Guitar Building

Ethan Corral - 2020

Starting out the junior year, I already had an idea that my research would be about music. I started to narrow it down and decided I wanted to learn more about the guitar, the instrument that has probably been the most pivotal thing in my life. I wanted to learn more about the history how it evolved into the instrument that it is today. I researched how the guitar had its different influencers and how its role in music has changed as well. I learned how it started off as a classical instrument and used to play those pieces, then became a backing rhythm instrument. Now guitars are at the forefront of modern music.

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I did extensive research on the history of the guitar, and how it evolved from the classical instrument to one that was at the forefront of making music and popular culture. I learned how the instrument that used to be only for privileged nobles to learn became so accessible that now anyone has many different tools to help teach them how to play it. The most fascinating part for me was learning how the shape changed over time and the various different body shapes that developed before the modern electric and acoustic guitars came to be. The archtop acoustic guitar was one of the ones that stuck with me because that was when the guitar was going from the classical instrument to being more widely played, and it was visually appealing because of the craftsmanship that was put into the little number of guitar being produced back then compared to today. While doing the research for the paper, I also developed an interest in how guitars are built and spent as much time watching different guitar builds as I did researching for the project.

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When it came to my project, I decided to make a guitar from scratch. This involved the hours of watching videos on different techniques and figuring out exactly how I was going to do this project. After some time, I realized I wasn’t going to have the skills required to build the neck of the guitar, so the whole thing was not going to be built from scratch. However, I did as much as I could on my own. I made the body from scratch and ordered the electronics online. Ultimately, I finished a working electronic guitar. While there are a few tweaks I'm still making, I am proud of my work.