Guitar Career Statistics
- There were about 215,000 people employed as musicians, composers, and related artists in 2002.
- Median earnings for salaried musicians were $36,290 in 2002. Employees of performing arts companies did well, earning an average of $43,060.
- Guitar players can work with (or be) composers or arrangers. Composers and directors earned an average of $31,310 in 2002.
- Guitar repairs and tuners are part of the larger "musical instrument repairers and tuners" industry - there were 6,200 jobs in this field in 2002.
- Repairers and tuners made an average hourly wage of $14.15 in 2002.
- It is possible that the word guitar comes from a variation on the Hindu "sitar." Another possibility is that guitar is a word adapted from the Persian "gui-tar," meaning half-sphere and strings; or that it is from the Arabic "qitara," a stringed instrument brought by the Moors in the 10th century.
- The electric guitar was developed in 1931. The original goal was to make a guitar that could be heard over large crowds, but the end result was also something that sounded completely different from an acoustic guitar.
- A Spanish carpenter named Antonio de Torres Jurado designed the first modern guitar in the 1800s.
- A guitar pick is officially called a plectrum.
- The makers and repairers of guitars are called luthiers.
