Guitar Lessons

Lesson 1

As you can see, a guitar has 6 strings. Also, you can see these iron things on the neck. They are called frets. The space between those frets is called a 'position'. At the upper end of the guitar is the first position, then the second, etc. etc. If you are right-handed, and you hold the guitar, the strings you see are called E A D G B E (from thick to thin, or from low to high). In tablature, it looks like this:

E ----------------
B ----------------
G ----------------
D ----------------
A ----------------
E ----------------

As you can see, the low E is below. This low E is the first string you see when holding the guitar.
When playing the guitar, you use your four fingers. Your thumb is placed at the back of the neck, behind the second fret, and you leave it there without using it. All notes played on the first fret, should be played using the forefinger (f). The notes on the second fret should be played using the middle finger (m), the notes on the third fret should be played using the ring finger, the notes on the fourth fret should be played using the little finger (l).
To practise this, you can do this exercise:

E -----------|-----------|-----------|-----------|-----------|-0-1-2-3-4-| B -----------|-----------|-----------|-----------|-0-1-2-3-4-|-----------| G -----------|-----------|-----------|-0-1-2-3-4-|-----------|-----------| D -----------|-----------|-0-1-2-3-4-|-----------|-----------|-----------| A -----------|-0-1-2-3-4-|-----------|-----------|-----------|-----------| E -0-1-2-3-4-|-----------|-----------|-----------|-----------|-----------|

You begin with the first string. This is the thick one, the E-string. First, you see an -0-, which means you play it 'open' without any fingers on the fret. You just take you plectrum and touch the string once. Then you see a -1- on the E-string. This means you go to the first fret on the upper string, and put your finger just before the fret. As this is the first fret, you should use your forefinger. Then the second fret. You put your middle finger just before the first fret, and play the string. Same goes for the third and fourth fret, on which you play the notes using you ring finger and your little finger. Then you go to the second string and you do the same exercise. Same goes for all the other snares.
OK, so that was the first exercise. Not too hard, is it? Now you know how to read tablature a little, but you don't know which notes you played. Well, you can find all notes on a scale (you must have heard of scales). A scale has the following notes in it:
A B C D E F G
Well, that's easy, right?? But, just like a piano has black keys, so does a guitar. Black keys on a piano are used to play sharps, notes half a step up from its natural note. Sharps are between two notes. We use the sign # to indicate it is a sharp. Every note on the scale has a sharp, except for the B and the E. So, a scale with sharps looks like this:
A A# B C C# D D# E F F# G G#
So from A to A# is half a note, from A# to B is half a note, but from B to C is half a note as well, although it may look like a whole note. Of course, this is not the case, because the B doesn't have a sharp. If we look at the guitar and its strings, these are the notes you play when you play a certain fret on a certain string:

Frets: 1 2 3 4 5 6 E||--F---|--F#--|--G---|--G#--|--A---|------| B||--C---|--C#--|--D---|--D#--|------|------| G||--G#--|--A---|--A#--|------|------|------| D||--D#--|--E---|--F---|--F#--|------|------| A||--A#--|--B---|--C---|--C#--|------|------| E||--F---|--F#--|--G---|--G#--|------|------|
Major scales
All notes have a scale to them. As we have seen above, there are twelve notes (including the sharps), so there are twelve scales. The scales are played in a major key, if they are played as above. One scale consists of 8 notes, an octave. An octave has eight notes, that go up one by one, except for the second and the seventh note. They only go up half a note. So the scheme for a major scale is:

+1 +1 +1/2 +1 +1 +1 +1/2 C D E F G A B C (notice that between E and F
and between B and C, it may look like a whole note,
but of course, these are the notes that don't have a sharp,
so they are only half a note) +1 +1 +1/2 +1 +1 +1 +1/2 C# D# F F# G# A# C C# D E F# G A B C# D D# F G G# A# C D D# E F# G# A B C# D# E F G A A# C D E F F# G# A# B C# D# F F# G A B C D E F# G G# A# C C# D# F G G# A B C D E F# G# A A# C D D# F G A A# B C# D# E F# G# A# B
This is the first guitar lesson. You can practise this at home until you understand exactly what I wrote here.

Lesson 2 Lesson 3 Lesson 4 Lesson 5 Lesson 6

Lesson 7 Lesson 8

What people think of this page

If you have any questions, you can e-mail me at fender1982@hotmail.com