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There are a vast amount of people, whether they are guitar players, or simply lovers of music, that have their very own guitar heroes. It is these heroes that may have inspired you with music and given you the motivation to learn how to play the guitar.

Listed below are some of the great guitar players who have compiled groundbreaking profiles in the history of guitar playing.

George Harrison

This famous guitarist was a member of the Beatles. He still remains to be idolized by many people for his skill of guitar playing, even after he left the Beatles to pursue a solo career. He is remembered for being a great man who played the guitar with a huge amount of emotion and feeling. He is also considered as being one of the greatest guitar players of all time in rock and roll.

John McLaughlin

This great guitarist is known for his rock and jazz music. Even though he had many roles in the music field, it was his guitar playing that excelled him and made him famous. He began playing the guitar at the age of 11 years, and he made a great breakthrough in the music industry with his guitar playing.

Robin Trower

This British guitarist became an idol in the 1970's. He became well known for his unique tone and feel along with a touch of the blues. "Bridge of Sighs" was one of his famous albums, which is considered to be the best among his many albums.

Randy Bachman

This guitarist was a member of two highly famous Canadian bands by the names of BTO and Guess Who. He is not one of the most well known guitarists, however, he has made remarkable contributions in the music industry and guitar playing. His talent for writing, as well as his guitar playing, is also second to none and has contributed with these in the success of the above named two bands.

Carlos Santana

This famous artist received his fame, not only for his voice, but also for his lead guitar playing. His music consists of a blend of Latin, African, blues and rock rhythms along with percussion. He has produced top quality albums and also won a great deal of awards in the music field. One of his albums which should be listened too, which is in the bracket of top selling music, is the "Best of Santana".

There still remains to be other guitar players who serve as deserving idols or role models when it comes to playing the guitar. The important thing about such guitar players, is that they make large contributions in influencing individuals to love and enjoy music through the guitar. They are role models to beginners and serve as inspiration as well as aspiring professional guitar players.

Among the many divisions in the guitar family is that of flattop vs. archtop. Both terms are really quite self explanatory. A flattop guitar is one with a flat top, the part of the instrument usually referred to as the soundboard. The sound hole of a flattop guitar is placed under the instrument's strings. The archtop guitar, on the other hand, has an arched top and a sound hole or holes carved in the (approximate) shape of an "f." The latter instrument was invented at the end of the 19th century. Until that time, all guitars had been flattop. Hence the term "flattop" never existed until the innovation of the archtop guitar made it necessary. The word "flattop" is now used to refer to a steel-string acoustic instrument (as opposed to one with nylon strings) with a flat soundboard. An archtop guitar is also steel-stringed, but it can be either acoustic or semi-acoustic.

Orville Gibson, founder of the Gibson Guitar Corporation, was the inventor of the archtop guitar. The instrument's first incarnation was the Gibson L5; featured the violin-inspired F-holes that would eventually become the archtop's trademark. Although this instrument flopped, the concept was retained and refined. In 1951, Gibson released the L5CES, an archtop that featured two electric pickups. These pickups allowed the guitar to be played as either an acoustic or electric instrument. The innovation was immediately popular and such models became the standard for archtop guitars. The instruments were eventually adopted by other guitar manufacturers. Today, the list of companies that make archtop guitars includes Eagle, Yamaha, Epiphone and others.

The defining characteristics of an archtop guitar are its arched soundboard and f-shaped holes. The strings of this guitar are generally thicker longer and thicker than those of a flattop, and the body is deep and usually hollow (although some semi-hollow models are manufactured). A true archtop guitar has a rich acoustic tone, but as mentioned, most models are fitted with electric pickups. These pickups are usually humbuckers, which use two coils of reversed polarity to reduce noise and interference.

Archtop guitars are often used in conjunction with attachments designed to create or increase vibrato, a slightly tremulous effect that adds warmth and expressiveness to music. A tremolo arm, for example, is a lever attached to the guitar's bridge. It enables the artists to quickly and temporarily vary the tension and sometimes length of the strings, thereby changing the pitch to create vibrato. A Bigsby vibrato tailpiece, or "Bigsby," is another vibrato device, one that allows the musician to bend the pitches of notes and chords with his pick hand.

Of all the musical genres, jazz and country most often feature the music of the archtop. These musical forms adopted the instrument almost immediately after the release of the modern version in the early 1950s. Pop music sometimes utilizes the sound of the semi-hollow body electric archtop, which produces very distinctive music. Rock and roll also uses the instrument, most often with one of the vibrato devices mentioned above.

Jazz guitar music is based on various guitarists' attempts to experiment with the form used to express musical ideas. Jazz began with the African slaves combining the song and dance forms they found in America with the musical traditions they carried with them from their homeland. Since then jazz musicians of every nationality have developed certain methods of taking a musical idiom and turning it into jazz by interpreting the music using jazz chord substitution and improvising techniques.

The trademark of the jazz guitar player is that he is inventing new music all the time. When people learn to play musical instruments it is usually with the aim of playing the songs or instrumentals of a famous musician. In jazz the aim is to build new music using other musical genres or the works of composers from outside jazz. A jazz guitarist with a number of years' experience will have developed his own ways of improvising over a song or instrumental piece. Quite often his improvisation will be based on the techniques of using the notes in the chord he is playing to provide the material for his solo, or to simply use the notes he finds in the melody.

Whichever approach the jazz guitar player uses he will always depart from the melodic structure of the musical work he is improvising over and use melodic figures or "licks" which he has made up or learned from other guitarists. A lick is a combination of notes which can be used in improvising over music in any key. A lick is like a very short tune or fraction of a melody. Listen carefully to a jazz guitar solo. Try imitating some of the licks that you hear. You do not need to play them exactly, just imitate them and see how they fit with other licks to carry the solo to its ending.

Other jazz guitar techniques are the substitution of chords using other chords with more interest or color, the use of walking bass to add interest or changing the rhythm of a song. You can find examples of all these jazz guitar techniques by listening to the music of jazz guitar players like Charlie Christian, one of the pioneers of jazz guitar, Charlie Byrd, an exponent of latin jazz guitar who developed a genre of his own using classical guitar techniques to play jazz, or Wes Montgomery, a guitar player who ventured into many fields of music.

Anybody wanting to learn to play jazz guitar will be wondering what guitars give you that distinctive jazz sound. Of course you can play jazz on any guitar but when musicians think of a "jazz guitar" they usually have in mind a guitar with  "f" holes in the body, an arched top and a piezoelectric pickup. This gives that warm, expressive jazz feel that people associate with jazz guitar and is expressed so well in the work of Wes Montgomery. Epiphone is the brand name most jazz fans associate with this kind of guitar but they are also made by D'Angelico, Gibson and others.

To learn to play jazz guitar, even in a comparatively superficial sense entails listening to alot of jazz guitar music. As you listen you need to analyze what jazz guitarists do and what you, as a musician, WANT to do. Maybe you do not want to learn jazz as a genre but just to play in the style of a certain jazz guitar player. This will cut your work load considerably as you can find tabs for the work of many jazz guitar players on the internet.