The Portuguese Guitar - A Modern Cittern

The guitar has a seemingly endless number of incarnations, no doubt due to the long history of instruments and wide geographical use. One such incarnation is the Portuguese guitar, a plucked instrument with twelve strings strung in six courses of two strings each. The instrument is significantly smaller than a standard classical guitar has a distinctive adaptive mechanism (more on that later) and your body is rounded, or pear-shaped. "These features have to do with the fact that the Portuguese guitar is really a cittern, a close cousin of the guitar. The cittern was a very popular in Europe during the Renaissance period, valued for its relatively cheap price and easy to play. A specific cittern, the "English guitar" is probably the direct ancestor of modern Portuguese guitar.


The Portuguese guitar as such can be traced to the early nineteenth century. During this century, the instrument was produced in a variety of shapes and sizes according to regional aesthetic preferences. It was not until the first half of the twentieth century that the Portuguese guitars were standardized. At that time, the instrument was refined in two models: the guitar from Lisbon and the Coimbra guitar. These two versions of the Portuguese guitar is still functioning today and both retain the overall appearance of the previous instruments.

While both types of guitars are undeniably Portuguese variations of the same instrument, each has certain unmistakable characteristics. The Lisbon has a larger soundboard and has invariably a scroll-shaped head. The Coimbra, on the one hand, has a teardrop-shaped head, a neck narrower and smaller spacing of the sequence. The Lisbon is usually a scale of 440 mm and a bell-like sound, the Coimbra has an average of 480 mm scale and a low sound accentuated in accordance with its larger scale.

To play the Portuguese guitar, a musician uses a method of fingerpicking during which only used the nails, the flesh of the fingers never comes into contact with the sequences. In modern times, in an effort to save their nails, artists generally use fingerpicks that can be attached to the ends of the fingers. Fingerpicks These are the most common plastics, but the shell of the endangered sea turtle was once popular and such selections can still be found. The musician uses only his thumb and forefinger, resting beneath the fingers against the strings and soundboard. The technique of the Portuguese guitar fingerpicking is called the "inside out" or "dedilho," which roughly translates as "to know thoroughly." In this context, can be taken to mean that the sequence is thoroughly plucked.

The Portuguese guitar is most commonly associated with fado, a Portuguese musical genre that can be traced to the 1820s, this was about the same time that the Portuguese guitar became popular. As its instrument, fado can be divided into two varieties, Lisbon and Coimbra. The older style is the most popular of the two, but the latter is conducted for refining. Fado, which translates roughly as "but" is a musical genre applicant, which is often full of nostalgia. The workings of Fado music invariably used the Portuguese guitar.