Fingers, Frets, And Strings Toturial

In this lesson, we’re going to go over the numbering systems for the guitar, including the system to use for your fingers, the frets on the guitar, and for the guitar strings. This lesson may seem very easy to you, but it’s an important lesson. Knowing these systems inside and out makes all of your future guitar lessons a lot faster.

We’ll begin with the numbering system for the fingers on your fretting hand. Your index finger is your first finger, middle finger is your second finger, ring finger is your third finger, and your pinky is your fourth finger. I’m sure this seems simple to you, but when you begin reading chord diagrams, scale diagrams, tabs, and sheet music, you’ll need to know which finger to use right away.

Next, let’s go over the numbering system for the strings of the guitar, which is a bit counterintuitive. Most people think the string closest to them, the thickest string, is the first string of the guitar, but it’s actually the opposite. The string closest to the floor, the thinnest string, is the first string. The next string up, the second thinnest string, is the second string, and so on from there. Just be aware that your thinnest string is the first string, and the thickest string is the sixth string.

The last numbering system that we’ll go over is for the frets on the guitar, which are the metal strips placed along the fretboard. The first fret is the metal strip closest to the headstock of the guitar, and then it counts down from there.

If someone told you to place your finger on the first fret, you would go to the first fret and place your finger right behind the fret. If they told you to go to the fifth fret on the first string with your first finger, you would count up five frets and place your first finger behind that fret on the thinnest string.

You’ll want to test yourself on all the numbering systems so you can quickly go the fret you need on the right string and with the right finger. Take as much time as you need to get comfortable with all three systems by testing yourself, looking at tabs, and studying chords diagrams.

Remember that knowing these systems really well will make all the other guitar lessons in the Beginner Guitar Quick-Start Series a lot faster, along with any other lessons you take later on.
The guitar is an ancient and noble instrument, whose history can be traced back over 4000 years. Many theories have been advanced about the instrument's ancestry. It has often been claimed that the guitar is a development of the lute, or even of the ancient Greek kithara. Research done by Dr. Michael Kasha in the 1960's showed these claims to be without merit. He showed that the lute is a result of a separate line of development, sharing common ancestors with the guitar, but having had no influence on its evolution. The influence in the opposite direction is undeniable, however - the guitar's immediate forefathers were a major influence on the development of the fretted lute from the fretless oud which the Moors brought with them to to Spain.

The sole "evidence" for the kithara theory is the similarity between the greek word "kithara" and the Spanish word "quitarra". It is hard to imagine how the guitar could have evolved from the kithara, which was a completely different type of instrument - namely a square-framed lap harp, or "lyre".

It would also be passing strange if a square-framed seven-string lap harp had given its name to the early Spanish 4-string "quitarra". Dr. Kasha turns the question around and asks where the Greeks got the name "kithara", and points out that the earliest Greek kitharas had only 4 strings when they were introduced from abroad. He surmises that the Greeks hellenified the old Persian name for a 4-stringed instrument, "chartar". The earliest stringed instruments known to archaeologists are bowl harps and tanburs. Since prehistory people have made bowl harps using tortoise shells and calabashes as resonators, with a bent stick for a neck and one or more gut or silk strings. The world's museums contain many such "harps" from the ancient Sumerian, Babylonian, and Egyptian civilisations. Around 2500 - 2000 CE more advanced harps, such as the opulently carved 11-stringed instrument with gold decoration found in Queen Shub-Ad's tomb, started to appear.A tanbur is defined as "a long-necked stringed instrument with a small egg- or pear-shaped body, with an arched or round back, usually with a soundboard of wood or hide, and a long, straight neck". The tanbur probably developed from the bowl harp as the neck was straightened out to allow the string/s to be pressed down to create more notes. Tomb paintings and stone carvings in Egypt testify to the fact that harps and tanburs (together with flutes and percussion instruments) were being played in ensemble 3500 - 4000 years ago.At around the same time that Torres started making his breakthrough fan-braced guitars in Spain, German immigrants to the USA - among them Christian Fredrich Martin - had begun making guitars with X-braced tops. Steel strings first became widely available in around 1900. Steel strings offered the promise of much louder guitars, but the increased tension was too much for the Torres-style fan-braced top. A beefed-up X-brace proved equal to the job, and quickly became the industry standard for the flat-top steel string guitar.

At the end of the 19th century Orville Gibson was building archtop guitars with oval sound holes. He married the steel-string guitar with a body constructed more like a cello, where the bridge exerts no torque on the top, only pressure straight down. This allows the top to vibrate more freely, and thus produce more volume. In the early 1920's designer Lloyd Loar joined Gibson, and refined the archtop "jazz" guitar into its now familiar form with f-holes, floating bridge and cello-type tailpiece.

The electric guitar was born when pickups were added to Hawaiian and "jazz" guitars in the late 1920's, but met with little success before 1936, when Gibson introduced the ES150 model, which Charlie Christian made famous.

With the advent of amplification it became possible to do away with the soundbox altogether. In the late 1930's and early 1940's several actors were experimenting along these lines, and controversy still exists as to whether Les Paul, Leo Fender, Paul Bigsby or O.W. Appleton constructed the very first solid-body guitar. Be that as it may, the solid-body electric guitar was here to stay.