Guitar Anatomy
The three biggest sections
We can divide the guitar in three different general areas: 1) The headstock, 2) The Neck, and 3) The body. Within these sections we can locate smaller parts of the guitar.
From all the parts of the guitar, there are three that we need to become very well acquainted with from the beginning. 1) The tunning pegs, 2) The strings, and 3) The frets.
Machine heads or Tunning Pegs
This is one of the guitar parts that we interact with the most. It is the tool to tune the guitar. We can turn them in two directions, one direction will make the string tighten up, the other direction will make the string loosen up. The more we tighten a string, the higher its sound will be, and the more we loosen it, the lower the sound of the string will get. Each string is connected to one of the tunning pegs.
The strings
The usual guitar has six strings. We identify them by numbers going from 1 to 6. There can be confusion regarding in which string the counting begins. Making sure we know where to begin counting is crucial for learning to play the guitar.
You will notice that each string has a different thickness. The thinnest string gets number one, the one that is right next to it gets number two, and so on until we get o the last one, which is the thickest and gets number 6.
The frets & the Fretboard
Frets also get numbers. Different guitars have different amounts of frets, but usually they will have at least 17 frets, going up to 24. All the space in which the frets are placed on is called the fretboard. The fretboard takes the entire front of the neck and part of the body.
The number of the frets
Frets also get numbers. Different guitars have different amounts of frets, but usually they will have at least 17 frets, going up to 24. All the space in which the frets are placed on is called the fretboard. The fretboard takes the entire front of the neck and part of the body.
The direction on the fretboard
You will hear expressions like “down the fretboard”, “up the fretboard” or “two frets down”, and “one fret up”.
Knowing what down or up means on the guitar can be a little counter intuitive, I know it was for me when I started. And this is maybe because depending and how we are holding our guitar, up and down can look differently.
We can fix this by disregarding the visual aspect of down and up and see it from a numeric standpoint. So, if we start on fret 5 and we move to fret 4, we are moving down the fretboard; and if we move from fret 5 to fret 6, then we are moving up the fretboard, regardless if we are playing the guitar standing up, laying down or hanging from a tree.
What to learn first
Knowing all the parts is important, but there are three things that we need to know to start learning to play.
- Learning the numbering of the strings.
- Learning the numbering of frets.
- Understanding what going down and up the fretboard means.