
C-chord: Place your ring finger on the third fret of the fifth string. The finger placement is as follows (first major, then minor): X Research source If you cannot afford a tuner, you can also tune your guitar without one by matching each note to the corresponding note on the piano. Make sure the room is quiet when using a tuner because the microphone on the tuner can pick up other sounds. Pick each note and tighten the string to make it go higher, or give it some slack to lower it. The tuner will tell you if the guitar is "sharp" (too high) or "flat" (too low). Hold it to the guitar and pluck the high E. Electric tuners are easy to use and very accurate. Use a mnemonic to remember this order, such as " Eddie Ate Dynamite, Good Bye Eddie!" From the lowest to highest pitch (thickest to thinnest strings) the strings are named E, A, D, G, B, and E (after the note played when the string is plucked with no fingers touching it). Tuning regularly will also familiarize you with which string and fret combinations correspond with which notes. It's no fun to play a guitar that's not in tune and can lead to some bad habits when you're first starting out. Do not become discouraged if your shoulder hurts in addition to your neck, arms and hands. Even if you hold the guitar correctly, you may experience some discomfort while getting used to playing. You should be able to smoothly move your left hand up and down the neck without having to hold it up. Hold the neck in the V created by your thumb and forefinger. Your left hand is used to stabilize the neck and fret the strings. The guitar should be held mostly with your leg and by cradling it in your body. Hold the back of the guitar so it touches your stomach and chest and rests on the leg of your strumming/picking hand. When you orient the guitar to your body, the smallest string should be pointed toward the ground and the thickest string should be pointed up at the ceiling. To play your guitar, sit up in a straight-backed chair or stool.
If you're right handed, you'll play the guitar by strumming about halfway between the sound hole and the bridge with your right hand and fretting the strings on the neck with your left hand.
Before you start wailing like Hendrix, make sure you're holding your guitar correctly. An acoustic guitar will have a sound hole in the body where the sound will resonate, while an electric guitar will have as many as three magnetic pickups which will channel the sound through an amplifier.The fretboard is inlaid with metal frets that demarcate the different notes. The neck of the guitar is the long wooden piece of wood, flat on one side (this is called the fretboard) and curved on the other.On an acoustic guitar, the strings are fixed to the bridge with removable pegs, and on an electric guitar the strings are generally strung through an eyelet. The strings run between the headstock of the guitar, where they are affixed to tuning pegs that can be rotated to tighten and slacken them, and the bridge, where they're fixed to the guitar's body.The wooden body resonates that sound to create the warm tones we associate with a guitar. Copper-wound strings vibrate to create sound. Whether you're playing an electric or an acoustic guitar, the instrument is essentially wood and metal.