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Jazz Guitars

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Play Jazz Music on Guitar

Jazz guitars are used for playing jazz - a type of music that originated in the US at the start of the twentieth century. African folk music combined with Western music to form this new style of music with its syncopated rhythms and blues melodies. Jazz provided a meeting point for different cultures and helped to form bonds across America 's diverse population. Jazz is still popular today and jazz guitarists require guitars which are modified for this style of music. Electric jazz guitars have full-bodies, ie guitars with a hollow-body which is almost the same thickness as an acoustic guitar. Jazz guitars use a pickup which is closer to the bridge than to the neck for different sound which emphasizes the mid-range frequencies.

History and manufacture of the jazz guitar

Arch-top guitars are a type of steel-string guitars which became popular with jazz guitarists in the 1920s. Traditional guitars were flat top, ie the top of the guitar (see diagrams) was flat with no contouring. Arch-top guitars are made with thicker pieces of wood allowing them to be shaped or contoured. The sound projects out and has enough volume to be used in a jazz band which was the appeal of the arch-top. The classical guitars with gut strings just didn't make enough noise to be effective in a big band.

The Gretsch Company started producing arch-top guitars by laminating them instead of carving them. Several layers of wood would be glued together and held in a mould or press until the glue had set. They also changed the design to have strings that pass over the bridge without being attached to it. This is called the 'adjustable two-footed floating bridge'. The bridge is held in place by the strings without being glued to the soundboard. These guitars feature the 'f-hole' design similar to violins where the holes in the soundboard are the shape of an italic 'f ' rather than a circular shape. These guitars are no longer as popular as they were due mainly to the development of electric guitars. Some of the early models of jazz guitars are now collectors' items. One famous luthier is Orville Gibson, who made arch-top guitars with oval soundholes and initiated the use of steel strings instead of gut.

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