Electric Guitar History

References to the guitar in its current form originate in the 14th century. It had four courses of dual strings and a rounded body like a pumpkin. Around the sixteenth century the guitar was a trendy musical instrument amid the middle and lower classes of Europe, and as it improved in popularity it began to undergo a change of form. Guitar makers began making instruments with lone strings instead of courses and experimented with its form until by the 19th century the body of the guitar was made wider, and flatter. The timber tuning pegs which adjusted the tension of the strings were replaced by metal machine heads. Now we have the guitar identity that the familiar electric guitar is based on.

The first electric guitars were made in the 1930's and had soundholes in the body that were smaller than the soundholes of conventional guitars.
In 1924 Lloyd Loar, an engineer with Gibson, employed a magnet to change guitar string vibrations into electrical signals, which could be enlarged through a speaker.
Now it was feasible to assemble guitars that did not possess soundholes but could be heard plainly through an amplifier.
Paul Barth, George Beauchamp and Adolph Rickenbacker founded the Electro String Company in 1931. This business made electric guitars for the general public for the first time.
Their guitars resembled steel guitars, and were played in the guitarist's lap using a slide.

During the Big Band Era of the 1930's and '40's, the guitar players with the orchestras found that they desired some way of being heard above the sound of the rest of the instruments. This is where the electric guitar as we know it got its first big break.
The main dilemma with the electric guitars of the time was that feedback was emerging through the amplifier from the pulsation of the guitar's body. This challenge led to the evolution of the solid body electric guitar.

Present electric guitars are made of many light layers of timber glued together. The top layer is regularly a more attractive wood to give the guitar an agreeable appearance, and the other layers are of a wood which gives a good tone such as poplar or ash. The use of laminates endows the instrument with the robust body and tonal value that would be impossible in one chunk of wood.
The earliest solid body guitar was however, made from one piece of wood. In 1941 Les Paul turned a railway sleeper into an amplified stringed instrument. He called it "The Log". When production of his instrument began he stayed with the conventional guitar form to give his market a familiar persona to connect to. Les Paul's invention marketed as the Gibson Les Paul is still really admired.
In the 1940s, the Fender Broadcaster Electric guitar came into the world. Renamed the Stratocaster, it was put on the market in 1954. The Strat with its distinctive tone and light weight is still the second most popular guitar in the world.
Ibanez, Jackson, Paul Reed Smith, ESP and Yamaha have made solid body electric guitars with creative designs, distinctive shapes and new materials varied with advanced technologies to engender more capable and versatile electric guitars. Today?s electric guitars generate tones varying between futuristic music and quasi-acoustic sounds.

In the 1960s, effects boxes introduced fuzz, delay, echo and the wah-wah sound to the battery of sounds presented to the modern guitarist. A pedal operated by the guitar player's foot turns the effects on or off. Now guitars contain software that lets guitars sound like other types of guitars or reproduce the sound of other musical instruments.

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The Music Of Elvis Presley

These free guitar lessons cover both acoustic and electric guitar. As well as guitar lessons supplied by professional guitar teachers we have video clips showing various random guitar players showing us how to play. Enjoy!
Free Guitar Playing Lessons

Which songs you must have tabs for depends on how you see yourself as a guitarist. Do you want to play your preferred songs largely for your own amusement or do you want to play for an audience?
Simple Guitar Tabs