Tuesday, October 20, 2009

Guitar - 7th post

Hello to my dear readers,  how are you recently?
Well, today i am going to post my blog with title of Guitar~
Before i start, i would like to ask?
What is music?
Music is an art that puts sounds together in a way that people like or find interesting. Most music includes people singing with their voices or playing musical instruments, such as the piano, guitar, or drums.
OR
Music is an art form whose medium is sound. Common elements of music are pitch (which governs melody and harmony), rhythm (and its associated concepts tempo, meter, and articulation), dynamics, and the sonic qualities of timbre and texture. The word derives from Greek (mousike), "(art) of the Muses".
OR
Music is sound that has been organized/generated by using rhythm, melody or harmony. If someone bangs saucepans while cooking, it makes noise. If a person bangs saucepans or pots in a rhythmic way, they are making a simple type of music. Blues music is music that is played by singing, using the harmonica, or the acoustic guitar. Jazz musicians use instruments such as the trumpet and saxophone.
Music started many thousands of years ago. When early people first banged pieces of wood together and enjoyed the sound, they were discovering music. Early people also discovered that when they cut off the horns of animals they had killed and blew through them, they could make interesting sounds. People also blew into conch shells and made sounds that they liked. They probably started to sing or shout in celebration.

There are four things which music has most of the time:


  • Music often has pitch. This means high and low notes. Tunes are made of notes that go up or down or stay on the same note.


  • Music often has rhythm. Rhythm is the length of each note. Every tune has a rhythm that can be tapped. Music usually has a regular beat.


  • Music often has dynamics. This means whether it is quiet or loud or somewhere in between.


  • Music often has timbre. This is a French word (pronounced the French way: "TAM-br"). The "timbre" of a sound is the way that a sound is interesting. The sort of sound might be harsh, gentle, dry, warm, or something else. Timbre is what makes a clarinet sound different from an oboe, and what makes one person's voice sound different from another person.

How to enjoy music?

  1. By listening : People can enjoy music by listening to it. They can go to concerts to hear famous musicians perform. Classical music is usually performed in concert halls, but sometimes huge festivals are organized in which it is performed outside, in a field or stadium, like pop festivals. People can listen to music on CDs, Computers, iPods, television, the radio, casette/record-players and even mobile phones.
    There is so much music today, in elevators, shopping malls, and stores, that it often becomes a background sound that we do not really hear. Sometimes it is good to listen more closely to music: by trying to hear the different instruments and what types of notes the instruments are playing.


  2. By Playing or singing : People can learn to play an instrument such as the piano, the guitar, the bass, the trumpet, the drums, or the tuba. They must choose an instrument that is practical for their size. For example, a very short child cannot play a full size double bass, because the double bass is over five feet high. People should choose an instrument that they enjoy playing, because playing regularly is the only way to get better. Finally, it helps to have a good teacher.


  3. By composing : Anyone can make up his or her own pieces of music. It is not difficult to compose simple songs or melodies (tunes). It's easier for people who can play an instrument themselves. All it takes is experimenting with the sounds that an instrument makes. Someone can make up a piece that tells a story, or just find a nice tune and think about ways it can be changed each time it is repeated. The instrument might be someone's own voice.

Well, let us talk about guitar as my title is being posted.
The guitar is a musical instrument with ancient roots that adapts readily to a wide variety of musical styles. It typically has six strings, but four-, seven-, eight-, ten-, eleven-, twelve-, thirteen- and eighteen-string guitars also exist. The size and shape of the neck and the base of the guitar also vary, producing a variety of sounds. The two main types of guitars are the electric guitar and the acoustic guitar (of which the three main types are the classical guitar, the steel-string flattop guitar, and the archtop guitar).


Guitars are recognized as one of the primary instruments in flamenco, jazz, blues, country, mariachi, rock music, and many forms of pop. They can also be a solo classical instrument. Guitars may be played acoustically, where the tone is produced by vibration of the strings and modulated by the hollow body, or they may rely on an amplifier that can electronically manipulate tone. Such electric guitars were introduced in the 1930s, and they have continued to have a profound influence on popular culture since then.
Traditionally guitars have been constructed of various woods and strung with animal gut, or more recently, with either nylon or steel strings. Guitars are made and repaired by luthiers.

 We know that this world have many types of guitar. So now we are going to see about it.
Acoustic guitars - There are several notable subcategories within the acoustic guitar group: classical and flamenco guitars; steel-string guitars, which include the flat-topped, or "folk," guitar; twelve-string guitars; and the arched-top guitar. The acoustic guitar group also includes unamplified guitars designed to play in different registers, such as the acoustic bass guitar, which has a similar tuning to that of the electric bass guitar.

 Renaissance and Baroque guitars - These are the gracile ancestors of the modern classical guitar. They are substantially smaller and more delicate than the classical guitar, and generate a much quieter sound. The strings are paired in courses as in a modern 12-string guitar, but they only have four or five courses of strings rather than six. They were more often used as rhythm instruments in ensembles than as solo instruments, and can often be seen in that role in early music performances. (Gaspar Sanz' Instrucción de Música sobre la Guitarra Española of 1674 constitutes the majority of the surviving solo corpus for the era.) Renaissance and Baroque guitars are easily distinguished because the Renaissance guitar is very plain and the Baroque guitar is very ornate, with ivory or wood inlays all over the neck and body, and a paper-cutout inverted "wedding cake" inside the hole.



 The Baroque Guitars

Portuguese guitar - In spite of the name, it is not a guitar, but rather a cittern.


Portuegese Guitar

Flat-top (steel-string) guitars - Similar to the classical guitar, however, within the varied sizes of the steel-stringed guitar the body size is usually significantly larger than a classical guitar and it has a narrower, reinforced neck and stronger structural design. The robust X-bracing typical of the steel-string was developed in the 1840s by German-American luthiers of whom C. F. Martin is the best known. Originally used on gut-strung instruments, the strength of the system allowed the guitar to withstand the additional tension of steel strings when this fortunate combination arose in the early 20th century. The steel strings produce a brighter tone, and according to many players, a louder sound. The acoustic guitar is used in many kinds of music including folk, country, bluegrass, pop, jazz and blues. Many variations are possible from the roughly classical-sized OO and Parlour to the large Dreadnought and Jumbo. Ovation makes a modern variation, with a rounded back/side assembly molded from artificial materials.

Flat Top Guitar

Archtop guitars - These are steel-string instruments in which the top (and often the back) of the instrument are carved from a solid billet in a curved rather than a flat shape; this violin-like construction is usually credited to the American Orville Gibson (1856-1918). Lloyd Loar of the Gibson Mandolin-Guitar Mfg. Co introduced the violin-inspired f-hole design now usually associated with archtop guitars, after designing a style of mandolin of the same type. The typical archtop guitar has a large, deep, hollow body whose form is much like that of a mandolin or violin family instrument. Nowadays, most archtops are equipped with magnetic pickups and are therefore both acoustic and electric. F-hole archtop guitars were immediately adopted upon their release by both jazz and country musicians and have remained particularly popular in jazz music, usually with flatwound strings.

Archtop Guitar

Selmer-Maccaferri guitars - These are usually played by those who follow the style of Django Reinhardt. It is an unusual-looking instrument, distinguished by a fairly large body with squarish bouts, and either a "D"-shaped or longitudinal oval soundhole. The strings are gathered at the tail like an archtop guitar, but the top is formed from thin spruce (like a flat-top or classical) forced into a shallow dome. It also has a wide fingerboard and slotted head like a nylon-string guitar. The loud volume and penetrating tone make it suitable for single-note soloing and it is frequently employed as a lead instrument in gypsy swing.

Selmer-Maccaferri guitars

Guitarrón - The guitarrón is a very large, deep-bodied Mexican 6-string acoustic bass played in mariachi bands. It is fretless with heavy gauge nylon strings, and is usually played by doubling notes at the octave, which is facilitated by the unusual tuning of A D G C E A.

Now, im going to tell you about the Guitar's Part

 


 1) Headstock


2) Nut

3) Machine heads (or pegheads, tuning keys, tuning machines, tuners)

4) Frets

5) Truss rod

6) Inlays

7) Neck

8) Heel (acoustic) – Neckjoint (electric)

9) Body

10) Pickups

11) Electronics

12) Bridge

13) Pickguard

14) Back

15) Soundboard (top)

16) Body sides (ribs)

17) Sound hole, with Rosette inlay

18) Strings

19) Saddle

20) Fretboard (or Fingerboard)




The Guitar Pick



**END**

No comments: