we got something really cool for the
channel today we got brandon aker here
back our friendly neighborhood stringed
instrument historian
for this video we're going to go through
the history of the guitar where the
guitar came from and how we got to what
we know and loved today seven
checkpoints along the way of the history
of the guitar starting in the 15th
century snapshots through time towards
the evolution to the guitar and we get
to play all of them as well and we're
going to jam on all the time
no stairway
oh man as far back as we can go where
did the guitar come from the guitar is a
member of the loot family the oldest
member of the loot family comes from 5
000 years ago in mesopotamia there's
this instrument called the tanbor which
is still played today around 30 100 bce
they discovered this instrument called
the the tanbor and there's actually tons
of instruments from ancient
civilizations like in central asia in
egypt and in mesopotamia where they were
playing these these loot-like
instruments you can see them in
sculptures and paintings and artwork
that brings us to actually ask the
question what is a guitar yeah what's a
guitar and which one of these ancient
ancestors
you know eventually turns into the
guitar unfortunately we're not gonna be
able to solve that one today
for the sake of this video what's
important is that there are many
instruments like liars which are
harp-like instruments as well as tombors
kitaras the first thing we can call a
guitar doesn't come around until around
1500. where does that name even come
from there's a lot of theories about
that there's an instrument called a tar
for example and i think tar actually
just means like string kartar i think is
it or something like that and car is
four and tar is string so it's like a
four string instrument depending on the
number of strings it'll have a different
name these instruments come from the
chordophone family and when you give
something a name like chordophones
what's the chord chord is greek for
string and phonos is greek for sound
string instruments that make sounds yeah
quarter phones boxes with strings on
them yeah
i have picked an instrument today to
start with which i think is the one that
we can say this one for sure at least
gets us towards the path of the guitar
and which one is that the arabic ood
this beautiful instrument got a teardrop
shape
a big bold back with individual strips
of what we call ribs these are heated up
and bent that's how you get the wood
bent a short neck cool bent back
peg box with these like violin like
friction serious angle there yeah each
string is doubled there are 11 strings
and what year was this invented so i
don't know the exact year that this was
invented but yeah i imagine you don't
have the patent but
yeah this instrument has gone back in
time for thousands of years it comes
from the very ancient instrument called
a barbot the first iterations only had
four strings and over time they they
added more and more until they end up
with 11 and sometimes i think they even
have 13. this is still really popular
today yeah especially in places like
turkey and the middle east and north
africa this instrument is light all over
the place the reason i'm starting with
this one is because historically we know
how this was brought to europe and the
chain of events that occurred that led
to the guitar this is the great great
great grandparent maybe yeah the guitar
and it's pretty much played like guitar
you know they even play with a plectrum
oh i was wondering what that is yeah
this is made of plastic but
traditionally the plectrum would have
been made of wood or even like an
eagle's quilt you open your hand and you
put your pinky around it and then you
hold it between these two fingers so
it's like that
use a lot of wrist to
really dig into the string to get a good
resonant tone so the tuning is c
f
a
d
c
okay um there's a little bit of that
that i recognize totally yeah because
it's tuned in fourths
with one major third f to a major third
everything else is a fourth that's a
guitar right the thing that really drove
me to be infatuated with this thing is
the fact that it has no frets yeah the
reason that this instrument needs to be
fretless is because arabic music
especially uses scales called mccombs
those scales have notes in them that
don't exist in the western scale they're
in between our 12-tone western system of
semitones without frets that means you
can get all those spicy in between notes
the octave split into 12 semitones
was that the
average
in the west it was yeah it was at that
time this classification of the the
church modes that we've heard about in
music theory for example is basically a
way of breaking the octave into 12 even
steps so in the west that's a very old
idea and that's how music has worked
since in the east it kind of took a
different path there's these cool notes
i learned about called half flats we
have like a a sharp b they have a b flat
and there's a b half flat in between
here's an a
that's about a b flat a western b flat
semitone
here's a half flat
apparently what region you come from
changes how flat that half flat is it's
hard for me to learn well how flat is it
if it's just kind of in the middle so
that's one of the biggest challenges
i've got just enough so we can at least
hear the sound of the instrument
[Music]
yeah that's the music you would have
been hearing at that time yeah you could
really see how the fretless is
absolutely necessary for that totally
those those little ornaments the sliding
thing is so cool but we can see
where the guitar is starting to form can
i play it yes you can play it all right
thanks i'll be careful wrap your pinky
around it
okay and now just grip it between your
thumb and index finger so your thumb is
it's there and then you wrap your arm
around and really all
like wrists and arms
i love that it's got this low string
yeah the low c is cool
[Music]
going right for the thirds wow that's
brace yeah
this is mainly a melodic instrument
without the frets it really is hard to
play chords in tune yeah so you don't
have to worry so much about that it's
mainly placed melodies so not so much
you can do that but it's very advanced
that's a little yes there's also no
markers to where the notes would be you
use your ear yeah ear plus muscle memory
[Music]
this pick is really
because it's so close to what i'm used
to yeah but not quite it's really it
took me a minute too
[Music]
nice
[Music]
i loved
that what we were doing earlier we're so
used to doing maybe like a little trill
like a little yeah but the fact that you
can do all those little slidey things
are it's just really characteristic of
the music yeah what are you plucking
like right here right here i think over
this this extra piece of wood here is
essentially a pick guard oh yeah of
course
something like that having six pairs of
strings almost it makes me want to just
go right to the chords and
i know like here's here's an everybody
beautiful this thailand look at these
different pieces of wood for each you
know millimeter around the entire thing
right through here as well it kind of
does look at the top
similar to the fretboard that i'm used
to but so micro tonals
the inside the label is great to look at
oh and it comes with his picture on it
and his email
this sound we're hearing especially with
these specific scales was in the ears of
people especially uh in places like
persia this is still played in popular
music so it's incredible that this has
lasted so long but later would branch
off into something else should we talk
about how that happened yeah because i
mean we're only on the first one and
already i feel like i could be here all
day yeah that's right trying to figure
out how to play this that's going to be
the the trap of the day is how do we go
to the next one if we fast forward a bit
in the year 711 the moors invade spain
and they bring with them the ood and
apparently the spanish must have been
really infatuated by the instrument
because they kind of stole it made it
their own the loot and play it kind of
like the hood for hundreds of years
through the medieval period they kept
the pick they took the gut strings they
were using because remember this would
have been gut strings these are modern
strings right now they're metal wound
and some nylon but at the time it would
have been gut which is remember animal
intestine usually sheep intestine and
what the europeans did was they took
those strings and they tied them around
to fix the pitches so you can play
chords and you're also now you're fixed
into the western tonal system right so i
have a loop now we're into the 1500s
yeah and so now we are into the 1500s in
the renaissance the same concept the
double stringing this one seven pairs
this one has seven medieval loots would
have had just four or five pairs but
again they still played them with the
pick and it kind of still sounds more or
less like a nude by the end of the 15th
century you get this which is usually a
six course
loot this one has seven which they added
later and over time they just kept
adding bases more and more and more why
was that the norm to have
pairs of strings one of the reasons
especially in the bass register is that
when you play a gut string where the
string is only this long the note sounds
a bit flubby
by adding an extra octave
high g and a low g
it makes it sound like a louder more
punchy version of that g they weren't
very bright like the steel strings we
know of course have very bright sound
the gut is actually a bit brighter than
nylon really yeah but not as bright as
steel um but i think another reason for
the double strings is it also gives you
a chorus effect you know when you have
one singer sing versus two singers
saying they're never exactly in tune and
it creates a thicker sound one time out
of for just an experiment i took off all
the double strings on this loot just to
see what it sounded like and it sounded
awful it just lost all of its resonance
have you ever heard the term uh
sympathetic resonation yeah when you
play one note and then stop it you can
actually tell that all the other strings
are vibrating even if they're not
touched
and that adds in like a built-in reverb
to the instrument exactly and the more
strings you have the more sympathetic
resonation you get that's a big part of
like the sitar for example like it has a
ton of strings on it that you don't play
you can but they're mainly just there to
vibrate along with you it's like a
built-in like really beautiful reverb
they always kept the the first string
single the chanterelle which means the
singing string was often single it
allows the melodies to be a little bit
more clear seven sets of strings correct
with the top one on its own correct
and how is this tuned it's like a guitar
with a capo on the third fret it would
become g to g okay if we forget about
the sixth course because the earliest
renaissance loots which is what we can
call this didn't have the seventh string
fourth with one third but the third's in
a different place so we get all right c
f
a
d
g there are some shapes where you can do
guitar like chords and it works like d
major
that's a d major shape and this would
just be a c major chord the shapes
aren't so unfamiliar no way but they're
just one string up yes
so this is the first one where just like
that if i picked it up and did my
regular guitar thing here's a c major it
would work you could figure it out be a
c major but it would work this
instrument's heyday was really the 16th
century it existed in the 15th century
as well but
the 16th century is really when this
instrument was popular this instrument
was played by kings queens it was used
during shakespeare plays it was even
played by common people eventually they
dropped the pick but they kept their
hand positioned like this and the reason
they dropped the pick was because of the
renaissance you have the birth of
polyphony when you have many different
parts which are independent melodies
that occur at the same time and they
weave together to create wonderful
harmony but with a pick you can only
really play
you know one line at a time and maybe
you can strum
chords but you can really only start to
sound like a guitar they figure out that
if you drop the pick and use your
fingers you can play several different
voices at the same time because your
thumb can play one part and your fingers
can play a different part the most
famous piece for the renaissance loot is
probably by this english composer named
john dowland and he wrote this piece
called the locker mate pavan which he
later wrote lyrics for with a singer and
it's called flow my tears
polyphony
was this normally played in a band with
other instruments was this a solo
instrument both all across the body
there's an amazing literature of music
for just a solo loot with voice it's
like the original singer-songwriters
yeah right this is also kind of the era
where secular song starts to become
really popular the medieval period
mostly sacred music religious music
right yeah so these songs like flow my
tears is about
sadness and grief and about religious
connotation or something so the birth of
secular music becomes very popular with
especially loot music troubadour songs
stuff like that so before this i mean
we're going back so far that if you were
making music it was probably for the
church so at the time was it like
rebellious to like
go to a concert or maybe maybe that's
still the case but like to be to go to
see music but just to see music that was
a different thing it was definitely a
different thing they were exploring a
very human emotion you know flow my
tears fall from your springs exiled
forever let me
rest uh it's like it's just like this so
dark standards were just really sad yeah
it's been a pretty emo actually
it's like popular music mostly sad no
john donald was kind of the king of
writing melancholic music although he
wasn't a very sad person turns out he
was actually a spy uh that's the thing
about loot players it's pretty cool
yeah really loot players had the
positions and they had the ear of the
king like they could sometimes their
best position you can have as a loot
player would be to serenade the king to
sleep because it's so
charmingly soft they had positions at
court you can hear the king speak you
might hear some some gossip and so
actually loot players were often spies
wow
so don't tell me any of your secrets
yeah
it's hilarious that you there was a job
to serenade the king to sleep isn't that
great i guess we do that now i often
have my phone and i'll put on some music
if i'm going to sleep i guess if you
were rich enough at the time you would
hire someone to do that for you what a
weird position
it is a very delicate soft sound but uh
rather than thinking of it as a defect
it has a charm because i would think
that these instruments at the time would
be made to be louder because of course
this is way before amplification
but this is playing at about speaking
volume if the instrument's too loud it
overpowers the voice so i can speak to
you
and while i'm playing
or sing and the loot never overpowers me
which means it's the perfect
accompaniment instrument
delicate yeah that's beautiful the piece
that i played the locker mate pavan how
i played it was just the first level any
loot player worth their weight
wouldn't just play that on the repeat
they would add what are called
here's the simpler version
[Music]
again already complicated four voices
but with divisions
[Music]
it becomes much more interesting and you
can improvise those in the spot and any
elite player at the time would have been
an amazing improviser another good riff
i like is the ending melody
that can become
[Music]
what was being a full-time musician at
this point like probably the best
position that i know of that you could
get was at courts yeah because if your
patron was royalty you were paid well
you were taken care of and that's
essentially what you would have needed
was you would need patronage this is
later but bach for example was had a
very common job which was music director
at a church and so every week he had to
write more music for the church so all
the strengths so far would be animal
intestine as you saw with me having
trouble with those thirds we could take
that same animal intestine we're using
for the strings wrap it around the
fretboard
fingerboard yeah and then make it a
fretboard yeah we fixed the pitches and
by the way there are some ancient
instruments like remember the ton bore
that i mentioned that one from like
thirty one hundred messages
that one had frets so the idea of frets
uh wasn't a new invention for the
europeans it fit in with their their
musical system at the time here we have
gut frets these are a real gut that i've
tied around myself also this headstock
is just really cool from the ud remember
i mean this is almost the same thing we
have the teardrop shape now we get this
beautiful decoration called the rose we
still have the bowl back and we still
have the cool bent back peg box with all
these friction pegs we're way before
gears those geared tuners didn't come
around to i think something like 18 20.
so friction pegs were the deal and by
the way they're fine like if you have a
good set of them they they work well but
they can't micro tune as easily as the
gears count yeah for people unaware of
friction pegs it's just held in there by
friction of course yeah you just you
push and turn and that's what keeps the
the string i mean violence that's what
they still do today right because they
held a pick like this and they would
strum down and up down as strong up as
weak right that's kind of
natural effect you get rather than just
which is a little bit
not very musical
and thrash metal like right yeah
yeah
i mean it's telling too that that works
on this instrument right getting
they want to preserve this strong weak
idea but still use the fingers so they
use the thumb
for down and they use the index finger
on the way up strong weak strong weak
you get this fast way of playing down
and up uh to play those divisions
so it's actually pretty pretty fast
while you're playing fast you still get
strong weak strong weak strong weak
which is very musical and perfect for
the music of the time that's the basics
of the renaissance flute yeah can we
give it a try
oh yeah i haven't prepared anything you
ever haven't read your treatises no i
don't have yet i don't have any
treatises with me this feels like a
guitar
oh no i'm so close forget about this
string yeah you have a guitar
oh okay all right it's just down the
whole step so that's a b flat major
chord instead of a c major chord
[Music]
nice
[Music]
melancholy it would be
down with the thumb and then up
correct the instrument is going to be
more horizontal to the ground and you
come like this and your thumb is
underneath your index finger down with
the thumb up with the index finger
but it's underneath it correct
all the paintings show them playing in
this in this position
jeez yeah that's really tough yeah
that's so different yeah
i probably won't have time to nail that
now right
this goes down to
that's a low d so imagine you take a
standard guitar and you tune it down a
whole step to d yeah that's what that is
oh
whoa
[Music]
yeah whoa like it can sound so pretty
and also sounds so
[Music]
nice
that sounds awesome yeah yeah whoa it's
very guitar-like yeah i mean bar chord
bam totally my muscle memory works
it's whoop i'll move the front there oh
oops dangerous oh i can't move my frets
that's different this might seem like a
disadvantage but this is a huge
advantage for these instruments having
movable threats so we can basically
raise or lower different notes of that
12-tone system to be more in tune to
fine-tune more than a guitar with fixed
frets yeah that's a big part of the
guitar that i learned through getting so
frustrated with it while recording
is that guitars are just by their nature
a little out of tune they're equally out
of tune yeah they're equally out of tune
equal temperament i remember recording
and just thinking my my guitar is broken
not every single fret on the fretboard
is perfectly in tune i got to bring it
into a shot but no that's just what
guitars are the whole point is that you
can play in every single key
you can play in c sharp minor and then
go to e flat major and all those things
will sound good the only way
temperaments work is if you make some
keys sound good and some keys not sound
so great some chords sound great
beautiful and some chords are very extra
dissonance so you're favoring certain
notes and then actually in the end if
you're sticking to one key you can play
much more in tune with much sweeter
especially major thirds are the big ones
major thirds and equal temperament are
super sharp and with the movable frets
you're able to bring it into those
different temperaments and have it be
more perfectly in tune i often tune my
guitars while recording a little bit
differently so that they work for that
one particular key
[Music]
what i love about your your first try of
every single instrument i've ever shown
you yeah even classical guitarists who
have a doctorate they go to pick up a
loot and they try to play one melody and
you always go for the hardest thing and
nail it
well i don't know if i nail it
there we go
[Music]
it feels like i have a regular six
string guitar where every string is
double so like a 12 string and then
another string on top yes and it's in a
different tuning yes
[Music]
the next instrument yeah comes around 1
500. this is loot like it has double
strings
friction pegs gut frets but now we've
lost the teardrop shape we've got an
hourglass which is i mean it's on a
guitar right we have a flat back like a
guitar that's cool straight head sock
not the bent back
headstock anymore we have made it to our
first ever guitar all right
so this is the renaissance guitar is
this when they started using the word
guitar as well yeah this is 1500s we
have the first guitar correct and the
tuning my dog has fleas
g-c-e-a it's a ukulele that's where the
ukulele tuning comes from g-c-e-a and
the portuguese in 1550 brought this to
hawaii
and they later turned it into the
ukulele
right on this instrument was really
popular for strumming much easier
to manage
chords as any you player would know we
went from very nearly having the guitars
tuning right to changing it and then
coming back to it later i think the
reason that this one kind of got demoted
in terms of the number of strings is
because when you have less strings it's
easier to form chords
with only one finger down i can play a c
major chord
pretty easy and they thought the same
thing some people even criticized this
instrument as being too simple to play
chords but it's great for chords
[Music]
so very easy to strum very easy to play
songs and then self-accompany you you
could sing over that very easily but
they kept the chanterelle they kept the
double stringing and they also developed
a small solo repertoire for it and
there's a lot of beautiful pieces
especially from france
[Music]
what got them to this body shape to this
hourglass shape that we know was it
because it could rest on your leg easier
you start seeing those hourglass shapes
in the 1500s but it's a really good
question as to what's the impetus behind
the shapes of our instruments this of
course makes sense because you just put
it on your leg and you play it here you
can put it on your other leg and i pick
up these and i don't really know how to
hold it or simply that i just don't have
any experience holding these there's a
reason for the bowl back when you have a
deep bowl there just often makes it so
that you have a better base and maybe
there was something about the flat back
and hourglass shape which produced an
ideal sound for maybe there are
different sizes by the way you can have
slightly bigger and slightly smaller
instruments that's the basic renaissance
guitar
yeah i would love to why this change to
this headstock and not this as far as i
know the reasoning for the the bent
backward peg box if you have seven
doubled strings that's a lot of strings
and if you just kept going farther away
you you start reaching really far so by
bending it back you're able to easily
access all of the tuning pegs so you're
gonna have only a few strings we don't
need to bend it back because it doesn't
go too far maybe that's one of the
reasons it's it's interesting a lot of
these conversations we're going to have
today are partially speculation yeah
[Music]
i don't quite have that same technique
you have i use the the like fleshy parts
of my fingers i love your strum it's
great
[Music]
what is that
what am i playing there i just stumbled
upon it i didn't prepare anything
yes
but yeah that's just a ukulele
and still my guitar muscle memory works
because i can play it just if i forget
about the lowest two strings yes imagine
it's the top four strings of a guitar
yeah one of the reasons also this is a
guitar is because the top four strings
are proportionally the same
if i just told you those were d g b e
anything you played on it would be this
as the same yeah as you played on a
guitar
[Music]
i mean i again i i could be here forever
should we keep going
yeah you should you got to stop me okay
to get a larger range they added a fifth
course to it and made it a bit bigger
that brings us to all right the baroque
guitar yeah we've already done a video
on this guy we'll link that somewhere
this is the gorgeous baroque guitar it
was really popular between about 1600 to
1750 the baroque period now we've added
a fifth course
and the whole thing is two to fourth
lower we have e b
[Music]
sounds like a guitar getting pretty
close we just don't have a low e we
still have doubled strings we still have
the single chanterelle but we've kept
the flat headstock we've gained a
mustache bridge which i i love so much
remember this beautiful rose is now a
three-dimensional decoration which is
made of goat skin now that was very
common at the time yeah all different
designs
you can see by different makers so it's
like a branding thing i think that's the
idea it's purely aesthetic by the way
this doesn't do anything for the sound
right that's interesting because like
now like different brands differentiate
themselves from the headstock and this
was kind of like that of the time it's
one of the distinguishing features we
also have a flat back
gut frets friction pegs all that's kind
of the same i did something on purpose
in this video i took out the peg
the tenth peg which is actually uh would
have been a doubled version of the e but
since most of the time they use it as a
chanterelle without the doubled string
it actually has nine strings and now
there's no confusion
it is very cool that 400 years ago if
you were a guitar player you played a
nine string yeah
totally the big appeal for the baroque
guitar was all the incredible
sophisticated strum patterns that they
developed but also could do plucking
puntiado means plucking rasgueado means
means strumming the puntiado sounds
something like
and the rescued
[Music]
[Applause]
much louder much deeper of a sound kind
of foreshadowing of flamenco this
instrument really blossomed in spain
other people in europe called the music
the way they were banging on guitars at
the time the spanish were musico rodoso
which is i think like ridiculous
are like loud annoying music it's
hilarious to to hear about that type of
criticism of new music yeah from 400
years ago that's loud and annoying yeah
there are five pairs of strings except
the top one single and the way you
string the bottom two depends on which
region you're in the ds
um could just be two high ds no
like like a guitar d
and then the fifth string
could also just have two high a's so
that's a very high tuning with no bass
register sometimes they added this low d
that i have on here
and for this video i decided since i
didn't have it last time i added the low
a
and this is the a of the guitar so
actually if i play the single strings a
d g
b
e there's our we are very nearly at a
modern guitar we're just missing that
low e
[Music]
now we're getting to the area where my
muscle memory of a sixth string
does me better than if i'm playing like
a seven string or an eight string like
this is almost this feels closer
to what i learned growing up with this
extreme guitar the scale length of the
instrument is very familiar yes exactly
right yeah something pretty cool for
more advanced guitar players out there
i'm sure you've run into this action
problems on the guitar can happen when
the weather changes yeah that's a big
because none of these have truss rods
yet not exactly in modern guitars
there's a
truss rod through the neck that you can
adjust and it adjusts the bow of the
neck it gets warped this way or this way
you can adjust that
none of these have that yet so you had
to be really careful with these yeah
these got into some bad weather that's i
mean that's it right there is an
advantage with gut frets by the way say
for example you have a buzzy note you
can just make the next note after it
make a smaller fret so there's more room
so by changing the frets you can
customize your setup every single fret
can be a different size on a metal
guitar you have to literally file the
frets down yep so it's actually a little
bit more convenient yeah
take one off and put a new one on it's
certainly far more modular big part why
we're still using gut frets here is
simply because these materials didn't
exist at the time there's some
instruments early instruments which
started using types of metals for
strings those wound strings that i was
talking about fully wound strings didn't
exist until into the i think the 18th
century there was some maybe the late
renaissance they took a piece of gut and
you could wrap it with a small piece of
metal like loosely wrapped i think it's
called a crimped string just to give the
string a bit more clarity actually using
metal strings on the instrument that's
that's pretty pretty far off gut strings
sound great and and most early plex
players today even if you say hey i have
some nylon strings that are cheaper and
will last you longer i say i want those
gut
i want those guts
well not because even because it's
a different sound it sounds better
and of course they had metal at this
time but i imagine putting metal into
the fretboard would have been
prohibitively expensive and maybe they
just didn't even yeah they just didn't
even want it if i had metal frets and i
showed up to an early music gig it
starts like this what temperament are we
in yeah and i say i'm an equal they
would go
you know
and i i can't adapt i can't change my
notes now every single time someone
plays one of those altered notes i'm out
of tune you have to be able to move your
frets otherwise you can't play the music
it's not like they were waiting oh i
can't wait till we can get rid of these
gut frets man they they were great so if
you want to learn more about this one
particular instrument we got a whole
video on it yes we've arrived now in the
17th century and even into the 18th so
this instrument was being played a lot
up until at least 1750. a new italian
style called gallant music was emerging
it was a return to simpler music
in 1750 that's when bach died bach's
music is incredibly complex it's very
contrapuntal i mean there's a lot of
separate voices weaving together it's
very sophisticated in a reaction to that
sophisticated music they started making
this music which would return to more
similar charming melodies very simple
beautiful melody with some basic
accompaniment and they wanted a better
bass range what's the trend so far just
keep adding strings and so at the end of
the 18th century you start getting
baroque guitars like this but with six
courses six pairs of strings and then at
the beginning of the 1800s we basically
get a new instrument now we have a six
single string guitar tuned
e a d g b
and we made it yeah so what year is this
around 1800 we start seeing these six
single string guitars but they're a
little bit smaller than our current
guitars right it kind of looks like a
broke guitar but we do there but we have
e to e six strings single strings
totally let's see what's different than
the baroque guitar first of course now
we have a
low e the double stringing as i
mentioned was often to give the sound a
bit of a louder sound as well as in the
bass to clarify those low bass notes
which with gut is a little bit uh dull
sounding so with an upper octave you get
more click on the different strings yes
i think around 1750 this guy in naples
uh savaretze invented the wound string
so he wounded metal around gut or
sometimes silk and you get when you do
that
you get a really punchy loud bass sound
they abandoned the double string because
they didn't need it anymore yeah and
then they abandoned all the doubles and
now you get
six single strings which is easier to
tune and it's easier to do things like
slurs and things on in general it's more
convenient it's cheaper because you have
less strings for the early 19th century
it was the new the new trend yeah in
1750 we now have wound strings yes which
is a huge change to the sound yes since
we have metal wound strings remember
those gut frets that i told you no one
was looking to replace them oh no the
metal bound strings keep ruining by
chewing up all the gut threats they
experimented with many different
materials wood and it ended up being
metal that was referred to i guess since
the metal wound strings but there's a
problem if they're metal you can't move
them so now we have to decide okay how
are we going to temper them and equal
temperament was the decision because you
can play in every key and everything
will sound pretty good we have a smooth
neck now on these instruments as you're
playing through you're also rubbing
against the frets and sometimes moving
them is okay metal one strings though
the top three by the way would still be
gut in the 19th century it's another big
thing remember how i was emphasizing on
these other instruments they only had
like eight
or so friends yeah this thing has 22
frets it's a total shredder guitar
[Laughter]
and they're on the fretboard they're not
on the body anymore exactly right the
fretboard itself extends above the neck
and actually that's floating i don't
know if you can see that's not touching
the sound board oh just like a cello or
yes you mentioned that these early
guitars didn't have trust rods which is
right so you can't make adjustments to
the fly
guess what does this have a truss rod in
it it's not a truss rod there's a
mechanism here it comes with a clock key
you can put the clock key and then turn
this and it changes the angle oh
that's one way around it yes so mid
concert if you're a little buzzy you can
go right and then you have interesting a
different action this wasn't on every
single 19th century guitar this guitar
specifically is a replica of a guitar
from a very famous
viennese maker named staufer in places
like fianna it was intense they called
it guitar mania this just was the new
the new thing if you're starting to
learn with this you also need to learn
about temperaments yes and
tying on the frets and
moving the frets to different
temperaments this just bypasses all that
so it takes some pressure off yeah we
still do have pegs because we don't have
gears yet yeah the gears come around
1820. i spoke earlier about this domino
effect of well if you're going to have
metal strings you need metal it turns
out there's other things that happen too
this is called a pin bridge with metal
strings you get more tension and so you
need a way of making sure this this
bridge doesn't rip off they drilled
holes in the top and the string actually
goes through the hole and is held in
place with these pins here yeah that is
exactly like a modern acoustic guitar
exactly and i didn't even think about
that with these other ones but the
bridges are so much different there's
just a tie block yeah and that that
wouldn't work with metal stitching pull
off the tension the tension is too great
because it can handle more tension and
you can have more taut strings that are
metal wound you also get more volume and
metal strings are more more durable
let's hear how this thing sounds a
little guitar
[Music]
in the 19th century we have a big
stylistic change happening now each
century has you know their trends and
their different tastes in music the
favorite style of music in the 19th
century in europe was opera and so the
popular tunes were themes from operas
right you could walk away humming oh
yeah
[Music]
they would only hear these tunes if they
paid the ticket to see it you can't go
home and turn on spotify and listen to
that your favorite song from the show
you just saw if you wanted to hear that
song again you had to go pay another
ticket and go which is cost prohibitive
the way around that to hear the song
again is to have composers take out
those moments fit them on instruments
you can play at home you have more
amateurs playing music because they
wanted to hear it so you have more
people playing at home in the streets
and the bars and the in whatever in
public forms but but you're right that
the best level of music making only
could be heard and there's just big
platforms like like in an opera or going
to see a symphony orchestra play because
there's a big amateur market you have a
lot of people specifically writing
pieces for them that they can really
manage you know really basic pieces that
are
[Music]
it's not very
hard but it's pretty
simple melodies with arpeggiations and
so that's what they were playing this
was also the time of incredible
virtuosos you wouldn't believe what they
could do on the guitar one of my
favorite examples of this is this piece
by the spanish composer fernando sor he
plucked a melody from a mozart opera uh
from the magic flute there's a melody in
it that goes
and he fit it onto the guitar so you
could play it at home but he goes above
and beyond he then makes a whole set of
variations on the theme when anybody
just shows off what you can do on the
guitar
[Music]
[Laughter]
[Music]
and at the very end he ends always in a
very operatic way
you can hear the operatic influence in
the music but he doesn't only just try
to imitate the opera he makes the guitar
do what it does best using the idioms of
the guitar i just wanted to make that
point earlier that it's not just an
amateur market although you have the
birth of an amateur market for
guitarists which never existed yeah you
have way more people playing guitar
before yes if you were a musician at the
time if you're a guitar player and you
wanted to get your music out there you
have your live performances of course so
another avenue would be
make music that's pretty easy to play on
guitar if it sounds great and then
release the sheet music for it for other
people to learn heytubes studies here
check it out see what yeah i mean at
this point like me getting the guitar
and learning how it works is there's no
this is just a guitar
yeah
there's no learning how it works small
differences i mentioned
how will that change the way you play it
[Music]
yeah it does sound quite a bit different
i'm playing something that i would
normally play on a steel string and it's
really not working on this one yeah much
softer more mellow sound i think
oh the the fretboard is a little bit
thinner than i'm used to it's thinner
and shorter and also still no dots i put
one piece of tape for you one piece of
paper
when did we get dots the whole idea of a
marker something hot to just burn the
wood at spots to make a marker so anyone
can do that i think probably not until
the late 19th century early 20th century
do you get standard dots on three five
seven i don't see that on any classical
guitars although on my classical tour i
requested when i had it built for me a
seventh fret dot when you're on stage
and it's dark and you have to make a big
shift you look down yeah you know
whether you missed the note could be if
for that reason modern guitars too the
dots are
are glow-in-the-dark like that's become
exactly well like it's super blatant
i've been told for classical guitars
that they don't have dots on them
because players would use capos so often
so you're always changing the key and
then if you're playing with a capo in
different places all the time then the
dots would be confusing that's true
rather than helping you
oh i've seen you do it like this that's
the classical vibrato yeah
there you go
that's great it works best on the 12th
fret
do
i've never really done that before but
it works surprisingly well
that's the beautiful one especially in
the halfway point the string is is the
most loose right yeah so it's easier to
move around
so we have a softer more mellow sound
[Music]
now all of a sudden we have 22 frets
almost added another octave yeah a lot
of people say things like yeah but you
probably never never use these oh they
did
they go all the way up to the top and
it's such a beautiful extension of the
register of the guitar these notes would
have been brand new this is quite the
development so if we go to the next
level here from the 19th century in the
mid 19th century we have some new
developments in the guitar if you
remember from our conversation with
marshall and richard bernay they
introduced us to a 275 000 guitar guitar
toys guitar torres was famous for taking
this 19th century smaller guitar with
ladder bracing he enlarged the body
and the depth he came up with a new way
of bracing the top the wood underneath
with a system called fan bracing these
new dimensions he added to the
instrument codified the new style of
guitar making for the rest of the
classical guitars life all the way up
until till now so if we look at how
small this guitar is around 1850 we have
this new codified shape and now we're on
a classical guitar this is our classical
guitar every classical guitar you see if
you meet someone says i play classical
guitar their guitar is going to look
more or less exactly like this and
torres was responsible for codifying
these dimensions we have a big body it's
a bit deeper yeah right it produces more
sound it's bassier uh we still have of
course the metal frets and here now
finally our gears finally
we can fine tune on such a small scale i
don't have to worry about pegs slipping
or anything like that friction pegs of
course it's just one to one if you turn
it all the way through once
it goes all the way through once and on
here you can have one turn be a much
smaller incremental change and i can do
a lot more fine tuning let's having a
gear of this size cost prohibitive to
have on something like that it wasn't
invented until until i mean it became
popular in 1820 it started to be used
but i'm not sure if it was even invented
before this is a complex like clock
mechanism yeah as far as i know this
just simply didn't exist until the early
19th century and as we learned with the
torah's guitar these were handmade these
were very expensive yes what we hear now
is a bit more volume this guitar the
same dimensions is also what flamencos
use they usually have clear plates
because they hit the top of the guitar
so much that they don't want to damage
the wood so all that really fun
[Music]
all that stuff works so well on this
instrument too and you can i hope you
can hear this is a louder sound
this one has a dot on the set i custom
ordered that dot it cost me 20 bucks
now we're just at a classical guitar
this is very familiar
[Music]
something like that nice so was flamenco
the most popular
music to be played on this in spain in
spain the guitar became the national
instrument of spain that type of music
is you know essential to the spanish
sound of music also what was it called
at the time i don't imagine they started
calling it classical guitar that's a
good point um hey we got this new thing
it's called the classical guitar all
those terms the baroque tar the
renaissance guitar these are hindsight
yeah of course likely they called it the
guitar yeah
one of the most famous composers who
played an instrument which was going to
be this size was francisco targa this is
a piece called roquerdo stella alhambra
which uses a technique called tremolo
[Music]
so
[Music]
they were coming up with all these
amazing new techniques that they were
using to full effect and the repertoire
for this instrument is really varied
played in so many different ways yes not
with a pick yet the classical guitar
wasn't played with a pick because you
can't achieve these parts with a pick we
talked about nails earlier this is a big
topic i do play with nails on each
finger kind of little picks for the
classical guitar in particular nails
became very popular so not so much for
this one it's somewhat dependent on the
player at this time bro guitar some
players played with nails renaissance
guitar same idea for the renaissance
loot no nails was the preference for ood
of course they they play with a pic
eagles quill you have eagles fall yeah
that's about as cool as it gets
coolness for what your plectrum has just
gone down and down
[Laughter]
it's really important to mention when
one instrument is invented the ones that
came before it don't just get erased
from history some people play them so
there's overlap so when the baroque
guitar became popular it's not that
everyone said now we have a five-course
guitar we don't need a four course it
was still being played played for a
while and same thing with these two
some people added a six strings some
people kept their five string you play
like a nine string guitar
even though the sixth string has become
my standard oh okay
when the 19th century guitar and the
classical guitar are becoming very
popular the most popular way to write
music for them became standard music
notation like same as piano and violin
do you remember what they used before
that no
tap well before this they used for that
all of these are tab
really yeah not the uh the ood is an
oral tradition but 400 years
of tablature
wow and here i was thinking this whole
time a tab is like this new thing
that just made it easy to share guitar
tabs on the internet
i mean it just makes sense right it's
super easy super logical tab existed for
hundreds of years that's how i learned
to play guitar it was
guitar tabs on ultimateguitar.com and
guitar pro yeah software so if you're
out there shaming people for using tab
shame on you shame on you let's take one
more look at this chauffeur guitar this
has a few things that the classical
guitar doesn't have that i've associated
with modern guitars like what the bridge
yes that's the main thing the reason i
wanted to talk about this one again for
a second is because the maker of this
one stouffer was super famous in vienna
and he had an apprentice in the early
19th century named cf martin carl
friedrich martin of martin guitars
he was a german guy who studied in
vienna yeah to learn how to make these
style guitars he moves with his family
to new york in like 1833 and tries his
luck here having studied with the best
maker in vienna he took off and he
started one of the biggest guitar
industries that america ever ever seen
by the early 1900s banjos and mandolins
were becoming very popular big band era
yeah big bandera banjos why are strong
mandolins at the time why are strong
they're loud it wasn't a positive thing
that the guitar was this beautiful
romantic instrument it was like dude we
can't hear you yeah
so they thought about putting metal
strings on it just like the banjo all
metal strings that's that's so much
tension how is the top gonna handle that
and one of the things that made martin
special was around i think 1850 he
invented this x bracing system how you
brace the underside of the soundboard
changes the sound a lot and so martin
around 1850 comes up with this x-bracing
pattern which is apparently more durable
and is was kind of very the staple of
martin guitars and stops this from
flinging off yes it gave more support
and changed the tone as well with all
steel what he had to do was make it much
more durable so he took his x bracing
pattern made it even more durable which
could handle the steel strings it worked
by like 1920 steel string acoustic
guitars became the guitar
here we go
guitar as we know it we did it
we made it
i'm just right at home it's just a
string guitar
hey 20th century the guitar that really
swept america yes they wanted to compete
to be loud enough but also steel strings
are more durable they last longer
they're also cheaper so cheaper more
durable louder this
many reasons why in america this this
took off now we have the gears as well
yep different type of gears than the
classical yeah from here martin guitars
experiments a lot with body shape and
size they have all these different
models how wide is the bottom compared
to the upper bouts they experimented
with really big bodies like dreadnock
guitars all the different models took
off now we have a pickguard yeah do we
have a guitar pick i usually have like
20.
way louder louder yeah you could play
this in a van and be heard
such a different sound
than everything i mean the steel strings
of course and you can really feel it
there's so much more tension that the
strings around without martin's
inventions and this pinhole bridge
system the guitar couldn't sustain all
that tension on the top 1833 right there
on the headstock
[Music]
lovely martin knew what was up that
thing comes with a ton of
dots it comes a little bit
yeah it has a ton of dots on it finally
it took us this long to get the dots on
the fretboard this has a truss rod in it
too yes so the truss rod is in here and
it wasn't until around 1940 that we get
nylon strings so for classical
guitarists started using nylons that
have got why it's cheaper
string technology also really influences
how guitars are made and built what
players use clearly we've seen that from
ancient plucked instruments all the way
back in mesopotamia all the way to a
steel string it's certainly not a
straight line it's also not an evolution
towards a better and better instrument
musical taste changes over time the
instruments that we make and use serve
the function of allowing us to play the
music that we think sounds good whatever
the musical trends are at the time
that'll shape the instruments we play
yeah so instruments don't get better and
better they just change with our
changing aesthetic there was many
different ways i'm sure that all these
were played just like this one is like
you can't pick this up and say this is
what the steel string acoustic sound is
like to everybody there's so many
different styles of music that this
plays well said when you go back to the
baroque period you're doing that for
many many decades and you have to
generalize a lot so without any
recordings from the time period yeah
yeah so when i when when someone says
this is how broad music sounds well
we're going off of treatises and books
of people and they wrote down the things
that were important to them but they
didn't write down everything one of the
reasons this instrument has been so
successful over time is because it's so
versatile blues folk rock pop classical
so that's one of the reasons i think
it's led to
such an incredible popularity so far up
until now
all of these instruments have been
amplified by just the body of the
instrument yeah the next step after this
brings me to the type of guitars that
are most close to my heart solid body
electric guitars and just north in
wisconsin
is a les paul exhibit at a museum and we
will look at the first ever
electric solid body guitar ever made so
that's the next video subscribe to that
brandon thanks so much
for everything we did yeah we did it we
made it through
and we'll see you next week uh with the
first ever electric
solid body guitar
cool see you then thanks for watching
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