The World of Guitars
The Guitar stands to be one of the most popular of musical instruments of the world. Basically talk about rock and roll, the image of a musician with a guitar would instantly spring into mind. Talk about the blues, and you're in for some really awesome guitar playing. Even more with flamenco, as well as when talking about classical music and guitars.
Basically, the guitar is one musical instrument used in a wide range of musical genres, from rock and roll, to pop, to blues, to classical, even to fusion and jazz. This versatile nature of guitars has made it one of the most popular of musical instruments in the world. Also, the guitar has somewhat become the most "basic" of musical instruments where music playing or composing is concerned.
The most common of guitars would be the six string guitar, though there are four string versions, seven string guitars, eight string guitars, ten string guitars and twelve string guitars. There are both electric guitars, as well as acoustic guitars. In modern history, electric guitars are known to have contributed a profound influence on popular culture, being the primary instrument of the rock and roll genre. As primary instruments, guitars are also famous in country music genres, flamenco, blues and with the various forms of pop music.
Basically, the modern guitar owes its origins to similar musical instruments which had been around at least 5000 years ago. The Sitara, a musical instrument known to have been used in Ancient India and Central Asia, stands to be the original "guitar" which the modern guitar is derived from. The guitar name comes from the Spanish guitarra, which is derived from cithara a Latin word which was in taken from the Greek word kithara.
The modern day guitar is basically from the Roman cithara, which the Romans brought to Hispania in about 40 AD. By around 1200 AD, the guitarra morisca, or the Moorish Guitar, which is basically a four string guitar and has several sound holes, and the Guitarra Latina, or Latin Guitar, which basically resembles the modern guitar, which has a narrow neck and only one sound hole, became the two standards types of guitar evolutions.
Today, the guitar stands to be one of the most definitive of musical instruments, acoustic or electrical. Iconic guitarists like Jimmy Hendrix, Joe Satriani, Steve Vai, and Victor Wooten, are known to have brought guitars to higher levels of music, higher to other horizons of music genres, defining them as simply awesome musical instruments.
