Electric GuitarsNo other instrument has done so much to influence music as the
electric guitar. Whole generations of young musicians picked up their first electric guitar in the hopes of
emulating such legendary players as Chet Atkins, Les Paul, Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton and
Jeff Beck. To this day, the electric guitar remains the driving force behind most popular melodic
music. Sound ProductionMost modern electric guitars are produced with a solid body. This means that unlike an acoustic guitar, the actual instrument itself is incapable of producing any real volume and tone. Instead, an electric guitar uses pickups (electro-magnetic devices which pick up the vibration of the strings) to produce sound. The vibration of the strings of the electric guitar is converted into an electrical current by the pickup, which is then fed into an amplifier and delivered via a speaker cabinet. Due to the fact that the sound produced by the electric guitar is in a purely electrical form before being amplified, effects such as reverb, chorus, delay and others can be applied to the electrical current and shape the sound before it is amplified. This makes the electric guitar one of the most versatile instruments in the world, if not the most versatile. Electric Guitar ConstructionMost electric guitars will be constructed with a solid body, attached to a neck which is far thinner than the necks found on acoustic guitars. In a similar fashion, all of the other standard guitar parts found on an electric guitar will be scaled down from those found on an acoustic guitar and augmented significantly. The bridge for example, will usually be a far more complicated piece of equipment than a bridge found on an acoustic guitar. Almost every electric guitar bridge will have the ability to adjust the intonation of individual strings, and many will feature fine tuning knobs, so that the guitar can be finely tuned using the right had during play.An electric guitar will often be manufactured with a tremolo arm (nicknamed the whammy bar by many people). This is a long arm attached to the bridge, which the player holds cupped in their right hand, and can be either pulled up on, or pushed down on, to create a variation in string tension. Most electric guitars will feature more than one pickup, and a selector switch will be fitted so that the guitar player can choose a single pickup, or sometimes a combination of pickups, to produce different tones. As well as the pickup selector switch, there will be a volume control knob and a tone control knob; again these will be placed conveniently close to the right hand playing position. Playing an Electric GuitarThe sound of an overdriven electric guitar churning out power chords is one of the driving factors behind rock music, and playing rock guitar rhythms using a pick and right/left hand damping techniques is something every guitar player adds to their repertoire of techniques at some time or another. However, it is as a soloist instrument that the electric guitar is at its most versatile. By flat picking and using advanced techniques such as pinch harmonics, combined with external effects units, a very wide range of sounds can be produced by a musician playing an electric guitar. | ||||||||||
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