Guitar Lesson -- The Notes In The Open Position

When you buy a new guitar, it's tuned in what's called "standard tuning"

. Although there are other types of guitar tunings, "standard" is what is normally used. So why is it tuned that way anyway?

I'm not sure that I can give you a real good "why". It's a lot of mumbo-jumbo about sympathetic string vibrations, which is interesting, but not very helpful to you.

What IS helpful though, is how things end up getting organized.

Music is a logical, and mathematically perfect language. There is a logic to standard tuning. Check this out:

E ------------------------------------------------------------0---1---3---

B ------------------------------------------------0---1---3--------------

G ---------------------------------------0---2---------------------------

D --------------------------0---2---3------------------------------------

A -------------0---2---3-------------------------------------------------

E -0---1---3-------------------------------------------------------------

This is called guitar tablature. The top line is the high E in your guitar, and the next line below is the B string, etc. The numbers on the lines are fret numbers. "0" means that that string is played "open", that is, without and fingering.

If you look at all of these notes from bottom to top, you get:

E F G A B C D E F G A B C D E F G

Music is, in fact, the alphabet from A to G repeated over and over again. Because this is an endless loop, I could start from any letter.Seeing as the sixth and last string of the guitar is an E, that's where we will start.

Standard tuning allows an easy way to play all of the basic notes on your guitar that are in the open position.

Keep in mind that there are other ways to tune your guitar, but these are for special types of sounds. I would not mess with these other types of tunings until you have more experience.

Try playing these notes on your guitar. Play all first fret notes with your first finger, all second fret notes with your second finger, and all third fret notes with your third finger. This keeps your hand from moving around too much and allows you to play these notes quickly if you wanted to..

These are all of the basic note names on your guitar. There are others (sharps and flats), but now you know where all of the main ones are. Have fun, you're making music.

by: James Emery Vigh

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