Intro to Guitars

History

• Musical instruments similar to the guitar have been used throughout much of history and by many different cultures and peoples. Instruments like the guitar may have been played as far back as 3,000 years ago.
• The oldest surviving guitar-like instrument comes from Ancient Egypt. It was used by a singer to the Egyptian queen Hatshepsut. You can see this guitar today in Cairo, Egypt at the Archaeological Museum.
• The Lute came to Europe between the 6th and 9th century in many forms. It was brought to the Byzantine Empire as the Barbat. Later is showed up in Spain from the Moors who brought the Oud. These instruments became the Lute which was a popular instrument in the European Middle Ages.
• One of the predecessors to the modern day classical guitar was the Baroque guitar. It was played during the European Renaissance in the late 1600s. The Baroque guitar had nine or ten strings.
• In the 1800's, Antonio Torres Jurado started building guitars in a similar fashion to the modern classical and acoustic guitars. All modern-day guitars are based on his design.
• The electric guitar was invented in the United States in the 1930's.

Names of the Strings

Use the sentence "Eddie Ate Dynamite - Good Bye Eddie" to help remember the names of the open guitar strings. The names are:

E A D G B E from biggest to smallest.

Using the smallest string, try to play this today:

4 2 0 4 2 0

0 0 0 0 2 2 2 2

4 2 0