The versatile guitar, the world’s most popular musical instrument, is a member of the plucked strings family. Jazz and rock musicians usually play electric guitars, which have six metal strings and a solid body made of brightly coloured wood or plastic.
Tiny microphones pick up sound waves from the vibrating strings. The sounds are then strengthened in an electric amplifier and played through loudspeakers. The electric guitar can be very loud indeed. Without its amplifier an electric guitar makes little sound.
The guitar’s fingerboard has metal ridges called frets that indicate where fingers must be placed to play different notes. The strings are ‘picked’ with the fingertips or fingernails, or with a small piece of plastic called a plectrum.
 

Some jazz musicians prefer to play solos on an acoustic guitar, which is like a large, flat violin. The sound is made louder as it echoes around inside the hollow body.

And acoustic guitars can be electronically amplified, too. Most children learn to play on a starter acoustic guitar, which is suitable from around the age of eight.