Functions of Guitar Parts

Video Transcript

"Hi, I'm Mike Lais on behalf of Expert Village. Today we are going to be talking about getting familiar with the guitar. The different parts of the guitar. Everybody likes to sound smart when they are talking about their own stuff. Right? So, here is my gift to you so that you can sound smart. We'll start with the simple stuff. These right here are the strings obviously. This is the first string and then the numbering system just goes up: 1, 2, and 3,4,5,6. Six being your thickest string. The next part of the guitar that we have are these little strips right here on the finger board. These divide the guitar up into half steps. So that when you're playing, you're actually going to get your tone from placing your fingers just above these frets. Then when we move up here further, we get something called the head stock. This is where you're going to place a lot of your strings. It holds the tension of your guitar. It keeps everything nice and straight, and where you can also place your tuning pegs. Which is the part of the guitar in which you're going to tune, or you're going to turn these things left or right depending on which way you need to go to tune your guitar. They come in different ways and everything like that. For a Stratocaster you're going to see 6 all the way across, or you will see this for a Martin or for some other's like Les Paul's you're going to see it on both sides like this. The next part that we're talking about is the nut. This is what holds the strings in place for your guitar, so that you don't have as much tension going on (on just the tuning pegs). It allows your guitar to stay in tune for a longer period of time. If you move on down the fingerboard here, it takes us to the body. This on an acoustic guitar (as most acoustic guitars) is a hallow body, which means that you have a sound hole here. This is where your sound is going to come out and you have the most sound if you strum over the sound hole and everything like that. I have a cutaway on this body here to make it so that I can reach my higher notes when it comes time to do that. Not all guitars have that, again that's personal preference on how you wish to play. We follow down here. This is the bridge of the guitar. This is what keeps your guitar in place with the body. These pin pegs is what will hold the string to the bridge on an acoustic guitar. Which applies enough tension where you can keep it in tune when you put it in tune? The next part we have is the pick guard. This is just basically (when you're strumming) and you hit your guitar it will protect your wood from any scratches that you're going to put on it. That's basically your guitar right there. Now you can sound like a genius when it comes to telling mom what you just bought."