When starting out on their path to learn to play guitar, many beginner guitarists can be a little confused by all the jargon surrounding guitars. We’ve all been through it when we first started out.
When you first start to learn guitar, you need to familiarise yourself with the various parts of a guitar. If you don’t know your headstock from your tremolo arm, or your tuning pegs from your pickups, you’re in need of some education. And that’s why I’m here, so read on and I’ll take you through the basics of guitar anatomy.
Learning the Parts of a Guitar
When I first began learning to play the guitar from friends all those years ago, I kept having to stop them and ask what they were talking about. “What’s a machine head?” Is the 6th string the top one or the bottom? “What on earth is the ‘nut’?” These were all pieces of jargon that were new to me.
Fortunately they were patient with me and took the time to explain all these new names. Something for which I am extremely grateful. Not everyone is lucky enough to have knowledgeable friends on hand to explain the workings of the guitar. So, what I’d like to do in this article is bring you up to speed on the main parts of a guitar so that you can confidently have a conversation with any guitarist and not be phased by any of the names of guitar parts that they might drop into the conversation.
Knowing what the parts of your guitar are called is absolutely essential. Not only will it improve your confidence when talking to other guitarists, but it is crucial to understanding many of the techniques and ways of playing the guitar.
I mean, what if you were aiming to learn a new song that required an alternative tuning and the instructions told you to tune your 6th string down a step but you confused the 6th and 1st strings? The result would sound wrong.
When learning a technique, you might be told to move your fingers along the guitar fretboard in the direction of the nut. If you keep getting the nut and the bridge confused you’ll be performing the technique in the opposite direction and therefore ingraining incorrect technique. This is bad because, as we all know, practice does not make perfect… perfect practice makes perfect!
The 3 Main Parts of a Guitar
The guitar is divided into 3 main parts: the head, neck and body. Just like a person in fact. The head (or headstock) is where the tuning pegs are located. The head is furthest away from your body when you are playing the guitar.
Tuning Pegs
The tuning pegs are sometimes called tuning keys or machine heads and are the cycindrical pegs that stick through the guitar’s headstock and around which the strings are wrapped. You use the tuning pegs to adjust the tension of the strings by twisting them by their little handles.
Some guitars, and this is normally the case with acoustic guitars, have the tuning pegs arranged in two rows of three either side of the headstock. Usually the lower-pitched, thicker strings are located on the upper side of the head of the guitar and the thinner, lower-pitched strings are on the underside. However, on certan guitars (often electric guitars such as the Fender Stratocaster), the tuning pegs are all in a single row along the top side of the headstock. It doesn’t really matter where the tuning pegs are and in how many rows they are arranged, it is simply a function of the design of the guitar and makes no real difference to how you play it.
Guitar Strings
The strings of the guitar are stretched along the length of the instrument and really deserve an article in their own right. It’s crucial that you know the nomenclature that describes each of the strings so that there is never any confusion about which string you’re referring to when discussing how to play with other guitarists.
Basically, the 6 strings of the guitar are arranged with the thickest string nearest the ceiling (as you hold the guitar when playing it) and the thinnest string is nearest the floor. The thickest string is the 6th string and they are numbered in descending order towards the floor, so that the last and thinnest string is the first string.
Each of the strings is tuned to a particular note of the musical scale. Starting with the sixth string, the notes are E, A, D, G, B and E. The 1st string is tuned to the same note (E) as the 6th string but two octaves higher.
Guitar Fretboard and Neck
The neck of the guitar is the long, slender piece of wood over which the strings are stretched. When playing the guitar, you bring your hand up underneath the neck of the guitar and your thumb is placed behind the neck on the curved surface. Your fingers are then used to hold down the strings against the guitar fretboard at the appropriate positions. Rosewood is a popular wood that is commonly for the guitar neck, although other types of wood are sometimes used.
On the side of the neck where the strings are located, there are a series of thin metal strips set into the guitar fretboard. These metal strips are known individually as frets – hence the name “guitar fretboard”. The frets serve to give a solid point from which the guitar string can vibrate and helps to give the guitar its distinctive, clear sound.
You should note that when playing the guitar you must place your fingers in between the metal strips (frets) and not directly on top of the frets themselves. Try to place your fingers immediately behind the metal fret because this makes it easier to hold the string down cleanly and avoids buzzing of the strings, which is a common problem amongst beginners. So if you are instructed to place your finger on the 5th fret, for example, you should place your finger immediately behind the 5th fret on the fretboard (counting from the nut). Immediately behind in this case means just on the headstock side of the fret, which makes sense if you think about it because you’re keeping your finger as close to the vibration as possible (and therefore getting the maximum purchase) without actually going too far and dampening the string.
When talking about moving up the neck, many people get muddled. Moving up the neck is moving towards your (and the guitar’s) body so that the notes get higher pitched. Playing further down the neck is further away from your body and results in lower pitched notes. You can easily remember this in terms of the pitch of the notes that are played – higher up the neck gives higher pitched notes and lower down the neck gives lower pitched notes.
Guitar Body
The body of the guitar is the next section, and this is the bit of the guitar that sits on your lap when you play it. On an acoustic guitar, the body is hollow and has a hole in it, across which the strings are stretched. The hollow body of the guitar amplifies the sound made by the strings and gives the guitar it’s distinctive sound.
The strings are attached to the guitar body and are stretched across the bridge, which sits on the body of the guitar towards the end of the body furthest away from the neck.
Guitar Pickups Explained
On an electric guitar, the pickups (along with the amp) do the job of amplifying the sound made by the strings. There are different types of pickup, which fall into two main categories: double coil (humbucker), or single coil. When playing lead, most players put the switch to the bridge pickup, whereas rhythm guitar playing sounds good at the neck pickup. This is great for jazz chords especially because it produces a more mellow, gentle sound, compared to the more piercing, harsh sound of the bridge pickup.
Guitar Tremolo (Whammy Bar)
Some guitars have a tremolo bar, which comprises a short metal bar, which is attached to the bridge of the electric guitar and is used to rock the bridge back and forth thereby increasing and decreasing the tension in the strings. This can be used to produce various effects, such as vibrato or a divebomb effect where the strings are loosened in a contimuous and smooth manner so as to produce a lower and lower pitch. Tremolo can sound amazing, but should be used sparingly.
Floating Bridge
Some guitars have a floating bridge, which can make it more difficult when it comes to tuning. Often, if you have a floating bridge, you’ll need to tune a guitar 2 or 3 times. A tuner can be very handy to make this process quicker and easier. If you have afloating bridge, it is best to tune your guitar strings in this order – 1, 6, 2, 5, 4, 3. This keeps the tension on the bridge more even and helps to avoid changes in the tension of one string impacting on the tension (and therefore pitch) of the other strings.
With a floating bridge, you’ll often have to go back and tune the strings two or three times before it’s perfect.
Guitar Fingers
Although not strictly part of the guitar itself, it’s worth mentioning the names given to the fingers as this is important to know when learning guitar. The fingers on the left hand are numbered in sequence from the index finger (1), middle finger (2), ring finger (3) and pinky (4). Sometimes you might see a letter “T” in certain notation, which will often be used to denote the use of the thumb when playing thumb chords. If you’ve played piano before to any level, the numbers given to guitar fingers can be confusing because they are different (in piano, the thumb is 1).
For the fingers of the left hand, particularly when reading notation for classical or fingerstyle guitar parts, you’ll notice some letters appearing on the musical score or tablature. These relate to which of the fingers you should be plucking the strings with and are as follows: P (thumb), I (index), M (middle), A (ring finger). The origins of these letters are in the Spanish words and come from classical guitar.
So now you know the parts of a guitar (and what to call your fingers!), you’re ready to get started with your practice.