Beginner Guitar Lesson 3 – Guitar String Names

Knowing the names of the strings is the first important foundational step before you can learn to tune your guitar, understand the notes on each string and even learn chords. Unfortunately, it’s not that glamourous of a lesson.

There are only 6 strings on your guitar, so it won’t take long to learn and memorize them all.

E —-
A —-
D —-
G —-
B —-
e —-

The above would be looking at your guitar if it was laying on the back of the body and you were looking down at the neck. The string that would be closet to you if you were holding your guitar is the top string, the E string, and the string furthest away from you if you were holding it would be the e string.

These two E strings are differentiated by the high E and low E since there is one octave separating them,.

People often remember the names of the strings by memorizing a story, or word for each string such as.

Every
Adult
Dog
Growls
Barks
Eats

These can work, although I suggest you just take the time to memorize them. There are only 6 strings, it won’t take too long. Go over it each day when you first pick up your guitar to practice, and repeat it to yourself when you have a few spare moments. You’ll remember them soon enough.

String Numbers

6 —-
5 —-
4 —-
3 —-
2 —-
1 —-

Sometimes strings are referred to as numbers as well. For what ever reason the numbers of the strings count backwards from the bottom string to the top string. So the high E string is string 1 and the low E string is string 6. You just count from one to six to figure out which string is what number.

Numbers are sometimes used by particular teachers and sometimes in Tab notation as well.

Our next lesson will take show you how to use an electric tuner along with the string names. If you haven’t yet you can sign up to receive the beginner lesson series via email on the left hand side of this page. If you’re ready for the next lesson go ahead and click here for lesson 4 how to use an electric tuner.