Introduction

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Guitar Making - Dum Dum, Kolkata

Musical Instrument Making

Introduction

The guitar is a fretted string instrument that possesses a string number between four and eighteen, usually six. Anciently, a guitar was identified as an instrument with several chordophones assembled to form a long fretted neck, flat wooden soundboard, ribs, a flat back, and incurved sides. This type is believed to be developed and used across Europe in the 12th century. Later an improvised version slowly spread to America. Here the sound was produced acoustically using a hollow wood. These events occurred before the electric guitar and the use of synthetic materials in the making came into existence.

Tracing back to its history, a 3300-year-old stone carving depicting a Hittite bard playing a stringed instrument is the oldest iconographic representation of chordophone and clay plaques found at Babylonia. This underlines a possible Babylonian origin to the guitar. According to legends, the German Gitarre, and the French guitars were all adopted from the Spanish Guitarra, which is derived from Ancient Greek kithara, Andalusian Arabic qitara, or the Latin cithara. Though there are no close impressions of modern-day guitar from a period before the Renaissance, there were many string instruments that related to guitars either in physical form or playing technique. One of the earliest of these is Lute, a long-necked instrument with a waisted soundbox. This survived the competition from the third to the sixth century. During the Renaissance, the guitar’s closest contemporary was the Vihuela, a form larger than guitar, with six or seven courses of strings and tuned like a lute. The first instruments that modern audiences would recognize as guitars were built in the fifteenth century. The main parts of a guitar are the body, the fretboard, the headstock, and the strings. While the body is made of wood, the strings are created out of steel or nylon. Though the strings are generally plucked with fingers or fingernails, a small pick made of thin plastic called "plectrum” also comes with the same function. Guitars can be divided into two broad categories, acoustic and electric guitars, which are further divided into several subcategories as per their technical construction and playing style. Hovner Musical Industries is a musical instrument manufacturing and trading unit based in Kolkata that makes guitars. Around 15 types of guitars are manufactured in this unit.

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Guitar Making - Dum Dum, Kolkata