Classical guitar making classical guitar today is the Spanish guitar: usually fan-braced and strong in fundamental. While fan-braced Spanish (Torres, post-Torres style) instruments coexisted with traditional central European ladder-braced (19th-century style) guitars at the beginning of the 20th century, the central European guitars eventually fell away. Some attribute this to the popularity of Segovia, considering him "the catalyst for change toward the Spanish design and the so-called 'modern' school in the 1920s and beyond". The styles of music performed on ladder-braced guitars, were becoming more and more unfashionable; and e.g. in Germany musicians were in part turning towards folk-style music (Schrammel-music and the
Classical guitar technique thumb, allowing the left hand to shift without sticking to the guitar. By keeping the thumb behind the second finger and playing off the front of the third finger, the classical guitarist sets the left hand shape. Playing with the left hand more or less parallel to the neck requires a certain amount of stretching between the fingers. There is a tendency, especially when one first begins guitar, to collapse the first and second fingers together to press on the string. For example, in playing the F on the first string, first fret (often the second note ever fingered after