Flamenco/Spanish Guitars

Gypsies shared a region with Spain, and their music had major eastern influences, intermingled with the Arabic tradition, Jewish and early European classical, and folk music producing a unique style now known as Flamenco.

Guitarists would try and oudo each other by showing off there abilities like playing with a glove on one hand, or playing it above their head.

Antnio Torres first produced modern guitars from the 1850s. They were made with a cypress body, light construction, and a solid peghead. His guitars were very similar the the traditional Flamenco Guitar.

In the early 1900s several modifiactions of the Flamenco Guitar are done to help facilitate flamenco playing. Guitar bodies were made out of inexpensive woods like Spanish Cypress. Special plates called "golpeadores" were usually placed below the sound hole and were used for tapping the instrument with the fingers for rhythm. Wooden pegs were often used instead of metal tuning machines due to the cheap price and the light weight of of the wood compared to metal, and the strings were usually closer to the body of the instrument for quicker and more percussive strumming.

An important of composer and musician of Spanish music, and is the composer of the earliest surviving music for the guitar.

A Spanish Guitar virtuoso who played for the Royal Family, and was a professor at the Royal Conservatory.

Ramon Montoya