Contents
The Parts of the Guitar
How To Hold the Guitar
How To Play Notes on the Guitar
How to Tune Your Guitar
Guitar Chord Basics
Open-Position Chords
Barre Chords
Power Chords
How to Play Songs with Tablature
Chord Progressions
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How To Play Notes on the Guitar
When you pluck or strum a guitar string, the string vibrates, creating a sound with a certain pitch, called a note. You can play different notes by fretting—pressing down on the string at different frets along the guitar’s fretboard.
By fretting a string, you shorten the length of the vibrating string. The shorter the string, the higher the note it creates when vibrating. Fretted notes therefore sound higher in pitch than the open string (unfretted string). As you fret higher along the fretboard (closer to the body of the guitar), the notes become higher in pitch.
- To fret (play) notes on the guitar, think of your fingers and thumb as if they were a pair of pliers, pressing toward each other to sound notes along the neck.
Which Fret Is Which?
Frets tell you exactly where to put your fingers on the fretboard in order to play the correct notes (unlike a violin, say, which has no frets). Most electric guitars have either 22 or 24 frets, whereas acoustics usually have 20 frets at most. The frets on the guitar are identified by number: 1st fret, 2nd fret, 3rd fret, and so on, with the 1st fret closest to the nut, all the way up by the headstock of the guitar.
Playing a Fret
Playing a fret does not mean you place your finger directly on the fret itself. It means you press down just to the left of that fret (a little toward the headstock). Keep in mind that the term “fret” also refers to the spaces between the frets.
To play the 1st fret, you would press down on the string between the nut and the 1st fret, as close to the 1st fret as possible.
To play the 2nd fret, you’d play just to the left and as close to the 2nd fret as possible, and so on.
Which String Is Which?
The guitar has six strings, each of which sounds a single note when played open (without playing any fret).
- The 6th string is the fattest and lowest-sounding string. It’s the one located closest to your head or the ceiling when you’re holding the guitar. It sounds a low E (explained later) when played open.
- The 1st string is the thinnest and highest-sounding string, the one closest to your feet when you’re holding the guitar. It sounds a high E when played open.
The strings in between are the 5th, 4th, 3rd, and 2nd strings. The notes they sound when played open are A, D, G, and B,
respectively.
Which Note Is Which?
The notes you can play on the guitar (or any other instrument) are identified with letters: A, B, C, D, E, F, and G. There are also notes halfway between some of these lettered notes, called sharps and flats. A sharp, indicated by a # sign, denotes a half-step up; a flat, indicated by a b sign, denotes a half-step down. Each sharp can also be called a flat, and vice versa: A# = Bb, C# = Db, D# = Eb, F# = Gb, G# = Ab.
In all, there are 12 named notes you can play:
- A, A# (Bb), B, C, C# (Db), D (Eb), E, F, F# (Gb), G, G# (Ab)
Each of the 12 notes has a universal frequency, or pitch, which means that an A played on a guitar will be the same note as an A played on a piano. But there are many instances of each note, each of which varies only in how high or low it sounds—the underlying frequency never changes. For instance, you can play several different E notes on a guitar: some (such as the guitar’s 1st string when played open) are high, while others (such as the 6th string when played open) are low.
Why You Don’t Need to Know the Notes
Thanks to chord diagrams and a system of guitar notation called tablature (see Guitar Chord Basics and How to Play Songs with Tablature), you don’t really need to know which note on the guitar is which. The only notes you absolutely must know—in order to tune your guitar so it sounds right—are the notes of each open string, which you know already, from 6th to 1st: (low) E, A, D, G, B, and (high) E.
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