The Acoustic Guitar: A Brief History Lesson

Rich melodies that echo from the wooden body of an acoustic guitar can bewitch and bewilder even the most stubborn of icy cold hearts. Take what Brian May was able to do with the huge crowd at Wembley Stadium during 1985’s Live Aid, as he strummed Is This The World We Created? The voice of his front man, Freddie Mercury, may have been the north star in the sky of that performance, but May’s guitar was what all those hands in the crowd were guided by. Years later, former Oasis singer Noel Gallagher would also enchant audiences with his acoustic rendition of Don’t Look Back In Anger.

Today we’re going to "look back" at the history of these spellbinding instruments, and perhaps learn a few of their secrets. So put on a pair of headphones. Take a deep breath. Over the next few minutes we have some chords to play. The time is yours and mine.

Birth of a classic sound

Handmade acoustic guitars have ancestry that dates back thousands of years. Indeed, their beginnings are difficult to trace, as it can sometimes seem that they’ve been around forever. Perhaps the most tangible artifact we have from those long ago days is the lute, which is basically any plucked-string instrument with a neck and round, hollow back. Writings and illustrations depicting the lute show up in history going all the way back to Babylonia and ancient Egypt.

Coming off the lute we encounter the gittern, which is a type of small body acoustic guitar that uses gut strings attached to a round, guitar-shaped body. The gittern makes its first appearance in European literature from the 13th century. During the Renaissance Era (15th and 16th centuries), instruments like these began to take on the even more familiar shape we know of today.

Coming into the present

Around 1790 a type of Spanish guitar known as the vihuela became popular for its use of six pairs of unison tuned strings and soon caught on all over the world. Not long after this, the "paired string" formation became less popular in favor of the six single string format musicians are still using today.

The most modern form of the acoustic guitar—and the one we still see on the stage and in music videos—came about in 1850 when Spanish guitar maker Antonio Torres Jurado increased the size of the guitar’s body, tweaked its depth and shape, and introduced a technique that became known as fan bracing. Fan bracing refers to the internal pattern of wooden reinforcements that prevent the guitar’s larger, hollow body from falling to pieces in a players arms. This pattern also resonates with the strings to create a lush, opulent sound far superior to older designs.

Your own special way

Today many musicians craft their own unique acoustic guitars to achieve special sounds for specific songs. This also goes for how certain guitars are strung and tuned. For his song Slide, Goo Goo dolls front man Johnny Rzeznik employs independent tuning to capture that piece’s unusual sound, a gambit that plays hob with other musicians who wish to cover the song.

The fundamentals may be older than many of us think, but then a sound with so much beauty and allure could only have yielded its secrets through centuries of pursuit by those passionate enough to give chase. And today we have them to thank, as well as the more modern artists who share so much talent by way of the acoustic guitar.

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