What do you Need to Know When Starting to Learn Guitar?

So you got your hands on a guitar and are antsy to get to playing your favorite songs. After fumbling around the strings for a few seconds, you position your fingers over the fret board in a way that will surely result in a beautiful, clear chord when you strum the strings with a pick. You enthusiastically swipe your hand down to strum, only to drop the pick on the floor while getting no discernible sound from the instrument. The pick takes a weird bounce and ends up behind a really heavy piece of furniture. You accept the fact that you don’t really know what you’re doing or where to begin. And that’s okay! This blog from our guitar school in Boston will provide a very general overview of the things you’ll need to learn as a beginning guitar student.

Know Your Instrument --

The Parts of a Guitar

It’s important to know about all of the different parts of the guitar and what they do. While there are some key differences between acoustic and electric guitars, they generally consist of the same parts.

Body - The big, round-shaped part of the guitar. Acoustic guitars have a deep, hollow body while electric guitars are much thinner and are typically solid wood.

Neck - The long skinny part that extends from the body of the guitar. The neck contains the fret board and frets on the front.

Headstock - Located at the end of the neck, opposite the body of the guitar. The headstock contains the tuning pegs.

Strings - The wires that run across the length of the instrument from the body to the head stock. They are plucked or strummed to create sound. Guitars typically have 6 strings of varying thicknesses.

Fret board - The flatter front side of the neck that contains the frets. Guitarists press strings against the fret board with their fingertips to play different notes.

Frets - Skinny pieces of metal that are spread across the length of the fret board at specific intervals. Frets are installed perpendicular to the strings. They enable guitar players to accurately play different notes on a string by pressing the string down against the fret board.

Tuners - The adjustable knobs sticking out from the head stock. Guitarists use tuning pegs to adjust each string to the proper pitch.

Nut - The notched piece of material at the far end of the fret board where the neck meets the head stock. Each string rests in a notch on the nut, which, in conjunction with the bridge, allows strings to rest just above the fret board without touching it.

Bridge - The part located on the body of the guitar that anchors the strings to the instrument. On acoustic guitars, the bridge transmits the vibration of the strings to the body.

In addition to the parts listed above, electric guitars have a few other components:

Pickups - A device that translates string vibrations into an electrical signal that can be amplified and manipulated. Electric guitars often have multiple pickups to allow for a wider variety of sounds.

Input jack - A port that allows guitarists to connect the instrument to an amplifier or audio interface with a 1/4” cable.

Knobs - Dials that allow users to adjust their volume and the amount of gain from their pickups.

Switch - Allows guitarists to toggle between pickups.

Whammy bar (not present on all guitars) - A bent piece of metal that attaches to the bridge, behaving as a lever to alter the orientation of the bridge. Pushing down the whammy bar drastically lowers the pitch of strings, while pulling it has the opposite effect. Use of a whammy bar can result in some wild sounds!

Tuning the Strings

As mentioned in the previous section, the standard guitar has 6 strings of varying width. The thicker strings produce lower pitches, while the thinner strings produce higher pitches.

From lowest to highest (in terms of pitch) the string names are: E, A, D, G, B, E. That’s right, there are two E strings! One is the thickest string, while the other is the thinnest. Stings can also be referred to by number, where the thinnest string is 1 and the thickest string is 6.

To make sure each string is actually producing the correct pitch, you should always use a tuner, an example of which is pictured to the right. Without getting too deep into the physics of sound, when a string is plucked, it vibrates really fast, which is what produces its pitch. This pitch is measured as vibrations per second, also known as frequency. Frequency is measured in a unit known as hertz, represented with Hz. Each pitch has a specific frequency. The more vibrations per second, the higher the pitch.

A tuner will measure the frequency of each string as you pluck it. If the pitch of the string is flat (too low), you’ll need to tighten the string using its associated tuning peg on the headstock. If the pitch is sharp (too high), then you’ll need to loosen the string by turning the tuning peg the opposite way. Oftentimes only small adjustments are needed to tune a guitar.

Holding a Pick

While simply plucking the strings with your fingers is a valid way of playing the guitar, it’s important to learn how to use a pick. Playing with a pick makes it much easier to strum across multiple strings and enables guitar players to pluck strings much faster by alternating the picking direction.

The pick should be held between the pad of your thumb and the side of the finger tip of your index finger, with the pointier side of the pick facing toward the guitar. The pick should stick out between roughly one quarter and one half of an inch from the side of your thumb. You shouldn’t squeeze very hard - someone should be able to easily pull the pick out from your fingers. Squeezing too hard will result in a lot of tension in your arm, which will make strumming quite uncomfortable.

Ultimately, handling a pick is somewhat subjective and will take some getting used to, but these general guidelines will at least get you started.

Making Sound: Strumming and Plucking

You now know the names of the parts of the guitar, you’re all tuned up, and you have your pick in hand. You’re ready to make some noise!

Start by gently plucking each string individually from low to high, then from high to low. It doesn’t require much force to get a nice, clear sound. Does plucking the thicker strings feel different than plucking the thinner strings?

Try strumming across all 6 strings, from lowest to highest, in one motion. You may lose grip on your pick and drop it while trying this and that’s to be expected! That means that you aren’t squeezing the pick too tight, which is a good thing.

Next, try to strum across only 2 or 3 strings at a time. Doing so using the higher strings is easier at first compared to using the lower strings or only strings in the middle.

Lastly, try strumming across all of the strings from highest to lowest. How does doing so feel compared to strumming from the lowest string to the highest?

Fretting Notes

Cool, so you can pluck and strum the strings, but how can you play different notes on each string? Using your other hand, you can press down on the frets on the neck to change the pitch of the strings. In actuality, you shouldn’t press directly on top of a fret; you should press just behind the fret you wish to play. Doing so results in a clear sound.

Your fingers should curl around the neck in such a way that you can press on the strings with the tops of your finger tips, not the pads of your fingers. Your thumb should rest gently on the back of the neck while your wrist remains straight and relaxed.

At first, pressing down on the strings may be quite uncomfortable and result in your finger tips feeling raw after some practicing. You shouldn’t have to press down all that hard to get a clear sound from the fret, but getting a feel for just how much pressure is necessary takes practice and time. Thankfully, your fingers will develop calluses along the way so this type of discomfort won’t last for long!

Your First Scale

Now that you know how to produce different pitches from each string, it’s time to get into some basic music theory.

Music theory can be intimidating, but it’s important to not think of it as a set of rules. It simply provides musicians with a more universal way to talk about the act of playing music. Understanding some music theory can hasten the learning process while sharpening your ear, and equip you with terms to describe what you’re doing on the instrument.

One of the first things people generally learn on any new instrument is a scale. A scale is a specific collection of pitches arranged in order from either low to high or high to low. There are many different types of scales, but we’re going to focus on the C Major scale.

In music, pitches are described using the letters A - G. The C Major scale consists of the notes C, D, E, F, G, A, and B. To play this scale on the guitar, begin by pressing down with your middle finger on the 3rd fret of the A string (second thickest string). This note is C, the first note of the scale. The next note, D, is played by pressing down on the 5th fret of the A string (same string) with your pinky. The next note, E, is played by pressing down on the 2nd fret of the D string (third thickest string) with your pointer finger. F is played by pressing the 3rd fret of the D string with your middle finger. G is located at the 5th fret of the D string (pinky). A is at the 2nd fret of the G string (pointer finger). B is at the 4th fret of the G string (ring finger). And finally, we return to C again on the 5th fret of the G string, one full octave higher than where we started.

The fret diagram to the right shows how the scale is laid out on the fret board. IMPORTANT: The diagram depicts the thickest string at the bottom and the thinnest string at the top. Doing so more closely represents how guitar tabs (which we’ll get to in a future post) and sheet music are notated, where the lowest pitches are written at the bottom and the highest are written at the top. The “3” and “5” under the diagram represent the 3rd and 5th frets respectively.

There are many different ways to play this same scale on the guitar, but this particular sequence allows your fretting hand to stay in only one position on the neck.

At first, playing a scale requires a lot of focus. But with lots of repetition, muscle memory will form and scale patterns become second nature.

Basic Chords

Now that you’ve played a bunch of notes individually, it’s time to begin playing chords, or combinations of notes. A chord is composed of two or more pitches played simultaneously. That means that on guitar, chords can be played using as few as two strings but most will use 3 or more strings. There are dozens of different chord shapes and sounds, but we’re going to begin with simple chords that can be played using only one finger.

Below are two chord diagrams depicting a C Major chord (on the left) and a G Major chord (on the right). The way the diagrams are arranged is a little different from the scale diagram in the previous section. In these chord diagrams, the strings are represented with vertical lines, where the thickest string is on the left and the thinnest string is on the right. The name of each string is written at the bottom. The frets are represented with horizontal lines, where the thick line at the top represents the nut and the bottom line represents the 5th fret. Each finger is represented with a number: the point finger is 1, middle finger is 2, ring finger is 3, and the pinky is 4. The “X” or “O” shown at top of each string indicates whether a string is skipped (not played) or played open (where the string is plucked without pressing on any of the frets).

Perhaps the simplest chord to play is a C Major chord. To get it set up, press down on the 1st fret of the B string (second highest string) with your pointer finger. This note is a C (but in a higher register than where we played the scale). While pressing down on that fret, strum the 3 highest strings - the G string, B string (the string your finger is pressing), and the high E string. Together, they create a C Major triad. A triad is a chord that contains 3 notes. You’ll learn more about those later! But in this case, the notes contained in this chord are C, E, and G. Even though we’re technically strumming the notes out of order (where G is the lowest pitch instead of C), it is still a C Major chord.

Another simple chord is a G Major chord. To play it, press down on the 3rd fret of the high E string (the thinnest string) with your ring finger, and then strum across the 4 highest strings (the D string, G string, B string, and high E string). The notes contained in this chord are G, B, and D. In this example, you’re technically playing 4 notes, but 2 of them are G, just an octave apart from one another.

Now that you know a couple of chords, try switching back and forth between a C Major chord and a G Major chord. At first, it’ll likely take you a few seconds to get your hand set up to play the next chord. But with lots of practice, these kinds of chord switches will become encoded in muscle memory. Many popular songs are created using only a handful of chords that are arranged in a cycle, known as a chord progression. Once you learn a few more chords, you’ll be able to begin playing along with some of your favorite songs!

Next Steps

While we hope this blog was informative and useful in helping you start your guitar journey, resources on the internet can’t provide you with any meaningful feedback. It’s all too easy to accidentally develop bad habits when first learning an instrument on your own, which ultimately leads to slower progress and a more frustrating experience overall.

To ensure you start off on the right foot, we began running a group class for total beginners: the Guitarist’s Roadmap. These group guitar classes provide structure for the early stages of learning the guitar while introducing you to our rapidly growing community of student musicians. The Guitarist’s Roadmap is geared toward adults who have never played an instrument before and have no prior music experience. Students will learn all of the fundamentals required to begin playing along with their favorite songs and the skills needed to begin creating their own music. It’s never too late to get started!

And, if you discover that you have a passion for strumming, you can always continue your musical journey by signing up for private guitar lessons in Boston with Loudlands.