Let's do a couple things in terms of terminology now.
Tablature and most instruction that you're going to see here and elsewhere is going to refer to the strings two ways.
One by a number and then also by a note name.
Number wise what we think of is this little guy down here on the bottom is the first string.
If you put strings on your guitar and the packages are labeled it will say this is the E or the first string.
First string is always the little one down here and it has the highest pitch.
Then predictably up from that it's second string, third, fourth, fifth and sixth is the big guy right here.
On tablature or when I'm casually referring to play the third string on the third fret.
You will know to start counting from here. Up and then over.
Third string, third fret.
It's basically a map for how to find the notes.
The other way strings are referred to requires a little bit of music theory.
I'm going to try not to kill you with this right off the bat but there's a minimal amount that you should start learning and getting familiar with.
The strings do have note names and if you're not familiar with music theory at all what you need to know is that
there are seven major notes in a scale and they are all lettered: A, B, C, D, E, F and G.
When you get to G you can still go higher but you start over again with an A.
What that sounds like is this.
We can start here with a C, D, E, F, G and we're out of letters now but we've got to go higher, A, B, C.
So it's a cycling alphabet.
There are some little baby steps that we will worry about later but those are your major whole notes.
C, D, E, F, G, A, B, C, but listen to this that is not a chord and it is not a scale but it is standard tuning on a guitar.
The trick there and the conspiracy is that they want to make sure that everybody bought guitar lessons along with their guitar so they make it
a little bit tricky and they give it away with a tuning that doesn't make sense.
We can fix that.
This string is the E string and to help you out we've got two of those.
The big one on the bottom and the little one on the top are E strings.
Hopefully you're ear can hear that even though one is significantly higher than the other they are both the same pitch.
Coming down from that we have the B string and the third is a G the fourth is a D the fifth is an A and the sixth is that E again.
So again we have E, B, G, D, A and E.
There are some other tunings and we'll explore those later but this is what's called standard tuning with the guitar
and there is really nothing you can do except learn this because you need to know the names of those.
Then what happens like I showed you everything is relative from there.
That open E can get fretted to an F the next guy in line and from F we go up to G.
So you need to know the names of those strings so that you know where other notes are relative to open position.
That is the basics of where we are going with this.