User:Becerraw/sandbox

History

Gitterns, a small plucked guitar were the first small like guitar instruments created during the Middle ages with a round back like that of a lute.. Guitar like shaped instruments where not seen until the Renaissance era where the body and size began to take a guitar like shape.

The earliest string instruments that related to the guitar and its structure where broadly known as the vihuelas within Spanish musical culture. Vihuelas where string instruments that were commonly seen in the 16th century during the Renaissance. Later, Spanish writers distinguished these instruments into 2 categories of vihuelas. The vihuela de arco was a bow like structured instrument that mimic-ed the violin, and the vihuela de penola which was played with a plectrum or by hand. When it was played by hand it was known as the vihuela de mano. Vihuela de mano shared extreme similarities with the Renaissance guitar as it portrayed hand movement at the sound hole or sound chamber of the instrument to create music.

The Real production of guitars kicked off in France where the popularity and production first began increasing with large quantities. Spain became the homeland of the guitar but there's very little information on the early makers there unlike France where many inventors and artists first began overproducing these instruments and its music. The production became so large that early famous guitar creators such as Gaspard Duyffooprucgar's (a string instrument maker) instruments where being sold as copies by other guitar makers in Lyon. Benoist Lejeune, a guitar maker, offered and sold guitar copies of Duyffoprucgar's instruments and was later imprisoned for using his mark and work. During this time, the production was increasing tremendously but it was not until Robert and Claude Denis appeared overproducing the early guitars' Renaissance guitar in Paris, France. As father and son, Robert and Claude produced hundreds of guitars that increased the popularity of the instrument greatly. Because of them and the great many guitar inventors of this time, the word guiterne gradually shifted to guitarre within the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

By 1790 only six-course vihuela guitars (6 unison-tuned pairs of strings) were now only being created and had become the main type modeled guitar used in Spain. Most of the older 5-course guitars where still in use but were also being modified to a six-coursed acoustical guitar. Fernando Ferandiere's Book Arte de tocar la guitarra espanola por musica (Madrid, 1799) describes the standard Spanish guitar from his time as an instrument with seventeen frets and six courses with the first two 'gut' strings tuned in unison called the terceras and the tuning named to 'G' of the two strings. The acoustic guitar at this time really began to take its shape with extreme similarities to the acoustic guitar today with the exception of the coursed strings which later where removed for single strings instead of pairs.

By the 19th century, coursed strings where evolved into 6 single stringed instruments much like that of the guitar today. It had evolved to that of our modern look except for its size still retaining a smaller frame.