Guitar · Chapter 1 of 23

Meet the Guitar

Before the first note, a short tour: what each part of the guitar is called, what it does, and how guitarists count the strings.

A guitar is a wooden box with a long neck and six strings. You press the strings against the neck with one hand and pluck or strum them with the other. Every part has a name, and you will meet these names in every chapter.

The parts

Headstock and tuners

At the top end is the headstock, with six tuning pegs (tuners). Turning a peg makes its string tighter (higher) or looser (lower). Just below it is the nut, a small strip with six grooves that holds the strings in place.

Neck and frets

The neck carries the fretboard, crossed by thin metal bars called frets. Pressing a string just behind a fret makes it shorter, so it sounds higher. Dots on the fretboard (usually at frets 3, 5, 7, 9 and a double dot at 12) help you find your place.

Body, sound hole and bridge

The hollow body makes the sound bigger. The strings cross the sound hole and end at the bridge, where a thin saddle holds them up. You strum or pick over the sound hole.

Here is the neck from the nut to the 12th fret, lying on its side with the headstock to the left. It is drawn the same way tab is written (you will meet tab in chapter 4): the thinnest string, string 1, on top, and the thickest at the bottom. Press any spot to hear it.

How the strings are numbered

Guitarists count the strings from the thinnest one: string 1 is the thin, high-sounding string nearest the floor when you hold the guitar, and string 6 is the thick, low string nearest your chin. Each open string (played without pressing) has a note name. From string 6 to string 1 they are:

E A D G B E, low to high. One old way to remember it: “Eddie Ate Dynamite, Good Bye Eddie.”

The two E strings are both called E: string 6 is two octaves below string 1. When we say “the low E” we mean string 6; “the high E” is string 1.

Three kinds of guitar

Kind	Strings	Sound and use
Steel-string acoustic	steel	Bright and loud. Folk, country, blues, campfire songs. Most often played with a pick or bare fingers.
Classical (nylon-string)	nylon (the three low strings wound with metal)	Warm and soft, with a wider neck. Classical and Spanish music; the strings are gentler on new fingertips.
Electric	steel	Thin sound on its own; it needs an amplifier. Everything in this course works on it too.

Any of them will do for this course. The sound buttons here play a steel-string sound for folk and blues songs and a nylon-string sound for classical pieces.

Try it. Pick up your guitar and find each part named on this page. Then pluck the open strings one at a time from string 6 to string 1, saying their names out loud: E, A, D, G, B, E.

Remember

Headstock, tuners, nut, neck, frets, body, sound hole, bridge.
String 1 is the thinnest (high E); string 6 is the thickest (low E).
The open strings, low to high: E A D G B E.