Brief history of guitar Guitar is an ancient instrument and its roots are from Spain, but earliest guitars ancestors were founded from Sumerian, Babylonian and Egyptian civilizations in 2500 – 2000 BC. With time guitar has been evolved from many different variations.

Lute – one of many early variations of guitar One of the early variation of guitar is lute. It is a short- necked instrument and it has pear- shaped body. Lute was originally called out, but the Europeans added frets to it and started to call it lute.

Classical Guitar Around 1850, a Spanish man called Antonio Torres started to make “modern classical guitar”. He made modifications in the structure of earlier guitar, which had radical changes in guitars features; it improved the volume and tone. Nowadays these guitars are called acoustic guitars.

Solid-body guitars Inventing of electric guitar had a big influence in popular music, especially in rock. First electric guitars were Hawaiian guitars, but electric guitars came to popularity when Gibson introduced the ES150 model. In early 1940’s the very first solid-body guitar was made. Solid-body guitars have kept their popularity until the present day.

50’s rock Teenage culture gave popularity to new artists such as: Olavi Virta, Elvis, Laila Kinnunen, Annikki Tähti, Bill Hayley etc. Besides many finnish artists, artists from America were very popular in Finland. Youth liked music that their parents didn’t like. Music changed the way that youth dressed. Finnish electric guitar music was called ”Rautalankamusiikki”, ”Iron wire music”. It became a fashion to play electric guitar.