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Guitar Performance Techniques
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to guitars: A guitar is a plucked string instrument, usually played with fingers or a pick. The guitar consists of a body with a rigid neck to which the strings, generally six in number, are attached. Most guitar necks have metal frets attached (the exception is fretless bass guitars). Guitars are traditionally constructed of various woods and strung with animal gut or, more recently, with either nylon or steel strings. Some modern 2010-era guitars are made of polycarbonate materials. Guitars are made and repaired by luthiers. There are two primary families of guitars: acoustic and electric. An acoustic guitar has a wooden top and a hollow body. An electric guitar may be a solid-body or hollow body instrument, which is made louder by using a pickup and plugging it into a guitar amplifier and speaker. Another type of guitar is the low-pitched bass guitar. Instrument classification A guitar can be described ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Archtop Guitar
An archtop guitar is a hollow acoustic guitar, acoustic or semi-acoustic guitar, semi-acoustic guitar with a full body and a distinctive arched top, whose sound is particularly popular with jazz guitar, jazz, blues, and rockabilly players. Typically, an archtop guitar has: * Six strings * An arched top and back, not a flat top and back * A hollow body * A moveable adjustable bridge (instrument), bridge * F-holes similar to members of the violin family * A rear-mounted tailpiece, stoptail bridge, or Bigsby vibrato tailpiece * A Set-in neck, set-in neck join at the 14th fret History The archtop guitar is often credited to Orville Gibson, whose innovative designs led to the formation of the Gibson Mandolin-Guitar Mfg. Co, Ltd in 1902. His 1898 patent for a mandolin, which was also applicable to guitars according to the specifications, was intended to enhance "power and quality of tone." Among the features of this instrument were a violin-style arched top and back, each carved fr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tailed Bridge Guitar
The 3rd bridge is an extended playing technique used on the electric guitar and other string instruments that allows a musician to produce distinctive timbres and overtones that are unavailable on a conventional string instrument with two bridges (a nut and a saddle). The timbre created with this technique is close to that of gamelan instruments like the bonang and similar Indonesian types of pitched gongs. Third bridge instruments can be custom-made by experimental luthiers (as with guitars designed and played by Hans Reichel); modified from a non-third bridge instrument (as with conventional guitars modified with a pencil or screwdriver under the strings); or may take advantage of design quirks of factory-built instruments (as with the Fender Jazzmaster, which has strings that continue from the "standard" bridge to the vibrato mechanism). Perhaps the best-known examples of this technique come from No Wave artists like Glenn Branca and Sonic Youth. The 3rd bridge te ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Steel-string Acoustic Guitar
The steel-string acoustic guitar is a modern form of guitar that descends from the gut-strung Romantic guitar, but is strung with steel strings for a brighter, louder sound. Like the modern classical guitar, it is often referred to simply as an acoustic guitar, or sometimes as a folk guitar. The most common type is often called a flat top guitar, to distinguish it from the more specialized archtop guitar and other variations. The standard tuning for an acoustic guitar is E-A-D-G-B-E (low to high), although many players, particularly fingerpickers, use alternate tunings ( scordatura), such as open G (D-G-D-G-B-D), open D (D-A-D-F-A-D), drop D (D-A-D-G-B-E), or D-A-D-G-A-D (particularly in Irish traditional music). Construction Steel-string guitars vary in construction and materials. Different woods and approach to bracing affect the instrument's timbre or tone. While there is little scientific evidence, many players and luthiers believe a well-made guitar's tone i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Silent Guitar
A silent guitar is a type of guitar with a solid body guitar, solid or chambered body that converts the vibration of the strings into electric current using a piezoelectric pickup. The body of the guitar does not amplify the vibration of the strings into audible sound. Thanks to this, musicians can practice with headphones without disturbing people around them, or obtain an acoustic tone under heavy amplification without feedback. Las Vegas Academy has used silent guitars in a classroom setting, with students wearing headphones to hear their instrument's sound. Types Full-size bodies A successful early silent guitar with a full-sized body was the Gibson Chet Atkins SST. It appeared to have a soundhole, but it was in fact a dummy. It was employed by Mark Knopfler, among others. Small bodies Reducing the body size of a silent guitar has little effect on the sound. The portability of a small bodied guitar, as well as the ability to practice silently, is an advantage to trav ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Semi-acoustic Guitar
A semi-acoustic guitar, also known as a hollow-body electric guitar, is a type of electric guitar designed to be played with a guitar amplifier featuring a fully or partly hollow body and at least one electromagnetic pickup. First created in the 1930s, they became popular in jazz and blues, where they remain widely used, and the early period of rock & roll, though they were later largely supplanted by solid-body electric guitars in rock. They differ from an acoustic-electric guitar, which is an acoustic guitar that has been fitted with some means of amplification to increase volume without changing the instrument's tone. Types Semi-acoustic guitars may have a fully hollow body, making them essentially archtop acoustics with the pickups permanently mounted into the sound board, such as the Gibson ES-175. Some models feature bodies the full width of acoustics, allowing them to be played fully acoustically, while others, such as the Epiphone Casino, have "thinline" bodies wh ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Selmer Guitar
The Selmer guitar — often called a Selmer-Maccaferri or just Maccaferri by English speakers, as early British advertising stressed the designer rather than manufacturer — is an unusual acoustic guitar best known as the favored instrument of Django Reinhardt. Selmer, a French manufacturer, produced the instrument from 1932 to about 1952. History In 1932 Selmer partnered with the Italian guitarist and luthier Mario Maccaferri to produce a line of acoustic guitars based on Maccaferri's unorthodox design. Although Maccaferri's association with Selmer ended in 1934, the company continued to make several models of this guitar until 1952. The guitar was closely associated with jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt. Construction In its archetypal steel-string Jazz/Orchestre form, the Selmer is distinguished by a fairly large body with squarish bouts, either a D-shaped or longitudinal oval sound hole, and a cutaway in the upper right bout. The strings pass over a movable b ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Resonator Guitar
A resonator guitar or resophonic guitar (often generically called a " Dobro") is an acoustic guitar that produces sound by conducting string vibrations through the bridge to one or more spun metal cones (resonators), instead of to the guitar's sounding board (top). Resonator guitars were originally designed to be louder than regular acoustic guitars, which were overwhelmed by horns and percussion instruments in dance orchestras. They became prized for their distinctive tone, and found life with bluegrass music and the blues well after electric amplification solved the problem of inadequate volume. Resonator guitars are of two styles: * Square-necked guitars played in lap steel guitar style (also called a dobro) * Round-necked guitars played in conventional guitar style or steel guitar style There are three main resonator designs: * The ''tricone'', with three metal cones, designed by the first National company * The single-cone "biscuit" design of other National instrumen ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Parlor Guitar
Parlor or parlour guitar usually refers to a type of acoustic guitar smaller than a Size No.0 Concert Guitar by C. F. Martin & Company. ''Mottola's Cyclopedic Dictionary of Lutherie Terms'' describes the term as referring to "any guitar that is narrower than current standards." Overview The popularity of these guitars peaked from the late 19th century until the 1950s. Many blues and folk musicians have used smaller-bodied guitars, which were often more affordable, mass production models. Parlor guitar has also come to denote a style of American guitar music from the 19th and early 20th centuries. Noted composers include William Foden, Winslow Hayden, William Bateman, Justin Holland, and Wilhelm Bischoff. The music for the guitar includes a variety of dance forms (waltz, schottische, polka), instrumental arrangements of popular songs, guitar arrangements of then popular classical music, operatic arrangements and music from European guitar composers ( Sor, Giuliani, Carca ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hybrid Guitar
A hybrid guitar is an electric guitar with the ability to produce a signal with the tonal quality of an acoustic guitar in addition to a typical electric signal from a magnetic pickup, allowing a wide tonal pallette. The signal from the two-pickup systems can be blended on board, or (sometimes on the same instrument) fed separately to two different effect and amplification lines. Hybrid guitars typically use a piezoelectric pickup to generate the acoustic-like signal, the same type of pickup used in most electro-acoustic guitars. Such pickups can produce a reasonable facsimile of acoustic tone even in solid bodied instruments. Aftermarket piezo pickups allow conventional electric guitars to be converted into hybrid guitars. Examples of solid-body hybrid guitars include the Ovation VXT, Godin A6 Ultra, Peavey's Generation Custom EXP Quilt Top w/ Piezo Series and Tom Anderson Guitarworks Crowdster Plus One and Two. They are similar to silent guitars, except that the latter do ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fretless Guitar
A fretless guitar is a guitar with a fingerboard without frets, typically a standard instrument that has had the frets removed, though some custom-built and commercial fretless guitars are occasionally made. The classic fretless guitar was first pioneered in 1976 by Turkish musician Erkan Oğur. Fretless bass guitars are readily available, with most major guitar manufacturers producing fretless models. On the fretless guitar, the performer's fingers press the string directly against the fingerboard, as with a violin, resulting in a vibrating string that extends from the bridge (where the strings are attached) to the fingertip instead of to a fret. Technique Musicians employ a standard harmony and the twelve-tone technique as a base for exploring tones, using a fretless guitar. Fretless guitars offer musicians an ability to use just intonation in any key and mode and explore new sounds through using microtonal harmonies and folk melodies in a jazz-groove context. A detailed ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Flat Top Guitar
A flat top guitar is a type of guitar body model which has a flat top (as opposed to archtop). The term "flat top" is usually used to refer to the most popular type of steel-string acoustic guitars; however, electric guitars such as the solid-bodied Fender Telecaster and the Gibson Les Paul Junior and Special can be described as "flat top". on Learn Guitar, 15 Nov 2011 See also *List of guitar-related topics
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to guitars:
A guitar is a plucked string instrument, usually played with fingers or a pick. The guitar consists of a b ...
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