Alan Stinson recently completed a construction apprenticeship at JobTrain Construction Fundamentals Pre-Apprenticeship Training Program in Redwood City, CA. He’s a fitness enthusiast and lover of art. When he’s not at the gym in Redwood City, CA, Alan Stinson plays the guitar, which he has mastered for over a decade.

The guitar’s earliest use is traceable to the guitarra latina, a four-stringed instrument prevalent in 16th century Spain. However, it wasn’t until the 20th century that the guitar got recognition as its own musical instrument. The lute mainly inspired the development of the present-day guitar. This instrument is a chordophone whose strings run along a distinct pole and are parallel to its pear-shaped soundboard.

The Egyptians originally devised the lute, who transferred it to the Greeks, the Greeks to the Romans. From the Romans, it went on to become the most commonly played instrument of European music in the Renaissance era. At the close of the Renaissance era, the lute had evolved from a four-stringed instrument to a chordophone of 20-30 strings. However, this innovation met public rejection, soon the lute was replaced by the four-stringed Baroque guitar and developed into a six-stringed instrument by the late 1700s.

Antonio de Torres Jurado invented the first modern guitar in the mid-1800s, about the same time when Christian Frederick Martin invented the flat-top acoustic guitar. It wasn’t until 1932 was the first electric guitar developed by a group of engineers and musicians at the National Guitar Corporation.

Alan Stinson is a Redwood City, CA resident who has job training in construction and has worked in the medical and retail delivery sectors. Passionate about music, Alan Stinson enjoys playing guitar in a variety of styles in Redwood City, CA.

One of the foundational genres of American guitar music is the blues, which has a classic 12-bar form defined by a basic I-IV-V chord progression. This harmonic structure takes its roots from African American church music and differs from standard tonal music in utilizing dominant 7th chords for color, rather than as functional harmonies.

The 12-bar blues form is an extended pattern that repeats after 12 chords, with the final bars called the “turnaround” and starting the chorus again. There are numerous variations within this form, from single chord substitutions to minor variations in which minor 7th chords take the place of I7 and IV7 chords. With the turnaround progression also different, a classic example of the minor 12 bar is “The Thrill Is Gone” by B.B. King.

Rhythmically, the blues tend to have a shuffle feel that involves eighth notes played “long-short,” in triplets. Pioneered by boogie-woogie pianists and added to the blues guitar arsenal by Robert Johnson, this adds a syncopated, propulsive flavor to the sound. With the advent of electric guitars and amplification in the late 1940s, single note motifs began to take root in the playing of John Lee Hooker, Muddy Waters, and Buddy Guy. Today, most blues music combines shuffle with single motifs, with exceptions being jazz-blues in the style of T-Bone Walker, which involves the use of fully articulated chords.