skateboarding and stunt video series produced by Bam Margera, brother of drummer Jess...
only uses four strings, but plays a six string guitar with the two highest strings removed. Many banjo players use this tuning: DGBE, mostly in Dixieland. Guitar players find this an easier transition than learning plectrum or tenor tuning.
Seven-string
Most Seven-string guitars add a low "B" string below the low "E". Both electric and classical guitarClassical guitar
The classical guitar is a 6-stringed plucked string instrument from the family of instruments called chordophones...
s exist designed for this tuning. A high "A" string above the high "E" instead of the low "B" is sometimes used. Another less common seven-string arrangement is a second G string situated beside the standard G string and tuned an octave higher, in the same manner as a twelve-stringed guitar (see below). Jazz guitarist
Jazz guitarist
Jazz guitarists are guitar players who play jazz music on the guitar using an approach to playing chords, melodies, and improvised solo lines which is called jazz guitar playing. The guitar has fulfilled the roles of accompanist and soloist in small and large ensembles and also as an unaccompanied...
s using a seven-string include veteran jazz guitarists George Van Eps
George Van Eps
George Van Eps was an American swing and Mainstream jazz guitarist noted both for his recordings as a leader, and for his work as a session musician. He was also the author of instructional books that explored his approach to guitar-based harmony...
, Lenny Breau
Lenny Breau
Leonard Harold "Lenny" Breau was a musician, guitar player, and music educator. He was known for blending many styles of music including: jazz, country, classical and flamenco guitar...
, Bucky Pizzarelli
Bucky Pizzarelli
John Paul "Bucky" Pizzarelli is an American Jazz guitarist and banjoist, and the father of jazz guitarist John Pizzarelli and upright bassist Martin Pizzarelli. Pizzarelli has also worked for NBC as a staffman for Dick Cavett and also ABC with Bobby Rosengarden in...
and his son John Pizzarelli
John Pizzarelli
John Paul Pizzarelli, Jr. is an American jazz guitarist, vocalist, songwriter and bandleader. He has had a lengthy career as a recording artist, performing for a variety of labels that include Telarc Records, RCA Records and Chesky Records, among others...
.
Seven-string electric guitars were popularized among rock players in the 1980s by Steve Vai
Steve Vai
Steven Siro "Steve" Vai is a three time Grammy Award-winning American guitarist, songwriter and producer who has sold over 15 million albums. Steve Vai is widely known as a flamboyant guitar virtuoso....
. Along with the Japanese guitar company Ibanez
Ibanez
is a Japanese guitar brand owned by Hoshino Gakki. Based in Nagoya, Aichi, Japan, Hoshino Gakki were one of the first Japanese musical instrument companies to gain a significant foothold in import guitar sales in the United States and Europe, as well as the first brand of guitars to mass produce...
, Vai created the Universe
Ibanez Universe
The Ibanez Universe is the world's first modern, commercial seven-string electric guitar, developed by Steve Vai and manufactured by Ibanez. The Universe is a seven-string version of the Ibanez JEM series, Vai's signature model...
series seven string guitars in the 1980s, with a double locking tremolo system for a seven string guitar. These models were based on Vai's six string signature series, the Ibanez Jem
Ibanez JEM
Ibanez JEM is an electric guitar manufactured by Ibanez and first produced in 1987. The guitar's most notable user is its co-designer, Steve Vai. As of 2010, there have been five sub-models of the JEM: the JEM7, JEM77, JEM777, JEM555 and the JEM333...
. Seven-string guitars experienced a resurgence in popularity in the 2000s, championed by Limp Bizkit
Limp Bizkit
Limp Bizkit is an American rock band from Jacksonville, Florida. Formed in 1995, the group's lineup consists of Fred Durst , Wes Borland , Sam Rivers , John Otto and DJ Lethal . The band achieved mainstream success with their second studio album Significant Other, released in 1999...
, Slayer
Slayer
Slayer is an American thrash metal band formed in Huntington Park, California, in 1981 by guitarists Jeff Hanneman and Kerry King. Slayer rose to fame with their 1986 release, Reign in Blood, and is credited as one of the "Big Four" thrash metal acts, along with Metallica, Megadeth and...
, KoRn
Korn
Korn is an American nu metal band from Bakersfield, California, formed in 1993. The current band line up includes four members: Jonathan Davis, James "Munky" Shaffer, Reginald "Fieldy" Arvizu, and Ray Luzier. The band was formed as an expansion of L.A.P.D.The band released their first demo album,...
, Fear Factory
Fear Factory
Fear Factory is an American industrial metal band. Formed in 1989, they have released seven full-length albums and a number of singles and remixes. Over the course of their career they have evolved from a succession of styles, as well as steadily pioneered a combination of the styles death metal,...
, Strapping Young Lad
Strapping Young Lad
Strapping Young Lad was a Canadian extreme metal band formed by Devin Townsend in Vancouver, British Columbia, in 1994. The band started as a one-man studio project; Townsend played most of the instruments on the 1995 debut album, Heavy as a Really Heavy Thing...
, Nevermore
Nevermore
Nevermore is an American heavy metal band from Seattle, Washington. Formed in 1991, they are known to incorporate elements from styles such as thrash, power, progressive, and neo-classical metal into their songs, and also makes use of acoustic guitars and a wide range of vocal styles.-Early years...
, Muse
Muse (band)
Muse are an English alternative rock band from Teignmouth, Devon, formed in 1994. The band consists of school friends Matthew Bellamy , Christopher Wolstenholme and Dominic Howard...
and other hard rock
Hard rock
Hard rock is a loosely defined genre of rock music which has its earliest roots in mid-1960s garage rock, blues rock and psychedelic rock...
/metal
Heavy metal music
Heavy metal is a genre of rock music that developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s, largely in the Midlands of the United Kingdom and the United States...
bands. Metal musicians often prefer the seven-string guitar for its extended lower range. The seven-string guitar has also played an essential role in progressive metal
Progressive metal
Progressive metal is a subgenre of heavy metal originating in the United Kingdom and North America in the late 1980s...
rock, and is commonly used in bands such as Dream Theater
Dream Theater
Dream Theater is an American progressive metal band formed in 1985 under the name Majesty by John Petrucci, John Myung, and Mike Portnoy while they attended Berklee College of Music in Massachusetts. They subsequently dropped out of their studies to further concentrate on the band that would...
, Pain of Salvation
Pain of Salvation
Pain of Salvation is a Swedish progressive rock band featuring Daniel Gildenlöw, who is the lyricist, chief composer, guitarist, and lead vocalist. Their sound is characterised by powerful, accentuated guitar work, broad vocal range, abrupt switching between heavy and calm passages, intense...
and by experimental guitarists such as Ben Levin.
Eight and nine-string
Eight-string electric guitars are rare, but not unused. One is played by Charlie HunterCharlie Hunter
for the New Zealand racehorse trainer and driver see: Charlie HunterCharlie Hunter is an American guitarist, composer and bandleader....
, which was manufactured by Novax Guitars
Novax Guitars
Novax Guitars is a guitar manufacturing company founded by Ralph Novak. His instruments feature frets which are not perpendicular to the instrument's neck , but rather fan out at various angles to allow for more comfortable, ergonomic playing and for proper intonation.Charlie Hunter, an acclaimed...
, the largest manufacturer of 8- to 14-strings is Warr Guitars. Their models are also used by Trey Gunn
Trey Gunn
Trey Gunn is an American musician, known for his membership in progressive rock band King Crimson from 1994 to 2003, playing Warr Guitar and Chapman Stick.-Biography:...
(ex King Crimson
King Crimson
King Crimson are a rock band founded in London, England in 1969. Often categorised as a foundational progressive rock group, the band have incorporated diverse influences and instrumentation during their history...
) who has his own signature line from the company. Similarly, Mårten Hagström
Mårten Hagström
Mårten Hagström, , is the rhythm guitarist for the Swedish experimental metal band Meshuggah. He joined the band after the release of their first album, which allowed Jens Kidman to focus on his vocal performances. He is known for his strong and complex rhythm guitar playing...
and Fredrik Thordendal
Fredrik Thordendal
Fredrik Thordendal is the lead guitarist and a founding member of the Swedish experimental metal band Meshuggah.He, along with Meshuggah's rhythm guitarist Mårten Hagström were rated #35 by Guitar World in the top 100 greatest heavy metal guitarists of all-time.-Musical career:Under the name...
of Meshuggah
Meshuggah
Meshuggah is an extreme metal band from Umeå, Sweden, formed in 1987. Meshuggah's line-up has primarily consisted of founding members vocalist Jens Kidman and lead guitarist Fredrik Thordendal, drummer Tomas Haake, who joined in 1990, and rhythm guitarist Mårten Hagström, who joined in 1992...
used 8-string guitars made by Nevborn Guitars and now guitars by Ibanez
Ibanez
is a Japanese guitar brand owned by Hoshino Gakki. Based in Nagoya, Aichi, Japan, Hoshino Gakki were one of the first Japanese musical instrument companies to gain a significant foothold in import guitar sales in the United States and Europe, as well as the first brand of guitars to mass produce...
. Munky of the nu metal
Nu metal
Nu metal is a subgenre of heavy metal. It is a fusion genre which combines elements of heavy metal with other genres, including grunge and hip hop...
band KoRn
Korn
Korn is an American nu metal band from Bakersfield, California, formed in 1993. The current band line up includes four members: Jonathan Davis, James "Munky" Shaffer, Reginald "Fieldy" Arvizu, and Ray Luzier. The band was formed as an expansion of L.A.P.D.The band released their first demo album,...
is also known to use seven-string Ibanez guitars and it is rumored that he is planning to release a K8 eight-string guitar similar to his K7 seven-string guitar. Another Ibanez player is Tosin Abasi
Tosin Abasi
Tosin Abasi is a Washington DC based virtuoso guitarist who is best known for playing in the instrumental progressive metal band Animals As Leaders. Before Animals as Leaders was formed, he was the guitarist for the technical metalcore band Reflux...
, lead guitarist of the progressive metal
Progressive metal
Progressive metal is a subgenre of heavy metal originating in the United Kingdom and North America in the late 1980s...
band Animals as Leaders
Animals as Leaders
Animals as Leaders is an American, Washington, D.C.–based instrumental progressive metal band, formed by guitarist Tosin Abasi in 2007 which now includes guitarist Javier Reyes and drummer Navene Koperweis. The self-titled debut album was released in April 2009 by Prosthetic Records...
, who uses an Ibanez RG2228 to mix bright chords with very heavy low riffs on the 7 and 8th strings. Stephen Carpenter
Stephen Carpenter
Stephen Carpenter is an American musician known as the co-founder and lead guitarist of the alternative metal band Deftones. His guitar technique makes use of both ringing open strings and dissonant chord voicings, as well as stock power chords in polyrhythms...
of Deftones
Deftones
Deftones are an American alternative metal band from Sacramento, California, founded in 1988. The band consists of Chino Moreno , Stephen Carpenter , Chi Cheng , Frank Delgado , and Abe Cunningham . Currently Sergio Vega is standing in on bass while Cheng recovers from a car accident...
also switched from 7 to 8 string in 2008 and released his signature STEF B-8 with ESP Guitars
ESP Guitars
, located in North Hollywood, California, is an American-based, Japanese-owned manufacturer of electric guitars and basses.- History :In 1975, Hisatake Shibuya opened a shop called Electric Sound Products in Tokyo. It provided custom replacement parts for guitars. In 1976, ESP gained a reputation...
. In 2008, Ibanez released the Ibanez RG2228-GK which is the first mass produced eight-string guitar. Jethro Tull
Jethro Tull (band)
Jethro Tull are a British rock group formed in 1967. Their music is characterised by the vocals, acoustic guitar, and flute playing of Ian Anderson, who has led the band since its founding, and the guitar work of Martin Barre, who has been with the band since 1969.Initially playing blues rock with...
's first album uses a nine-string guitar on one track. Minarik Guitars manufactures the "Inferno V" 9 stringed guitar that has the top three strings doubled up with strings that are an octave higher, like 12 stringed guitars. Bill Kelliher
Bill Kelliher
Bill Kelliher is a guitarist in the Atlanta heavy metal band Mastodon. He is a native of Victor, New York. He shares guitar duties with Brent Hinds, playing mainly complex rhythm parts. Kelliher is married, with two young sons—the eldest one named Harrison, after Harrison Ford of Star Wars fame...
, guitarist for the heavy metal
Heavy metal music
Heavy metal is a genre of rock music that developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s, largely in the Midlands of the United Kingdom and the United States...
group Mastodon
Mastodon (band)
Mastodon is an American heavy metal band from Atlanta, Georgia, formed in 1999. The band is composed of bassist/vocalist Troy Sanders, guitarist/vocalist Brent Hinds, guitarist Bill Kelliher and drummer/vocalist Brann Dailor...
, worked with First Act
First Act
First Act is a musical instrument manufacturer, which producers guitars, bass guitars, guitar and bass accessories, drum sets, percussion instruments, amplifiers as well as student-line clarinets, saxophones, and trumpets...
on a custom mass-produced nine-string guitar.
Ten-string
B.C.Rich manufacture a ten-string six-courseCourse (music)
A course is a pair or more of adjacent strings tuned to unison or an octave and usually played together as if a single string. It may also refer to a single string normally played on its own on an instrument with other multi-string courses, for example the bass string on a nine string baroque...
electric guitar known as the Bich, whose radical shape was specifically designed to allow the machine heads for the four secondary strings to be positioned on the body, avoiding the head-heaviness of many electric twelve-string guitars. However many players bought it for the body shape or electrics and simply removed the extra strings. The company recognized this and released six-string models of the Bich, but ten-string models also remain in production.
In October 2008, a ten-string electric jazz guitar
Jazz guitar
The term jazz guitar may refer to either a type of guitar or to the variety of guitar playing styles used in the various genres which are commonly termed "jazz"...
by Mike Shishkov was demonstrated at the 3rd International Ten String Guitar Festival. This instrument was based on the ten-string extended-range classical guitar.
Twelve-string
Twelve string electric guitars feature six pairs of strings, usually with each pair tuned to the same note. The extra E, A, D, and G strings add a note one octave above, and the extra B and E strings are in unison. The pairs of strings are played together as one, so the technique and tuning are the same as a conventional guitar, although creating a much fuller tone. They are used almost solely to play harmony and rhythm. They are relatively common in folk rockFolk rock
Folk rock is a musical genre combining elements of folk music and rock music. In its earliest and narrowest sense, the term referred to a genre that arose in the United States and the UK around the mid-1960s...
music. Lead Belly is the folk artist most identified with the twelve-string guitar, usually acoustic with a pickup.
George Harrison
George Harrison
George Harrison, MBE was an English musician, guitarist, singer-songwriter, actor and film producer who achieved international fame as lead guitarist of The Beatles. Often referred to as "the quiet Beatle", Harrison became over time an admirer of Indian mysticism, and introduced it to the other...
of The Beatles
The Beatles
The Beatles were an English rock band, active throughout the 1960s and one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed acts in the history of popular music. Formed in Liverpool, by 1962 the group consisted of John Lennon , Paul McCartney , George Harrison and Ringo Starr...
and Roger McGuinn
Roger McGuinn
James Roger McGuinn is an American singer-songwriter and guitarist. He is best known for being the lead singer and lead guitarist on many of The Byrds' records...
of The Byrds
The Byrds
The Byrds were an American rock band, formed in Los Angeles, California in 1964. The band underwent multiple line-up changes throughout its existence, with frontman Roger McGuinn remaining the sole consistent member until the group disbanded in 1973...
brought the electric twelve-string to notability in rock and roll
Rock and roll
Rock and roll is a genre of popular music that originated and evolved in the United States during the late 1940s and early 1950s, primarily from a combination of African American blues, country, jazz, and gospel music...
. During the Beatles' first trip to the US, in February 1964, Harrison received a new "360/12
Rickenbacker 360/12
The Rickenbacker 360/12 is an electric guitar made by the Rickenbacker company; it was among the first electric twelve-string guitars. This instrument is visually similar to the Rickenbacker 360...
" model guitar from the Rickenbacker
Rickenbacker
Rickenbacker International Corporation, also known as Rickenbacker, is an electric and bass guitar manufacturer based in Santa Ana, California...
company, a 12-string electric made to look onstage like a 6-string. He began using the 360 in the studio on Lennon's "You Can't Do That" and other songs. Roger McGuinn began using electric 12-string guitars to create the jangly sound of The Byrds. Another notable guitarist to utilize electric 12-string guitars is Jimmy Page
Jimmy Page
James Patrick "Jimmy" Page, OBE is an English multi-instrumentalist, songwriter, and record producer. He began his career as a studio session guitarist in London and was subsequently a member of The Yardbirds from 1966 to 1968, after which he founded the English rock band Led Zeppelin.Jimmy Page...
, the guitarist with hard rock-heavy metal and rock group Led Zeppelin.
3rd bridge
The 3rd bridge guitar is an electric prepared guitarPrepared guitar
A prepared guitar is a guitar that has had its timbre altered by placing various objects on or between the instrument's strings, including other extended techniques...
with an additional 3rd bridge. This can be a normal guitar with for instance a screwdriver placed under the strings, but can also be a custom made instrument. Lee Ranaldo
Lee Ranaldo
Lee M. Ranaldo is an American singer, guitarist, writer, record producer, and visual artist, best known as a co-founder of the alternative rock band Sonic Youth...
of Sonic Youth
Sonic Youth
Sonic Youth is an American alternative rock band from New York City, formed in 1981. The current lineup consists of Thurston Moore , Kim Gordon , Lee Ranaldo , Steve Shelley , and Mark Ibold .In their early career, Sonic Youth was associated with the No Wave art and music scene in New York City...
plays with a 3rd bridge.
Double neck guitar
Double neck guitar
A multi-neck guitar is a guitar that has multiple fingerboard necks. They exist in both electric and acoustic versions. Although multi-neck guitars are quite common today, they are not by any means a modern invention...
(or, less commonly, "twin-neck") guitars enable guitarists to play guitar and bass guitar or, more commonly, a six-string and twelve-string. In the mid-1960s, one of the first players to use this type of guitar was Paul Revere & the Raiders
Paul Revere & the Raiders
Paul Revere & the Raiders is an American rock band that saw considerable U.S. mainstream success in the second half of the 1960s and early 1970s with hits such as "Kicks" , "Hungry" , "Him Or Me - What's It Gonna Be?" and the 1971 No...
' guitarist Drake Levin
Drake Levin
Drake Maxwell Levinshefski was an American musician who performed under the stage name Drake Levin. He was best known as the guitarist for Paul Revere & the Raiders....
. Another early user was John McLaughlin
John McLaughlin (musician)
John McLaughlin , also known as Mahavishnu John McLaughlin, is an English guitarist, bandleader and composer...
, but the double-neck guitar was popularized by Jimmy Page
Jimmy Page
James Patrick "Jimmy" Page, OBE is an English multi-instrumentalist, songwriter, and record producer. He began his career as a studio session guitarist in London and was subsequently a member of The Yardbirds from 1966 to 1968, after which he founded the English rock band Led Zeppelin.Jimmy Page...
, who used a custom-made Gibson EDS-1275
Gibson EDS-1275
The Gibson EDS-1275 is a doubleneck Gibson electric guitar introduced in 1963 and still in production. Popularized by both rock and jazz musicians such as Jimmy Page and John McLaughlin, it was called "the coolest guitar in rock."-History:...
to perform "Stairway to Heaven
Stairway to Heaven
"Stairway to Heaven" is a song by the English rock band Led Zeppelin, released in late 1971. It was composed by guitarist Jimmy Page and vocalist Robert Plant for the band's untitled fourth studio album . The song, running eight minutes and two seconds, is composed of several sections, which...
" and "The Song Remains the Same
The Song Remains the Same (song)
"The Song Remains the Same" is a song by the English rock group Led Zeppelin. It is the opening track from their 1973 album, Houses of the Holy.-Overview:...
", although "Stairway to Heaven" was actually recorded using a Fender Telecaster and a Fender XII electric twelve string. Don Felder
Don Felder
Donald William "Don" Felder is an American musician and songwriter, best known for his work as lead guitarist for the Eagles from 1974 to 1980 and again from 1994 to 2001.-Early life and influences:...
of the Eagles also used the Gibson EDS-1275 during the Hotel California
Hotel California
Hotel California is the fifth studio album released by the American rock band the Eagles, in late 1976. It is the first Eagles album without founding member Bernie Leadon and the first album with Joe Walsh. It is also the last album featuring original bass player and singer Randy Meisner...
tour. Muse guitarist and vocalist Matthew Bellamy
Matthew Bellamy
Matthew James Bellamy is an English musician, singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist, best known as the lead vocalist, lead guitarist, pianist, and main songwriter of the alternative rock band Muse.-Early life:...
uses a silver Manson Double Neck on his bands' The Resistance Tour
The Resistance Tour
The Resistance Tour was a worldwide concert tour by English alternative rock band Muse in support of their fifth studio album The Resistance. The opening European leg began on 22 October 2009 and ended on 4 December 2009, comprising 30 shows. The second leg, which began on 7 January 2010, included...
.
Popular music
Popular musicPopular music
Popular music belongs to any of a number of musical genres "having wide appeal" and is typically distributed to large audiences through the music industry. It stands in contrast to both art music and traditional music, which are typically disseminated academically or orally to smaller, local...
and rock groups often use the electric guitar in two roles: as a rhythm guitar
Rhythm guitar
Rhythm guitar is a technique and rôle that performs a combination of two functions: to provide all or part of the rhythmic pulse in conjunction with singers or other instruments; and to provide all or part of the harmony, ie. the chords, where a chord is a group of notes played together...
which provides the chord
Chord (music)
A chord in music is any harmonic set of two–three or more notes that is heard as if sounding simultaneously. These need not actually be played together: arpeggios and broken chords may for many practical and theoretical purposes be understood as chords...
sequence or "progression
Chord progression
A chord progression is a series of musical chords, or chord changes that "aims for a definite goal" of establishing a tonality founded on a key, root or tonic chord. In other words, the succession of root relationships...
" and sets out the "beat
Beat (music)
The beat is the basic unit of time in music, the pulse of the mensural level . In popular use, the beat can refer to a variety of related concepts including: tempo, meter, rhythm and groove...
" (as part of a rhythm section
Rhythm section
A rhythm section is a collection of musicians who make up a section of instruments which provides the accompaniment section of the music, giving the music its rhythmic texture and pulse, also serving as a rhythmic reference for the rest of the band...
), and a lead guitar
Lead guitar
Lead guitar is a guitar part which plays melody lines, instrumental fill passages, guitar solos, and occasionally, some riffs within a song structure...
, which is used to perform melody
Melody
A melody , also tune, voice, or line, is a linear succession of musical tones which is perceived as a single entity...
lines, melodic instrumental fill passages
Fill (music)
In popular music, a fill is a short musical passage, riff, or rhythmic sound which helps to sustain the listener's attention during a break between the phrases of a melody....
, and guitar solo
Guitar solo
In popular music, a guitar solo is a melodic passage, section, or entire piece of music written for an electric guitar or an acoustic guitar. Guitar solos, which often contain varying degrees of improvisation, are used in many styles of popular music such as blues, jazz, rock and metal styles such...
s. In some rock or metal bands with two guitarists, the two performers may perform as a guitar tandem
Multiple guitar players
In rock and other related genres, bands often have multiple electric and/or acoustic guitar players to perform the different musical parts, such as instrumental melodies, "licks", riffs, guitar solos, and chords. The band can divide up the roles by assigning one or more performers the role of lead...
, and trade off the lead guitar and rhythm guitar roles. In bands with a single guitarist, the guitarist may switch between these two roles, playing chords to accompany the singer's lyrics, and then playing a guitar solo in the middle of the song.
In the most commercially available and consumed pop and rock genres, electric guitars tend to dominate their acoustic
Acoustic guitar
An acoustic guitar is a guitar that uses only an acoustic sound board. The air in this cavity resonates with the vibrational modes of the string and at low frequencies, which depend on the size of the box, the chamber acts like a Helmholtz resonator, increasing or decreasing the volume of the sound...
cousins in both the recording studio
Recording studio
A recording studio is a facility for sound recording and mixing. Ideally both the recording and monitoring spaces are specially designed by an acoustician to achieve optimum acoustic properties...
and the live venue, especially in the "harder" genres such as heavy metal
Heavy metal music
Heavy metal is a genre of rock music that developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s, largely in the Midlands of the United Kingdom and the United States...
and hard rock
Hard rock
Hard rock is a loosely defined genre of rock music which has its earliest roots in mid-1960s garage rock, blues rock and psychedelic rock...
. However the acoustic guitar
Acoustic guitar
An acoustic guitar is a guitar that uses only an acoustic sound board. The air in this cavity resonates with the vibrational modes of the string and at low frequencies, which depend on the size of the box, the chamber acts like a Helmholtz resonator, increasing or decreasing the volume of the sound...
remains a popular choice in country
Country music
Country music is a popular American musical style that began in the rural Southern United States in the 1920s. It takes its roots from Western cowboy and folk music...
, western
Western music (North America)
Western music originated as a form of American folk music. Originally composed by and about the people who settled and worked throughout the Western United States and Western Canada. Directly related musically to old English, Scottish, and Irish folk ballads, Western music celebrates the life of...
and especially bluegrass music
Bluegrass music
Bluegrass music is a form of American roots music, and a sub-genre of country music. It has mixed roots in Scottish, English, Welsh and Irish traditional music...
, and it is widely used in folk music
Folk music
Folk music is an English term encompassing both traditional folk music and contemporary folk music. The term originated in the 19th century. Traditional folk music has been defined in several ways: as music transmitted by mouth, as music of the lower classes, and as music with unknown composers....
.
Jazz and jazz fusion
Jazz guitarJazz guitar
The term jazz guitar may refer to either a type of guitar or to the variety of guitar playing styles used in the various genres which are commonly termed "jazz"...
playing styles include rhythm guitar
Rhythm guitar
Rhythm guitar is a technique and rôle that performs a combination of two functions: to provide all or part of the rhythmic pulse in conjunction with singers or other instruments; and to provide all or part of the harmony, ie. the chords, where a chord is a group of notes played together...
-style "comping
Comping
Comping is a term used in jazz music to describe the chords, rhythms, and countermelodies that keyboard players or guitar players use to support a jazz musician's improvised solo or melody lines....
" (accompanying) with jazz chord voicings
Voicing (music)
In music composition and arranging, a voicing is the instrumentation and vertical spacing and ordering of the pitches in a chord...
(and in some cases, walking basslines) and "blowing" (improvising solos) over jazz chord progression
Chord progression
A chord progression is a series of musical chords, or chord changes that "aims for a definite goal" of establishing a tonality founded on a key, root or tonic chord. In other words, the succession of root relationships...
s with jazz-style phrasing and ornaments. The accompanying style for electric guitar in most jazz
Jazz
Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...
styles differs from the way chordal instruments accompany in many popular styles of music. In rock and pop, the rhythm guitarist usually performs the chords in dense and regular fashion which sets out the beat of a tune. In contrast, in many modern jazz styles, the guitarist plays much more sparsely, intermingling periodic chords and delicate voicings into pauses in the melody or solo. Jazz chord voicings are usually rootless
Root (chord)
In music theory, the root of a chord is the note or pitch upon which a triadic chord is built. For example, the root of the major triad C-E-G is C....
and emphasize the 3rd and 7th notes of the chord.
When jazz guitar players improvise
Improvisation
Improvisation is the practice of acting, singing, talking and reacting, of making and creating, in the moment and in response to the stimulus of one's immediate environment and inner feelings. This can result in the invention of new thought patterns, new practices, new structures or symbols, and/or...
, they use the scales, modes, and arpeggios associated with the chords in a tune's chord progression. Jazz guitarists have to learn how to use scales (whole tone scale, chromatic scale, etc.) to solo over chord progressions. Jazz guitar improvising is not merely the recitation of jazz scales and rapid arpeggios. Jazz guitarists often try to imbue their melodic phrasing with the sense of natural breathing and legato phrasing used by horn players such as saxophone players. As well, a jazz guitarists' solo improvisations have to have a rhythmic drive and "time feel" that creates a sense of "swing
Swing (jazz performance style)
In jazz and related musical styles, the term swing is used to describe the sense of propulsive rhythmic "feel" or "groove" created by the musical interaction between the performers, especially when the music creates a "visceral response" such as feet-tapping or head-nodding...
" and "groove".
In addition to the traditional rhythm/comping and lead/blowing roles, some jazz guitarists use the electric instrument to play unaccompanied, combining harmony and melody to form a complete piece of music, like classical guitarists.
Most jazz guitarists play hollow body instruments, but solid body guitars are also used. Hollow body instruments were the first guitars used in jazz in the 1930s and 1940s. During the 1970s jazz fusion
Jazz fusion
Jazz fusion is a musical fusion genre that developed from mixing funk and R&B rhythms and the amplification and electronic effects of rock, complex time signatures derived from non-Western music and extended, typically instrumental compositions with a jazz approach to lengthy group improvisations,...
era, many jazz guitarists switched to the solid body guitars that dominated the rock world.
Contemporary classical music
Until the 1950s, the acoustic, nylon-stringed classical guitarClassical guitar
The classical guitar is a 6-stringed plucked string instrument from the family of instruments called chordophones...
was the only type of guitar favored by classical, or art music
Art music
Art music is an umbrella term used to refer to musical traditions implying advanced structural and theoretical considerations and a written musical tradition...
composers. In the 1950s a few contemporary classical
Contemporary classical music
Contemporary classical music can be understood as belonging to the period that started in the mid-1970s with the retreat of modernism. However, the term may also be employed in a broader sense to refer to all post-1945 modern musical forms.-Categorization:...
composers began to use the electric guitar in their compositions. Examples of such works include Karlheinz Stockhausen
Karlheinz Stockhausen
Karlheinz Stockhausen was a German composer, widely acknowledged by critics as one of the most important but also controversial composers of the 20th and early 21st centuries. Another critic calls him "one of the great visionaries of 20th-century music"...
's Gruppen
Gruppen (Stockhausen)
Gruppen for three orchestras is amongst the best-known compositions of German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen, and is Work Number 6 in the composer's catalog of works. Gruppen is "a landmark in 20th-century music . ....
(1955–57); Donald Erb
Donald Erb
Donald Erb was an American composer best known for large orchestral works such as Concerto for Brass and Orchestra and Ritual Observances.-Early years:...
's String Trio (1966), Morton Feldman
Morton Feldman
Morton Feldman was an American composer, born in New York City.A major figure in 20th century music, Feldman was a pioneer of indeterminate music, a development associated with the experimental New York School of composers also including John Cage, Christian Wolff, and Earle Brown...
's The Possibility of a New Work for Electric Guitar (1966); George Crumb
George Crumb
George Crumb is an American composer of contemporary classical music. He is noted as an explorer of unusual timbres, alternative forms of notation, and extended instrumental and vocal techniques. Examples include seagull effect for the cello , metallic vibrato for the piano George Crumb (born...
's Songs, Drones, and Refrains of Death (1968); Hans Werner Henze
Hans Werner Henze
Hans Werner Henze is a German composer of prodigious output best known for "his consistent cultivation of music for the theatre throughout his life"...
's Versuch über Schweine (1968); Francis Thorne
Francis Thorne
Francis Thorne is an American composer of contemporary classical music and grandson of the writer Gustav Kobbé.-Life:...
's Sonar Plexus (1968) and Liebesrock (1968–69), Michael Tippett
Michael Tippett
Sir Michael Kemp Tippett OM CH CBE was an English composer.In his long career he produced a large body of work, including five operas, three large-scale choral works, four symphonies, five string quartets, four piano sonatas, concertos and concertante works, song cycles and incidental music...
's The Knot Garden
The Knot Garden
The Knot Garden is the third opera by composer Michael Tippett for which he wrote the original English libretto. The work had its first performance at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, on 2 December 1970 conducted by Sir Colin Davis and produced by Sir Peter Hall...
(1965–70); Leonard Bernstein
Leonard Bernstein
Leonard Bernstein August 25, 1918 – October 14, 1990) was an American conductor, composer, author, music lecturer and pianist. He was among the first conductors born and educated in the United States of America to receive worldwide acclaim...
's MASS (1971) and Slava! (1977); Louis Andriessen
Louis Andriessen
Louis Andriessen is a Dutch composer and pianist based in Amsterdam. He teaches composition at the Royal Conservatory of The Hague...
's De Staat (1972–76); Helmut Lachenmann
Helmut Lachenmann
Helmut Lachenmann is a German composer associated with musique concrète instrumentale.-Life and works:...
's Fassade, für grosses Orchester (1973, rev. 1987), Steve Reich
Steve Reich
Stephen Michael "Steve" Reich is an American composer who together with La Monte Young, Terry Riley, and Philip Glass is a pioneering composer of minimal music...
's Electric Counterpoint
Electric Counterpoint
Electric Counterpoint is a minimalist composition written by American composer Steve Reich. The piece consists of three movements, "Fast", "Slow", and "Fast"...
(1987), Arvo Pärt
Arvo Pärt
Arvo Pärt is an Estonian classical composer and one of the most prominent living composers of sacred music. Since the late 1970s, Pärt has worked in a minimalist style that employs his self-made compositional technique, tintinnabuli. His music also finds its inspiration and influence from...
's Miserere (1989/92), György Kurtág
György Kurtág
György Kurtág is a Hungarian composer of contemporary music.- Biography :György Kurtág was born in Lugoj in the Banat region, Romania.In 1946, he began his studies at the Franz Liszt Academy of Music in Budapest, where he met his wife, Márta, and also György Ligeti, who became a close friend...
's Grabstein für Stephan (1989), and countless works composed for the quintet of Ástor Piazzolla
Ástor Piazzolla
Ástor Pantaleón Piazzolla was an Argentine tango composer and bandoneón player. His oeuvre revolutionized the traditional tango into a new style termed nuevo tango, incorporating elements from jazz and classical music...
.
Alfred Schnittke
Alfred Schnittke
Alfred Schnittke ; November 24, 1934 – August 3, 1998) was a Russian and Soviet composer. Schnittke's early music shows the strong influence of Dmitri Shostakovich. He developed a polystylistic technique in works such as the epic First Symphony and First Concerto Grosso...
also used electric guitar in several works, like the "Requiem", "Concerto Grosso N°2" and "Symphony N°1".
In the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, a growing number of composers (many of them composer-performers who had grown up playing the instrument in rock bands) began writing contemporary classical music for the electric guitar. These include Frank Zappa
Frank Zappa
Frank Vincent Zappa was an American composer, singer-songwriter, electric guitarist, record producer and film director. In a career spanning more than 30 years, Zappa wrote rock, jazz, orchestral and musique concrète works. He also directed feature-length films and music videos, and designed...
, Shawn Lane
Shawn Lane
Shawn Lane was an American musician. Although piano was his first instrument, he quickly became a noted player in underground guitar circles and joined Black Oak Arkansas when he was just fourteen years old....
, Steven Mackey
Steven Mackey
Steven Mackey is an American composer, guitarist, and music educator.-Life:As a musician growing up listening to and performing vernacular American musics as well as classical music, Mackey's compositions are informed by rock and jazz, though in an avant-garde vein...
, Nick Didkovsky
Nick Didkovsky
Nick Didkovsky is a composer, guitarist, computer music programmer, and leader of the band Doctor Nerve. He is a former student of Christian Wolff, Pauline Oliveros and Gerald Shapiro....
, Scott Johnson
Scott Johnson (composer)
Scott Johnson is an American composer known for his pioneering use of recorded speech as musical melody. He was the recipient of a 2006 Guggenheim fellowship.- John Somebody :...
, Lois V Vierk
Lois V Vierk
Lois V Vierk is a "post-minimalist" or "totalist" composer who lives in New York City.She received a B.A. degree in piano and ethnomusicology from UCLA in 1974. She then attended Cal Arts, studying composition with Mel Powell, Leonard Stein, and Morton Subotnick, receiving her M.F.A. in 1978...
, Tim Brady
Tim Brady (composer)
Timothy Wesley John Brady is a Canadian composer, electric guitarist, improvising musician, concert producer and record producer...
, Tristan Murail
Tristan Murail
Tristan Murail is a French composer. His father, Gérard Murail, is a poet and his mother, Marie-Thérèse Barrois, a journalist. One of his brothers, Lorris Murail, and his younger sister Elvire Murail, aka Moka, also write, and his younger sister Marie-Aude Murail is a French children's writer...
, John Rogers
John Rogers
-Europeans:*John Rogers , editor and part translator of the Matthew Bible, and the first English Protestant martyr under Queen Mary...
, and Randall Woolf.
Yngwie Malmsteen released his Concerto Suite for Electric Guitar and Orchestra
Concerto Suite for Electric Guitar and Orchestra
-External links:*...
in 1998, and Steve Vai
Steve Vai
Steven Siro "Steve" Vai is a three time Grammy Award-winning American guitarist, songwriter and producer who has sold over 15 million albums. Steve Vai is widely known as a flamboyant guitar virtuoso....
released a double-live CD entitled Sound Theories
Sound Theories
Sound Theories vol. I & II is a 2007 album by American guitarist Steve Vai. The album was recorded with the Metropole Orchestra in Netherlands in mid 2004-2005 and released on June 26, 2007....
, of his work with the Netherlands Metropole Orchestra in June 2007. The American composers Rhys Chatham
Rhys Chatham
Rhys Chatham is an American composer, guitarist, and trumpet player, primarily active in avant-garde and minimalist music. He is best known for his "guitar orchestra" compositions...
and Glenn Branca
Glenn Branca
Glenn Branca is an American avant-garde composer and guitarist known for his use of volume, alternative guitar tunings, repetition, droning, and the harmonic series. In 2008 he was awarded an unrestricted grant from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts.-Beginnings: 1960s and early 1970s:Branca...
have written "symphonic" works for large ensembles of electric guitars, in some cases numbering up to 100 players, and the instrument is a core member of the Bang on a Can
Bang on a Can
Bang on a Can is a multi-faceted classical music organization based in New York City. It was founded in 1987 by three American composers who remain its artistic directors: Julia Wolfe, David Lang, and Michael Gordon...
All-Stars (played by Mark Stewart
Mark Stewart (guitarist)
Mark Stewart is a New York City-based multi-instrumentalist, composer, singer and instrument designer.He has been a member of the Fred Frith Guitar Quartet, Steve Reich and Musicians, Zeena Parkins' Gangster Band, and Arnold Dreyblatt's Orchestra of Excited Strings, and is a founding member of the...
). Still, like many electric and electronic instruments, the electric guitar remains primarily associated with rock and jazz music, rather than with classical compositions and performances. R. Prasanna
Guitar Prasanna
Prasanna is a South Indian Carnatic musician who plays the south Indian musical art form of Carnatic music on the electric guitar. He is the second musician to take the guitar to the carnatic classical stage after Sukumar prasad. He not only plays carnatic music but is also a jazz musician...
plays a style of Indian classical music (Carnatic music
Carnatic music
Carnatic music is a system of music commonly associated with the southern part of the Indian subcontinent, with its area roughly confined to four modern states of India: Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala, and Tamil Nadu...
) on the electric guitar.
In the 21st century, European avant garde composers like Richard Barrett
Richard Barrett (composer)
Richard Barrett is a British composer.-Biography:Barrett began to study music seriously only after graduating in genetics and microbiology at University College London in 1980 . From then until 1983 he took private lessons with Peter Wiegold...
, Fausto Romitelli
Fausto Romitelli
Fausto Romitelli was an Italian composer.-Life and career:Romitelli studied composition at the Conservatorio Giuseppe Verdi in Milan and subsequently took part in courses at the Accademia Chigiana di Siena with Franco Donatoni and at the Scuola Civica di Milano...
, Peter Ablinger, Bernhard Lang
Bernhard Lang
Bernhard Lang is an Austrian composer of the experimental and avant-garde school, particularly advocating a style he has self-termed "repetition-perpetrator"....
, Claude Ledoux and Karlheinz Essl
Karlheinz Essl
Karlheinz Essl is an Austrian composer, performer, sound artist, improviser and composition teacher.- Biography :Essl was born in Vienna. His studies at the University of Music in Vienna included: composition , electro-acoustic music and double bass...
have used the electric guitar (together with extended playing techniques) in solo pieces or ensemble works. Probably the most ambitious and perhaps significant work to date is Ingwe (2003–2009) by Georges Lentz
Georges Lentz
Georges Lentz is a contemporary composer and sound artist, born in Luxembourg in 1965, and is that country's internationally best known composer. Since 1990, he has been living in Sydney, Australia...
(written for Australian guitarist Zane Banks
Zane Banks
Zane Banks is an Australian guitarist, from Sydney who plays both classical and electric guitars in a variety of musical genres. Banks premiered the 1-hour long solo electric guitar work, Ingwe, by composer Georges Lentz.-Biography:...
), a 60-minute work for solo electric guitar, exploring that composer's existential struggles and taking the instrument into realms previously unknown in a concert music setting.
See also
- 3rd Bridge3rd BridgeThe 3rd bridge is an extended playing technique used on some string instruments , that allows a musician to produce distinctive timbres and overtones that are unavailable on a conventional string instrument with two bridges...
- Bass guitarBass guitarThe bass guitar is a stringed instrument played primarily with the fingers or thumb , or by using a pick....
- Distortion (guitar)Distortion (guitar)Distortion effects create "warm", "dirty" and "fuzzy" sounds by compressing the peaks of a musical instrument's sound wave and adding overtones. The three principal types of distortion effects are overdrive, distortion and fuzz. Distortion effects are sometimes called “gain” effects, as distorted...
- Effects pedal
- Electric pipa
- Electromagnetic inductionElectromagnetic inductionElectromagnetic induction is the production of an electric current across a conductor moving through a magnetic field. It underlies the operation of generators, transformers, induction motors, electric motors, synchronous motors, and solenoids....
- Electronic tunerElectronic tunerThe term electronic tuner can refer to a number of different things, depending which discipline you wish to study.In the Discipline of radio frequency electronics an electronic tuner is a device which tunes across a part of the radio frequency spectrum by the application of a voltage or appropriate...
- Guitar harmonicsGuitar harmonicsA guitar harmonic is a musical note played by preventing or amplifying vibration of certain overtones of a guitar string. Music using harmonics can contain very high pitch notes difficult or impossible to reach by fretting...
- Guitar synthesizer
- Guitar effects
- Guitar amplifierGuitar amplifierA guitar amplifier is an electronic amplifier designed to make the signal of an electric or acoustic guitar louder so that it will produce sound through a loudspeaker...
- KeytarKeytarA keytar is a relatively lightweight keyboard that is supported by a strap around the neck and shoulders, similar to the way a guitar is supported by a strap. Keytars allow players a greater range of movement compared to conventional keyboards, which are placed on stands...
- PickupPickup (music technology)A pickup device is a transducer that captures mechanical vibrations, usually from suitably equipped stringed instruments such as the electric guitar, electric bass guitar, Chapman Stick, or electric violin, and converts them to an electrical signal that is amplified, recorded, or broadcast.-...
- Stars and Their Guitars: A History of the Electric GuitarStars and Their Guitars: A History of the Electric GuitarStars and Their Guitars: A History of the Electric Guitar is a documentary film by filmmaker Kent Hagen. It spotlights the development and history of the classic electric guitar as well as the players that made them famous...
(documentary film) - Vintage guitarVintage guitarA Vintage guitar is an old guitar usually sought after and maintained by avid collectors. Musicians and dealers commonly claim that older guitars have superior craftsmanship to modern mass-produced ones....
External links
- Guitar Player Zone for great information on some of your favorite guitar brands
- ON! The Beginnings of Electric Sound Generation – an exhibit at the Museum of Making Music, National Association of Music Merchants, Carlsbad, CA – some of the earliest electric guitars and their history, from the collection of Lynn Wheelwright and others
- From Frying Pan to Flying V: The Rise of the Electric Guitar
- "Born to Rock" guitar exhibit at HarrodsHarrodsHarrods is an upmarket department store located in Brompton Road in Brompton, in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, London. The Harrods brand also applies to other enterprises undertaken by the Harrods group of companies including Harrods Bank, Harrods Estates, Harrods Aviation and Air...
, London, February 2007, featuring the 1931 Rickenbacker "Frying Pan". Also see BBC 6 MusicBBC 6 MusicBBC 6 Music is one of the BBC's digital radio stations, was launched on 11 March 2002 and originally codenamed Network Y. It was the first national music radio station to be launched by the BBC in 32 years.... - news story.
- When to Change Electric, Acoustic, Bass and Classical Guitar Strings
- Guide to Buying an Electric Guitar
- The Invention of the Electric Guitar – Online exhibition at the Smithsonian InstitutionSmithsonian InstitutionThe Smithsonian Institution is an educational and research institute and associated museum complex, administered and funded by the government of the United States and by funds from its endowment, contributions, and profits from its retail operations, concessions, licensing activities, and magazines...
's National Museum of American HistoryNational Museum of American HistoryThe National Museum of American History: Kenneth E. Behring Center collects, preserves and displays the heritage of the United States in the areas of social, political, cultural, scientific and military history. Among the items on display are the original Star-Spangled Banner and Archie Bunker's...