[00:00.00]NARRATOR: Listen to part of a lecture in a music history class. [00:03.69]The professor has been discussing music of the twentieth century.[00:07.30]MALE PROFESSOR: And what instrument comes to mind when you think of rock and roll?[00:12.49]FEMALE STUDENT: The electric Guitar?[00:13.76]MALE PROFESSOR: Exactly. I think it's fair to say that the sound of the electric guitar typifies the rock and roll genre, which became popular in the 1950s.[00:23.73]But really the instrument we know today was the result of a continuing development that started for our practical purposes in the 1920s.
[00:34.01]But long before that even, people were experimenting with ways to modify traditional acoustic guitars. [00:41.38]The first guitars were wooden.[00:44.48] This is the Spanish guitar and the strings were made from animal products. [00:49.70]Then came steel strings. [00:51.80]And that led to the lap guitar, which is also called the steel guitar because the player slides a steel rod up and down the neck.[01:00.48]And those are all acoustic guitars. OK?
[01:03.82]But then, eventually, we have electric guitars. [01:07.94]Over the years, many inventors and musicians contributed to the design of these instruments.[01:13.54]And each design was intended to alter the sound in some way, at first at least with the electric guitar, to make it louder.[01:22.83]Eh, So let's get back to when the steel guitar was first introduced in the United States. [01:29.30]It was right after the Spanish-American war in the late 1890s. [01:34.87]US sailors who were stationed in Hawaii then a US territory, were very enamored with the music they heard there.[01:44.31]Uh, Hawaiian music was based on the steel guitar I just described.
[01:49.74]Some sailors learned how to play the steel guitar and brought it home to the States.[01:54.70]Before long, Hawaiian steel guitar music was all the rage in the mainland US.[02:00.64]It actually had a strong influence on the development of several musical genres—rock and roll, most notably, but also jazz and blues.[02:10.61]Anyway...by the 1920s, with the advent of the public dance movement, people were gathering in large groups to listen to steel guitar music.[02:21.38]But they had trouble hearing it, especially in large public settings.
[02:26.45]As I mentioned, the instrument was played horizontally, on the lap. [02:30.67]Since the strings faced upward, the sound was projected toward the ceiling rather than outward toward the audience. [02:38.60]Something had to be done, because the music venues and the audience kept getting larger and larger.[02:45.08] So what would you do?[02:47.95]FEMALE STUDENT: Find a way to amplify the sound?[02:51.34]MALE PROFESSOR: Yes. And to do that, inventors started attaching electronic devices, electrical coils to the acoustic guitars. [03:00.82]And the electronics worked![03:02.88] But attaching electronics didn't just affect how loudly you could play.[03:08.53]It also changed the quality of the sound.
[03:11.54]These early electric guitars were hollow and these early amplifiers caused vibrations in the bodies of the instruments. [03:20.34]So as the sound got louder, it became more distorted, fuzzy-sounding.[03:26.03]And what musicians at the time wanted was a pure, clean sound.[03:31.85]FEMALE STUDENT: So where does Les Paul fit in?[03:34.62] Wasn't he the first to electrify acoustic guitars?[03:37.57]MALE PROFESSOR: Uh, no. Electrified guitars already existed by the time Les Paul came into the picture around 1940.[03:45.18]What Paul did was experiment with ways of removing the distortions and he succeeded.[03:53.37]He designed a guitar with a solid body that relied solely on electronics.[04:00.30]Paul's solid body eliminated the vibrations, and thus the distortions.[04:05.64]FEMALE STUDENT: Excuse me. But when I think of electric guitar music, I think of Jimi Hendrix.[04:11.16]MALE PROFESSOR: Jimi Hendrix, one of my favorites![04:14.92]FEMALE STUDENT: But Hendrix's style really was all about distortion, that's what's so great about his music, all those special effects. [04:23.44]I think a lot of rock-and-roll fans prefer that to a pure sound.[04:27.52]MALE PROFESSOR: Yeah. You are getting ahead of me here. [04:30.23]But good, because the point I was going to make is that the sound of rock-and-roll changed over the years. [04:37.10]And the designs and technology of electric guitars made those changes possible.[04:42.86]So whereas Les Paul's goal was to remove the distortion, later musicians wanted to produce it.[04:51.52]And by the time Jimi Hendrix came around.[04:54.33] Well, essentially, Hendrix reinvented the electric guitar, in the sense that he created amazing effects and vibrations that changed the sound of rock and roll completely. [05:07.80]So eventually, people tried to improve on Les Paul model, well, to modify it, I should say.
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