What makes a Guitar?

It is important you understand what the parts of a guitar are, so that as we get to grips with the different components and move our way around, we’re using a common language. Check out the video guide and diagram below:

If in the course of the rest of this Guitar Basics guide I use a term that doesn’t make sense, refer to this section!

Job one for starting to play the guitar is getting the foundation right. So go put yourself in your practice spot and make yourself comfortable. For this section of Guitar Basics I’m going to assume you are right-handed, mostly because I am right-handed. If you’re a lefty, switcheroo the lefts and rights.

Holding a guitar

Yeah OK, I know it sounds basic – but taking the time to get this right will make your playing more efficient and make it less likely you will cause yourself discomfort over time. Check out the video, then follow the numbered steps below for perfect-position!

So, let’s do it by the numbers.

1. Sit in/on a stood or chair with no arms. If you’re on a sofa, move away from the arms of it (nothing under your elbows) and sit on the edge.

2. Sit up straight, no slouching! You’ll thank me later.

3. If you’re righ handed, position the guitar with the lower cutaway on your left leg. Keep the guitar upright and close to your body.

4. Elevate the neck of the guitar until the headstock where the strings connect to the tuners is more or less at your eye-level.

5. Hold on to the neck of the guitar with your left hand, thumb exactly in the middle of the back of the neck.

6. Keeping your wrist as straight as possible, place all four fingers of your left hand on the strings – doesn’t really matter where for now.

7. Make sure you’re using your very fingertips and keep an arch in your fingers. Imagine you’re grasping an oversize baseball bat and need to keep a circle from your thumb on the back of the neck, around your hand to yor fingertips.

You may have noticed that you don’t look as cool as you hoped right now. Don’t panic! You can be more relaxed with playing position as your playing develops, and you’ll find different positions work better for different techniques – but this approach positions your body in the most efficient way possible for the challenge ahead.

Holding a Pick

Or a plectrum, depending on where in the world you are. Again, this sounds like a piece of cake, but doing it the right way can get you playing much much faster! Check out the video here:

You’ll want to hold a pick (if you’re using one) between thumb and index or thumb and middle finger, as you prefer – I like index better. You want the point of the pick sticking out past the end of you thumb and finger by around 2mm, just enough to hit the string but not so much you get caught up on it. And finally, you want to angle the pick slightly so that your thumb is pointing down slightly – doing this makes the pick glide more smoothly and ultimately makes playing easier!

So, click the next tab to get your guitar ready to go!

It doesn’t matter how great a guitar player you become, the most amazing music will sound terrible if your guitar isn’t in tune. It is a good idea to get in to the habit of tuner your guitar at the start of each practice session, so your ears become used to the sound of a guitar in perfect tune. You have a few options for guitar tuning:

1. Get a Tuner! (Duh)

2. Tune to another instrument (less reliable)

3. Download a tuner app for your phone

4. Find an online guitar tuner, this one for example

5. Check out the video below for a standard tuning rundown

Tuning a Guitar

Standard guitar tuning from the lowest string in pitch (the fattest one) is E A D G B E. We will always use this tuning unless I specify otherwise. Tune from the lowest string, tuning up to pitch rather than down to it for best results. If your guitar is new, you may find you have to tune it a few times until it becomes stable.

If your guitar refuses to stay in tune, the likely reason is either:

a) It is a poor quality guitar – tuners are almost always the first component sacrificed to save money. Or;

b) There is a problem with the guitar – find a friend who plays and ask for help, take it back to the store where you got it or send me a message via the contact page and I’ll see if I can help. No promises though 🙂

How to read guitar notation

Whoa there – no clicking away! I know ‘notation’ sounds boring, but we need to understand it, and it’s OK! Reading guitar notation can be the biggest hurdle for a beginner to overcome, so here’s a super-quick Guitar Basics guide to the three main types you’ll see:

Boxes

A guitar fretboard picture, used to show the fingerings for chords, scales and arpeggios. Imagine holding the guitar in front of you, with the nut being at the top:

• An ‘O’ above a string means play that string ‘open’ (no fingers on frets).
• An ‘X’ above a string means do not play that string at all.
• The black dots direct you to place a fingertip in that location, with the numbers being the suggested finger to use – 1=Index, 2=Middle, 3=Ring, 4=Pinky.
• The coloured dots are the root note, so in an A minor scale the note A will be coloured. The note G would be coloured in G major and so on.

TAB

TAB shows the six-strings of a guitar, low E (the fattest string, nearest your face as you sit with the guitar in playing position) at the bottom. The numbers tell you which fret to play, but nothing about which finger to use or how long to hold a note for:

The TAB above shows the same notes as the box diagram in a different way – played ascending the descending. This is probably the most common form in which you will find guitar notation on the Internet.

TAB will also include technique directions by way of symbols accompanying fret numbers, for example:

Hammer on: h
Pull off: p
Vibrato: ~
Bend: b
Release bend: br
Slide: / or \ depending on direction

Don’t worry about that list being meaningless for now, we’ll get there!

The Stave

The original, arguably best but probably most difficult to grasp – the musical stave. There are no directions for fingers to use, nor specific reference to guitar anatomy – what fret or string to play. Only note and duration are shown:

You will see guitar music on the treble clef, and as a reference point, once again the series of notes above is the same as shown in the box and TAB examples. Reading notation is a topic in its own right, and one that is beyond a Guitar Basics course, so I include it here for completeness only.

And that concludes Guitar Basics – thanks for sticking with me. As soon as you’re ready, head on to Beginner Guitar, where we’ll actually get to play some stuff… and be creating our own music!