Guitars | Can’t Sleep? Learn About the World’s Most Popular String Instrument

The guitar is a stringed musical instrument, usually fretted, with six or twelve strings, held flat against the body and played by strumming or plucking. Its sound is produced by a vibrating string stretched between two fixed points, projected either acoustically through a resonant hollow chamber or amplified by an electric pickup. The modern word "guitar" traces back through Spanish guitarra, Andalusian Arabic qitara, Latin cithara, and ancient Greek kithara—an instrument that appears four times in the Book of Revelation, usually translated as "harp." But the origins of the modern guitar itself are not known for certain.

The Deep History: From Medieval Spain to the Baroque

Before the electric guitar and synthetic materials, a guitar was defined as an instrument with a long fretted neck, a flat wooden soundboard, ribs, and a flat back, often with incurved sides. A 3,300-year-old stone carving of a Hittite bard and clay plaques from Babylonia show people playing lute-like instruments similar to the guitar. Two instruments are commonly claimed as influential predecessors: the four-string oud (brought to Iberia by the Moors in the eighth century) and the European lute. However, many scholars consider the lute an offshoot of a separate line of instruments.