This Is a Nice History of the Guitar

The guitar is a fretted, stringed instrument, and is a member of the lute family. It originated in Persia and reached Spain during the twelth-century, where it¹s versatility as both a solo and accompanying instrument were established. The theory of the guitar was discovered in the early centuries. They found that the sound of a bowstring could be enhanced by attaching a resonating chamber -most like a tortiseshell- to the bow. From the bow came essentially three main types of stringed instruments: the Harp family, which was the sound of plucked strings indirectly transmitted to an attached sound box. The second was the Lyre family, which was strings of a fixed pitch are attached to the directly to a sound chamber. And the third was the Lute family, this was were the pitch of strings was altered by pressing them against a neck that is attached directly to a sound chamber. Within the Lute family came two groups. The lutes proper which had rounded backs and the guitar type instruments with their flat backs.
Guitar-shaped instruments appear in stone bas-relief sculptures of the hittites in northern Syria and Asia Minor from as far back as 1350 B.C.
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