Electric guitar

An electric guitar is a type of guitar with a solid or semi-solidbody that utilizes electromagnetic " pickups " to convert the vibration of the steel-cored strings into electrical current. The current may beelectrically altered to achieve various tonal effects prior to being fed into an amplifier , which produces the resultant sound. In contrast to most stringed instruments , the electric guitar does not rely as extensively on the acoustic propertiesof its construction to amplify the sound produced by the vibrating strings; as such, the electric guitar does not need to benaturally loud, and its body can be virtually any shape.

The electric guitar is used extensively in many popular styles of music, including blues , rock and roll , country music , pop music and jazz .

History

Electric guitars were originally designed by an assortment of luthiers ,electronics buffs, and instrument manufacturers, in varying combinations. Some of the earliest electric guitars used tungsten pickups and were manufactured in the 1930s by Rickenbacker . The popularity of the electric guitar began with the Big band era, the amplified instruments being necessary to compete with the loudvolumes of the large brass sections common to jazz orchestras of the thirties and forties. Initially, electric guitars consistedprimarily of hollow "archtop" acoustic guitar bodies to which electromagnetic transducers had been attached.

The version of the instrument that is most well known today is the "solid body" electric guitar: a guitar made of solid wood,without resonating airspaces within it. One of the first solid body electric guitars was built by musician and inventor Les Paul in the early 1940s, working after hours in the Epiphone Guitar factory. His "log"guitar, so called because it consisted of a simple rectangular block of wood with a neck attached to it, was generally consideredto be the first of its kind until recently, when research through old trade publications and with surviving luthiers and theirfamilies revealed many other prototypes, and even limited production models, that fit our modern conception of an 'electricguitar.' At least one company, Audiovox, built and may have offered an electric solid-body as early as the mid-1930s.Rickenbacher (later spelled 'Rickenbacker') offered a solid Bakelite electric guitar beginning in 1935 that, when tested byvintage guitar researcher John Teagle, reportedly sounded quite modern and aggressive.

See the entry on the Fender Telecaster for more details on the earlydevelopment of the electric solidbody guitar.

Gibson, like many luthiers, had long offered semi-acoustic guitars with pickups, but it was in 1954 that the Gibson Les Paul , the instrument that wouldbecome their trademark, was introduced to the market. In the late 1940s , electrician andamplifier maker Leo Fender , through his eponymous company, designed theFender Telecaster. In 1954 Fender introduced the Stratocaster , or Strat , which had become by thelate sixties the most widely played guitar on the market. Fender is also credited with inventing the electric bass , although solidbody electric basses had appeared elsewhere as prototypes and limitedproduction models.

Unlike the more traditionally styled and crafted Gibson instruments, Fender's guitars and basses pioneered the modular, andhence much less expensive, method of guitar making in which the body and neck of the guitar were crafted separately, usingcommonly available woodworking tools, and then bolted together to form a complete guitar. Today, the design of electric guitarsby most companies echoes one of the two classic designs: the Les Paul or the Stratocaster.

Types of electric guitar

Most electric guitars are fitted with six strings and are usually tuned from low to high E - A - D - G - B - E, the same as anacoustic guitar, although some modern guitarists tune their guitars lower to produce a "heavier" sound. Seven-string modelsexist, most of which add a low B string below the E, and were made popular by SteveVai and modern day nu metal bands. Jimmy Page , an innovator of hard rock , used and made famouscustom Gibson electric guitars with two necks - essentially two instruments in one. These are commonly known as double neck (or,less commonly, twin neck) guitars. The purpose is to obtain different ranges of sound from each instrument; typical combinationsare six-string and four-string (guitar and bass guitar) or, more commonly, a six-string and twelve-string . English progressiverock bands such as Genesis took this trend to its zenith usingcustom made instruments produced by the Shergold company.

Some electric guitars have a tremoloarm or whammy bar, which is a lever attached to the bridge that can slacken or elongate the strings temporarily,changing the pitch or creating a vibrato . Tremolo properly refers to a quickvariation of volume, not pitch; however, the misnaming is too established to change. Eddie Van Halen often uses this feature to embellish his playing, as heard in Van Halen 's "Eruption". Early tremolo arms tended to cause the guitar to go out of tune with extended use;an important innovator in this field was Floyd Rose , who introduced one of thefirst tremolos which allowed the guitar to stay in tune, even after heavy use.

A " MIDI guitar" is an electric guitar fitted with sensors for sound and notearticulation. It is used to transform string vibrations into MIDI messages to control a synthesizer or other electronic musical instrument .

Electric guitar sound and effects

An acoustic guitar's sound is largely dependent on the vibration of the guitar's body and the air within it; the sound of anelectric guitar is largely dependent on an electrical signal, generated by the vibration of the strings and shaped on its path tothe amplifier. By the late 1960s , it became common practice to exploit this dependence toalter the sound of the instrument. The most dramatic innovation was the generation of distortion by increasing the gain, or volume, of the preamplifier in order to clip the electronic signal. This form of distortion generates harmonics , particularly in odd multiples ofthe input frequency, which are considered pleasing to the ear.

Beginning in the 1960s , the tonal palette ofthe electric guitar was further modified by introducing an effects box in its signal path. Traditionally built in a small metal chassis with an on/offfoot switch, such " stomp boxes " have become as much a part of the instrument formany electric guitarists as the electric guitar itself. Typical effects include vibrato , fuzz , wah-wah and flanging , compression/sustain , delay/echo , and phaseshift . Some important innovators of this aspect of the electric guitar include guitarists Jimi Hendrix , Eddie Van Halen , Jerry Garcia , DavidGilmour , Thurston Moore and Daniel Ash , and technicians such as Roger Mayer .

By the 1980s and 1990s , digital effects becamecapable of replicating the analog effects used in the past. These new digital effects attempted to model the sound produced byanalog effects, to varying degrees of quality. Although there are some obvious advantages to digital effects, many guitaristsstill use analog effects for their real or perceived quality over their digital counterparts.

In 2002 , Gibson announced the first digital guitar, which performs analog-to-digitalconversion internally. The resulting digital signal is delivered over a standard Ethernet cable, eliminating cable-induced line noise. The guitar also provides independent signal processing foreach individual string.

Related instruments

• Acoustic guitar / guitar
• Acoustic bass guitar / Bass guitar
• Cello - Electric cello
• Violin - Electricviolin
• String orchestra
• Double bass

External Links

• Gibson digital guitar announcement
• NewMusicBox.org: Composers Toolbox: Composing for the Electric Guitar by Nick Didkovsky © 2004