Electric Guitar Instruments
Electric Guitar Instruments Fast Facts
The electric guitar gives rock music its sound. Most bands have two – often three – electric guitars. These are: a lead guitar that plays the solos, a rhythm guitar to play rocking rhythms behind the lead and the singer (often the same person), and a bass guitar that pumps out a driving bass line to urge the band forward. Because the solid body of an electric guitar does not produce the actual sound that is heard, it can be made in any shape that can be held. Rock guitars can come in a bizarre range of shapes, colors, and materials, but most stars put music first and prefer the more standard styles.
A Brief History of Electric Guitar Music Instruments
Electricity first began to play a part in music with the beginning of radio broadcasting early in the 20th century. Three elements are combined in order to make music louder: a microphone or “pick-up” converts sound waves into electrical signals. These are then strengthened by an amplifier and passed to a loudspeaker – basically a glorified telephone earpiece – which changes the signals back into sound waves. This system can boost the quietest of noises, and electrified sound has a character all its own. The electric guitar was invented to overcome the limited volume of the acoustic guitar and now dominates popular music.
The first electric guitar was the Fender Stratocaster, popularly known as the Strat. The pioneering Strat first made music in 1954, and has changed little since then. It introduced the double cutaway body, which made it easier to play, the tremolo arm to bend the notes, and the use of three pickups to vary the sound. It resembles an acoustic guitar in overall design – it has the same six strings and is played in the same way. But there are important differences. The most obvious one is that the body is not hollow but made of solid wood. Without its amplifier, an electric guitar makes little sound. Although the body can affect the sustaining quality of the notes, its main purpose is to provide a stable platform for the bridge that holds the strings and the pickups mounted beneath them. The pickups convert the vibrations of the strings into an electrical signal. This signal passes to the volume and tone controls before leaving the guitar at the output socket. A cable leads the signal to an amplifier, which has more controls, and finally to the loudspeaker.
Electric guitars often have two or more pickups, which can be combined to produce different sounds. As the strings vibrate, they change the magnetic fields produced by the magnets in each pickup. The changing fields generate a varying electric signal in the coil of the pickup. In this way, the pickup directly changes the vibration of each string into an electric signal that varies in strength at the same rate as the string vibrates. Once amplified, this varying signal makes the loudspeaker vibrate to produce the sound of the rock guitar!
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