Andres Segovia

The main parts of a guitar

Bridge
The bridge is mounted on the body or glued (acoustic) to the top. The bridge keeps the strings at the correct distance from each other in width, and the distance in height between the strings and the fretboard.
At the acoustic guitar, the vibration of the strings is transferred by means of the bridge to the top the soundboard.

Saddle
The saddle of a guitar is the part of the bridge that supports the strings.
It can be in one piece (usually on acoustic guitars) or in separate parts (electric guitar), one for each string.
The function of the saddle is to put the string in the right place for the correct intonation. For the acoustic guitar, the saddle is usually made of plastic or bone. The saddles of the electric guitar are usually made of metal, or sometimes of synthetic material.

Nut
The component where the strings stretched over to the tuners.

Scale length
Scale length is the actual length of the vibrating strings.
So this is the length of the strings between the bridge and the nut. The scale length affects playability. A shorter scale length has a shorter neck and is best suited for a quick position change.

Frets
Frets are metal strips of nickel alloy or stainless steel.
They are stamped along the fretboard at exact points that divide the scale length according to a certain mathematical formula. The pitch of each consecutive fret is set at a half-step interval on the chromatic scale. Standard classical guitars have 19 frets and electric guitars between 21 and 24 and sometimes 27 frets.

Neck
The guitar neck is one long piece of wood on which the fretboard with the frets and tuners are mounted. The beginning of the neck is called the heel and the end piece of the neck, headstock. The machine heads are located at the headstock or in the headstock.

Machine head
A machine head (also called tuner) is a tuning device for tuning the guitar by adjusting string tension.

The first acoustic bass guitar appeared in 1972, the Earthwood. It was developed by Ernie Ball in conjunction with former Fender companion, George Fullerton.
However, the Earthwood was not a success, the production was discontinued in 1974.


In the late 1930s there was already a predecessor of the acoustic bass guitar. Chicago's Regal Musical Instrument Company introduced the Bassoguitar, which you could call a bass 'guitar'. The instrument was a cross between a flat acoustic guitar and a double bass and had a length of 1.80 m.

Electricity

Adolph Rickenbacker, the manufacturer of the first electric guitar and founder of 'Electro String Instrument Corporation', was born in 1886 in the Canton of Schwyz, Switzerland. After the death of his parents he emigrated with some family members to the United States in 1891. In 1928 he moved to Los Angeles. Here he started the company 'Rickenbacker Manufacturing Company' and manufactured metal bodies for the company 'National Steel Guitars'.
There he met George Beauchamp and Paul Barth. And together they founded a new company in 1931, 'Ro-Pat-In Company'. In the following year they began designing the first aluminum versions of the lap steel guitar. In 1934 the company name was renamed 'Electro String Instrument Corporation'.
The steel guitar was and is especially popular with the 'Hawaiian' music where it is often dominant.

As early as 1930, Beauchamp experimented with a well-known fact: If you move a copper wire along a magnetic field, it will changed the intensity of the magnetic field.
He won a copper wire around a magnet and thus made a coil. Above this coil he held a metal wire (string). The movement (vibration) of this wire changed the electric current in the coil. With this information it should be possible to amplify the sound of the guitar electrically.
The problem now was that he had to have six of these (large) coils, which had to be adjusted to produce an even signal in order to be able to use it on a guitar.

       

George Beauchamp       Patent Frying Pan (1937)

After a lot of experiments, Beauchamp created together with Barth two horseshoe magnets (based on a pickup with copper wire wound iron rods) each with its own opening under the strings. In this way, each string could be individually amplified.

George Beauchamp contacted Harry Watson, then Chief Superintendent of National String Instrument Co. Watson was impressed by Beauchamp's invention and produced a model with a single piece neck and body. Then he mounted the electric amplification element developed by Beauchamp and Barth at the bridge of the body. Beauchamp named this prototype 'The Frying Pan'.

The Frying Pan is the first electric guitar that was take into production, and worked according to the principle still applied today. The Frying Pan proved an immediate success with countless steel guitarists.

But already in 1925, one Lester William Polsfuss (Les Paul) had invented an invention that not only amplified the sound of the guitar, but also gave it a very unique sound. For this reason we can considered Les Paul as the inventor of the electric guitar.
Read the Les Paul story about the origin of the first real electric guitar.

The development of the electric guitar and
American music

In the southern United States, music began to develop as African and European influences mixed through black and white people. It is almost certain that the skin-covered gourd instrument is the predecessor of the current banjo.
In those days, slaves also made guitars themselves from large cigar boxes, broom sticks and rope. But most of the guitars of colonial America at the time were made in England.
In the Southwestern US, Mexicans played the guitar as well as the 16th century vihuela. Spanish missionaries took the instruments to California and cowboys also used the guitar to keep the herds calm on the praire at night.

The Blues music originated in the Mississippi Delta, developed from work songs, yells and other field cries. Harmonic gospel melodies were often accompanied by the banjo and later by primitive guitars, which were sometimes played with a metal bar slide or bottle neck. By sliding it over the strings, a whining and whining sound was created that is so typical of the blues, but is now also widely used in other music styles.
Music have always a greatly contributed in religion both in the rural areas of the South and in the Midwest. All social activities at the time revolved around religion. The guitar was often played on farms, plantations and mining camps.
The instrument was easy to transport, was relatively inexpensive and almost everyone could learn to play three or four chords with it.

In the big cities, poor people took the guitar out into the street. American blues, country & western and folk music were oriented towards the guitar for the same reasons: inexpensive, easy to transport, easy to play and sounds good.
In jazz groups in New Orleans and Chicago, the guitar had a less easy time. No matter how hard the frustrated guitarist hit, he never got above the horn section and piano. But soon these self-ignoring guitarists were able to get their revenge through the microphone, amplifying the instrument.

Electricity had a big influence on many guitarst, but the new form of energy was not valued everywhere by the public. Many new melodies and inventieve developments were brought by Eddie Long, Freddie Green, Charlie Christian and Eddie Condon. Guitarist Eddie Condon was in the years twenty till forty one of the most important people in the Chicago-jazzscene. The development of the (electric) guitar came in that period in a rapid.
Eddie Durham may well have been the first musician to play electric guitar.

Eddie Durham (L.) and Eddie Condon

An equally important guitarist was the French gypsy Django Reinhardt. He was born on January 23, 1910 in Liverchies, Belgium and played guitar from the age of twelve.

A catastrophe occurred on November 2, 1928. There was a fire in his caravan and Django was able to escape with severe burns at the last minute. As a result of this accident, he lost two fingers on his left hand. His music career seemed to be over. But he practiced hard for two years and managed to develop a playing style with three fingers that was even more unique than before the accident.
Django was the European answer to American jazz and he influenced many American colleagues, especially after WW II, like Les Paul, B.B. King and Wes Montgomery. With his group, Quintet Du Hot Club de France, which included the violinist Stephane Grappelli and his brother Joseph, he caused a furore. Django Reinhardt died in Fontainebleau in 1953 at the consequences of a brain haemorrhage and left historical recordings.

In the last fifty years, inventive guitarists like Les Paul, Kenny Burrell, Jim Hall, George van Eps, Barney Kessel, Wes Montgomery, Tal Farlow, Herb Ellis and Joe Pass have experimented a lot with different time signatures and melodies.
In country the guitar was used by almost every artist: Hank Williams, Jimmie Rodgers, Hank Snow, Ernest Tubb, Merele Haggard and of course instrumentalists like Roy Clark, Merle Travis, Glen Campbell and Jimmy Bryant.
Mr. Guitar himself, Chet Atkins is one of the most versatile and respected guitarists. He started with primitive means, stringing a ukulele with wire from a screen door, and designed various guitars himself and developed new playing and recording techniques. In recent years this Tennessee musician has also moved on the classical and popular field, but his trademark remains the instrumental country.
The Chet Atkins style is a combination of smooth melodies, harmonies and a powerful, muted bass line played simultaneously.

Despite everything, the masses didn't listen to jazz and country guitarists after WW II, but a new kind of music changed everything in the mid-1950s. Amid the corny crooners and interpreters of sugary ballads, the king of rock & roll rose.
Armed with sensual lips, swaying hips, long black hair and wide sideburns, dressed in tight leather and pointed shoes, 80 pounds of pure sex and strength: the Tupelo trucker named Elvis Presley.
He was a completely new phenomenon, and American youth, beginning to develop as a fairly homogeneous subculture, had found a new hero, hated by their parents. He was perfect!

Everyone soon realized that this squirming maniac was no ordinary musician.
One of his main characteristics was that he played the guitar. He hit wildly, slammed the instrument against his body, swung it around and slid it behind his back. It was pure and explosive show work, and as Elvis rose to the dizzying heights of his legendary super status, he was accompanied by his buddy: the box with the six strings.

Elvis was kind, religious, and above all respected his parents. Despite making his first record for his mother, he was attacked by modesties and conservative radio makers because they think he has a bad image on the youth. However, the new generation was behind Elvis and bought 10 million records from him in 1956. Many have started playing guitar thanks to Elvis.
The youth looked at Elvis and said, "What he can do, I can too." When it comes to guitar playing, they were right, songs like Hound Dog, Surfin USA, This land is your land, Mr. Tambourine Man and many other songs like this were easy to play.
As well as other rock, blues, country and folk songs from B.B. King, Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, The Rolling Stones and many others.
Elvis himself was no more and no less than an average guitarist. The real guitar work was done by his regular guitarist and friend Scotty Moore, who invented quirky and original riddles that are so typical of rock & roll.

Also not unimportant to the success was the composers duo Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, who guaranteed many hits.

Jerry Leiber (L.) & Mike Stoller

Not to mention Elvis manager, Colonel Tom Parker.
Born in 1909 in Breda, the Netherlands, as Andreas Cornelis (Dries) van Kuijk, felt in great detail how the music and the phenomenon Elvis Presley should be marketed.

Colonel Tom Parker with Elvis

After his military service, deliberately planned by Colonel Parker, Elvis worked on a comeback. In the mid-1970s, The King reached the top again. However, its success was fatal. On August 16, 1977, Elvis died at his Graceland mansion in Memphis from the effects of excess (medicine) use.
After his death, however, Elvis became more popular than ever, his records/CDs are still eagerly bought. Titles are being rereleased again and have still not lost their momentum as they are once again skyrocketing the charts.

In the early days of rock and roll, instrumental songs were very popular. You only had to turn on the radio or you would hear a saxophone, guitar or organ. Records like Tequila by the Champs and Red River Rock by Johnny and the Hurricanes scored well. The song Walk Don't Run, a classic by the Ventures, was in the charts for almost five months and reached the top position to number two.

In England, The Shadows made their mark with songs like Apache, Atlantis, Wonderful Land and many others. Duane Eddy claimed to have invented the technique of pulling up the strings. He made a large number of hits where he only played on the low strings played. Later he found out that there were even more on it. Like other records from that time, Duan Eddy's were not polished to today's standards, but songs like Ramrod, Rebel Rouser and Cannonball hit like a bomb and sounded best when played hard. He showed that you could make good music with simple means.

Chuck Berry on the other hand, developed a style of guitar playing that is characteristic of rock & roll: 'Oh my, but that country boy could play.'
Chuck wrote in the original text by Johnny B. Goode about 'a Coloured boy'.
The record bosses had quite a hard time with that, since at that time blacks in the US were not yet considered full fellow citizens and was therefore changed to 'a Country boy'.
The two strings that Chuck Berry played while doing his famous 'duck-walk' sounded from every jukebox. And those who threw coins in it frequently were among others Mick Jagger, Keith Richard, Marc Bolan, Eric Clapton, George Harrison and Jimmy Page.

(left to right) Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page

Real good guitarists were scarce, but fortunately there were exceptions like Mickey Baker who provided the calypso hit Love Is Strange by Mickey & Sylvia with melodic guitar playing and a blues rhythm at the end of every verse.

Good "Southern guitar" work can be heard in rockabilly-songs by Carl Perkins (Blue Suede Shoes), Buddy Holly (That Will Be The Day), Eddie Cochran (Summertime Blues) and Bill Haley (Rock Around The Clock).

Mickey Baker en James Burton

Also surfmusic was responsible for popularize of the guitar.
In the beginning this style was only successful on the American West Coast, but after a while the music took hold all over the world. The most famous surf group is of course still the Beach Boys, but the aforementioned instrumental band the Ventures also belonged to this category. The guitarists of surf groups mainly played Fender guitars, the Stratocaster in particular was very popular.
The first wave of rock & roll also saw an increasing interest in traditional American music. The Kingston Trio is a good example of this. Neatly trimmed, they sang lyrics about railroad tracks, legendary heroes, and executions of notorious bandits ( Tom Dooley ), all of course in close harmony.
Pete Seeger, Joan Baez and Phil Ochs sang on similar topics, but also presented their ideas on topics such as politics, war, civil rights and famine.

Few people outside the coffee house circuit knew a certain Bob Dylan. But the Byrds and the gooey Peter, Paul and Mary were commercial enough to use some of his ideas and messages in the mid-1960s to score massive hits. Bob Dylan on the charts along with Lesley Gore, Jan & Dean and Freddie & The Dreamers.
The public wanted to learn more about honest music without tricks, they wanted songs with new ideas that forced you to think, songs about real people.
Because this new folk music had its roots in the blues and the country & western, people started to rediscover musicians like Hank Williams, Doc Watson, Woody Guthrie, Robert Johnson, Jack Elliot, Mississippi John Hurt, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Son House, Walter "Furry. Lewis, Leadbelly, Sam 'Lihtnin' Hopkins, Josh White, Fred McDowell and Brownie McGhee.
Some were the descendants of slaves, itinerant workers, and tenant farmers. Most of them did not live long enough to enjoy this appreciation. Others did not really become known until they were already in their seventies.

As many attempts have been made to classify the styles of these singers as there are writers who narrate about them. have written. The common factor, however, was that they all played guitar.