Learn Guitar and Music Theory Here

Lesson 1: Guitar Body and Fretboard (referred to as fingerboard on diagram)

To Start out... briefly overview the various parts of the guitar and their labels to get an idea of how the guitar is set up. You will hear these terms referred to often, especially if you are beginner and are reading articles and books that teach guitar for beginners.

I would say the most important part of the guitar to know is the fretboard (fingerboard). The fretboard is simply the neck of guitar that commonly contains 22 frets. Frets are the horizontal metal bars on the neck of the guitar that the 6 strings lay over. In order to sound a note, press the tip of your finger down on any string right behind any fret. It is important to remember that frets are also referred to as the entire space between the 2 metal bars (frets). These fret spaces contain dots (position markers on the diagram) that are a visual ways of remembering the fret number. For example, the first dot is located in the 3rd fret space indicating the 3rd fret and so forth. 3, 5, 7, 9, 12, 15, 17, 19, 21 are all the labeled frets. The double dots on the 12th fret indicates that the fretboard is repeating the same notes over, but 1 octave higher.

As you notice, there are letters E, A, D, G, B and E above the diagram. These are the 6 guitar string names and are also the notes that sound when you play the strings open without touching any frets.

String Name E A D G B E

String number 6 5 4 3 2 1

Low Pitch -----> High Pitch

As you play around with your guitar and play random notes, you will soon realize that some notes sound great together and some sound absolutely terrible together. This has to do with sound frequencies and mathematical calculations that we will not get into yet. For now, you must understand that the notes that sound good together are the ones found in any scale. Scales are simply a set notes that are known to sound good together because of mathematical and theoretical observations.