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Home  News Acoustic Guitar Family
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Written by AGNews
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Wednesday, 26 July 2006 |
 There are several subcategories within the acoustic guitar group:
steel string guitars, which includes the flat top, or "folk" guitar,
the closely related twelve string guitar, and the arch top guitar. A
recent arrival in the acoustic guitar group is the acoustic bass
guitar, similar in tuning to the electric bass.
- Renaissance and Baroque guitars: These are
the gracile ancestors of the modern classical guitar.
They are substantially smaller and more delicate than the classical
guitar, and generate a much quieter sound. The strings are paired in
courses as in a modern 12 string guitar,
but they only have four or five courses of strings rather than six.
They were more often used as rhythm instruments in ensembles than as
solo instruments, and can often be seen in that role in early music
performances. (Gaspar Sanz' Instrucción de Música sobre la Guitarra
Española
of 1674 constitutes the majority of the surviving solo corpus for the
era.) Renaissance and Baroque guitars are easily distinguished because
the Renaissance guitar is very plain and the Baroque guitar is very
ornate, with inlays all over the neck and body, and a paper-cutout
inverted "wedding cake" inside the hole.
- Classical guitars: These are typically strung
with nylon strings, played in a seated position and used to play
classical music. Flamenco guitars are almost equal in construction,
have a sharper sound, and are used in flamenco. In Mexico, the popular
mariachi band includes a range of guitars, from the tiny requinto to
the guitarron, a guitar larger than a cello, which is tuned in the bass
register. The father of the modern classical guitar was Antonio Torres
Jurado.
- Flat-top (steel-string) guitars: Similar to the classical guitar,
however the body size is usually significantly larger than a classical
guitar and it has a narrower, reinforced neck and stronger structural
design, to sustain the extra tension of steel strings which produce a
louder and brighter tone. The acoustic guitar is a staple in folk, Old-time music and blues music.
- Resonator, resophonic or Dobro® guitars:
Similar to the flat top guitar in appearance, but with sound produced
by a metal resonator mounted in the middle of the top rather than an
open sound hole, so that the physical principle of the guitar is
actually more similar to the banjo.
The purpose of the resonator is to amplify the sound of the guitar;
this purpose has been largely superseded by electrical amplification,
but the resonator is still played by those desiring its distinctive
sound. The type of resonator guitar with a neck with a square
cross-section -- called "square neck" -- is usually played face up, on
the lap of the seated player, and often with a metal or glass slide.
The round neck resonator guitars are normally played in the same
fashion as other guitars, although slides are also often used,
especially in blues.
- 12 string guitars usually have steel strings
and are widely used in folk music, blues and rock and roll. Rather than
having only six strings, the 12-string guitar has pairs, like a
mandolin.
Each pair of strings is tuned either in unison (the two highest) or an
octave apart (the others). They are made both in acoustic and electric
forms. Big Joe Williams is a blues musician famous for his 12 string
guitar.
- Russian guitars
are seven string acoustic guitars which were the norm for Russian
guitarists throughout the 19th and well into the 20th centuries. The
guitar was traditionally tuned to an open G tuning.
- Archtop guitars
are steel string, instruments which feature a violin-inspired f-hole
design in which the top (and often the back) of the instrument are
carved in a curved rather than a flat shape. Lloyd Loar of the Gibson
Guitar Corporation invented this variation of guitar after designing a
style of mandolin
of the same type. The typical Archtop is a hollow body guitar whose
form is much like that of a mandolin or violin family instrument and
may be acoustic or electric. Some solid body electric guitars are also
considered archtop guitars although usually 'Archtop guitar' refers to
the hollow body form. Archtop guitars were immediately adopted upon
their release by both jazz and country
musicians and have remained particularly popular in jazz music, usually
using thicker strings (higher gauged round wound and flat wound) than
acoustic guitars. Archtops are often louder than a typical dreadnought
acoustic guitar. The electric hollow body archtop guitar has a distinct
sound among electric guitars and is consequently appropriate for many
styles of rock and roll. Many electric archtop guitars intended for use
in rock and roll even have a Tremolo Arm.
- Acoustic bass guitars
also have steel strings, and match the tuning of the electric bass,
which is likewise similar to the traditional double bass viol, the "big
bass", a staple of string orchestras and bluegrass bands alike.
- Harp guitars.
Harp Guitars are difficult to classify as there are many variations
within this type of guitar. They are typically rare and uncommon in the
popular music scene. Most consist of a regular guitar, plus additional
'harp' strings strung above the six normal strings. The instrument is
usually acoustic and the harp strings are usually tuned to lower notes
than the guitar strings, for an added bass range. Normally there is
neither fingerboard nor frets behind the harp strings. Some harp
guitars also feature much higher pitch strings strung below the
traditional guitar strings. The number of harp strings varies greatly,
depending on the type of guitar and also the player's personal
preference (as they have often been made to the player's specification).
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Guitar " |
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Last Updated ( Wednesday, 26 July 2006 )
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