Читать книгу Blues Guitar For Dummies - Jon Chappell - Страница 18

Just as soon as people could utter the primitive strains of proto-blues music, they sought to reinforce their vocal efforts through instruments. Unfortunately, the Fender Stratocaster and the Marshall stack weren’t invented yet, so people did what blues players always did in the early part of the blues’ history: They made do with what was available. And in the rural South at the turn of the 20th century, that wasn’t much.

Some of the first blues instruments included a one-string diddley bow (a wire stretched between two points and plucked with one hand while the other changed pitches with a bottleneck or knife dragged up and down the string) and a banjo, descendant of the African banjar that was constructed from a hide-covered gourd and a stick. The harmonica followed close behind. Guitars didn’t arrive on the scene until after the Civil War when they were left behind in the South by Union soldiers.

All guitars have six strings (except for 12-string guitars, of course) and frets, whether they’re electric or acoustic. You can play chords, riffs, and singlenote melodies on virtually any guitar. When the first mass-produced electric guitars were publicly available, in the mid- to late ’30s, blues and jazz players similarly flocked to them, and not too much attention was given to what kind of guitar was best for what style of music.