Invention Of Electric Guitar

With the advance of technology, more sophisticated musical instruments were made, and during the twentieth century, reaching its peak in the 60s and 70s, the electric guitar became an institution for musicians and a battlefield among the great guitarists of the time. Les Paul, Duane Eddy, Keith Richards, Eric Clapton, Slash, Van Halen and Yngwie Malmsteen attracted legions of worshiping followers. The endless debate of electric guitar ("Who is the best?") Is part of pop culture, and the two main contenders, Jimi Hendrix and Jimmy Page, are legendary figures in the world of rock n 'roll. We will begin by answering these questions by discrediting a common mistake. Many people think that Les Paul was the inventor of the electric guitar, but it was not. The credit for this is owed to George Beauchamp, musician, and Adolph Rickenbacker, an electrical engineer, who are legitimately considered the people who created the first commercially viable modern amplifiable electric guitar. Others had tried this before, such as using carbon button microphones (as in old phones) connected to the bridge of the guitar, but Beauchamp and Rickenbacker were the first to actually achieve the electrically amplified guitar with sound quality good enough to use it. in a professional music environment. But let's take a closer look at its history. The need for an electric guitar arose because the classical guitar was too quiet to contribute to the music produced by a band in many environments. This problem particularly began to be evident in the music of the concert hall of the 1880s. Later, the Big Bands of the 1920s got their power and swing from drums and brass, so the acoustic guitar it became a second-level instrument, producing melodies that not even the musicians of the band could hear in many cases. The need for an innovation for the guitar was obvious. George Beauchamp, who designed the first raw electric guitar at home, played the Hawaiian guitar and, according to guitar historian Richard Smith, Hawaiian music as a genre was a key factor in the invention of the electric guitar. "You had the Hawaiian musicians," Smith said, "where ... the guitar was the instrument of the melody, so the real impulse to make the electric guitar come from the Hawaiian musicians." As mentioned, before this, jazz musicians and others tried to unite various things to hollow body wood guitars to amplify the sound with not so good results; then, the Hawaiian style lap guitar was electrified. Originally converted into high-stringed guitars ("steel") of hollow Spanish-style wooden guitars, these Hawaiian steel guitars (so called because they are played with a steel bar), are placed on the knees and are played horizontally, giving place to the term "lap guitars" or "lap steel guitars". Eventually, some were forged from brass, and were much louder than wood varieties. At the same time in the history that lap steel guitars began to be made of metal, electric amplification was becoming a reality. Beauchamp met Rickenbacker at Dopyera Brothers, a guitar maker in Los Angeles, and they agreed to work together on an electric guitar project. Adolph Rickenbacker was a pioneer in his field, a man who loved to experiment and dare with new things, such as founding The Rickenbacker International Corporation, a company whose sole purpose was to create and manufacture electric musical instruments. Beauchamp and Rickenbacker, after a lot of experiments, finally invented an electromagnetic device that picked up the vibrations of the strings of the guitar with great clarity. In short, the electromagnets convert these vibrations into an electrical signal, which is then amplified and reproduced through loudspeakers. In 1931, they installed these pads in a new model designed by Harry Watson, the aluminum steel guitar called "Frying Pan" because of its size and shape. The first commercial prototype was finally a reality. Manufacturing began in the summer of 1932 by the Ro-Pat-In Corporation, later renamed the Rickenbacker Electroscopic Instrument Company, with the "Frying Pan" the first commercially feasible electric guitar. From there, the earliest known public mention of an electrically enhanced guitar appeared in Wichita, Kansas in October 1932, in an article printed in the local newspaper, the Wichita Beacon. The musician Gage Brewer demonstrated to the press two of his recent purchases, a Hawaiian electric A-25 and a Spanish standard electric, two of the first electric guitars manufactured by Beauchamp. In the same month, the guitars played in a series of Halloween concerts. A humble beginning for an instrument that would quickly dominate the world of popular music.