What is a Guitar?

A guitar is a stringed musical instrument with a long neck and a round body that is often made of wood. It has strings, usually six of them, that can be strummed with the fingers or with a pick. The neck has bars or marks called frets on it that help a guitarist know where to put the fingers when playing different notes. The strings are usually tuned to a standard chord but some people use alternate and improvised tunings.

There have been instruments like the guitar for at least 5,000 years. It may have evolved from older instruments known as the oud and the kithara from ancient India and central Asia. The earliest picture of a guitar-like instrument is a stone carving from the 3300 BC city of Ugarit, southern Syria.

Today, guitars come in a variety of shapes and sizes. They can be either acoustic or electric, with six or more strings. There are also many sub-categories of each type, depending on the internal construction and components, the species or types of wood used in the body and neck, the hardware and electronic appointments, and other factors.

Most guitars have a pickup that converts vibrations from the strings into electrical signals. The signal is amplified and processed to produce the desired sound. The controls on a guitar can include potentiometers for volume and tone, pickup selector switches that choose between one or more pickups, and input jacks for connecting to amplifiers. Other electronic components, such as preamps and EQ circuitry, can be added for additional effects or to compensate for losses in the signal due to long wires connecting pickups to the instrument.

Guitars are played in a wide range of musical genres, from folk music to modern pop and rock, as accompaniment or solo instrument. The loud, amplified sound of a guitar can be heard in heavy metal and punk rock music, for example. A large number of guitar players have become famous throughout the world.

In the 19th century, the guitar underwent changes that improved its sonority. The body became broader and deeper, with a thinner soundboard. The transverse bars reinforcing the soundboard were replaced by radial braces that fanned out from below the sound hole, and the neck was set into the body instead of being raised into a block.

The strings are usually made of gut or nylon and are tuned to a standard chord, usually E, A, D, and G. There are some alternative and improvisational tunings, and there are even guitars with seven, eight, or twelve strings. A capo is used to raise the pitch of open strings by a semitone. There are also a variety of other devices for changing the sound of a string, such as adding distortion to a note. Guitars can be connected to a computer through a MIDI converter, allowing them to control the software of a virtual music synthesizer. This can allow a guitarist to play music that is not otherwise possible to create on the guitar itself.