Page 8 - Guitar Book

Fretboard & Strings

The completed fretboard is below with all of its notes.

OK , hopefully we now understand what the fretboard is all about. Lets now
get down to getting some form of noise out of your guitar.

The first thing we must do is get familiar with our fingers. No, I haven’t lost
the plot, we just need to number each finger to assist us in forming the chords
on the fretboard. Your fingers are normally known as Index finger (i). Middle
finger (m), Ring finger (r) and Little pinkie finger (p). In that order we are now
going to number our fingers 1-4. i.e. Index is now 1, middle is now 2 etc. This
is important to understand so you don’t end up playing finger twister on the
fretboard.

The other important thing is to inform you that for the first few weeks you
may experience a little bit of pain as the ends of your fingers begin to harden
up. Bear with it, it doesn’t last. If you are using a guitar with nylon strings then
you shouldn’t have too much of a problem with this but most acoustic steel
string guitars are a bit unforgiving.

Right, that’s enough egg-sucking for now, lets learn to play our first chords. I
better explain the chord box first so we’re all singing of the same song sheet
(No pun intended). Lets take a look at a chord box showing the chord of E

E A D G B E

The Chord of E

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