Learn the Strings of a Finger-Style Guitar

Video Transcript

"Hi this is Jeff Isbell again on behalf of ExpertVillage.com. Knowing your way around the guitar part one. We’re going to talk about string names and things like that. Finger style guitar is an intermediate to advanced style, so you’re going to have to know a few basics for these lessons to be worth your while. Do you know the names of your strings? If you don’t, you must learn them before you can continue in these lessons. Let’s take a look. Strings are usually named from the top down. In standard tuning they are, E-A-D-G-B-E. At the beginning it was useful for me to use the mnemonic device Eat A Darn Good Breakfast Early, E-A-D-G-B-E. You can use that or make up your own, but to communicate with other guitar players, in this case – me, you must know the string names. Now the strings are also numbered and I’m sorry about this, they don’t go the way you think they should. They count from bottom to top one through six, so the top string, the low E is the sixth string, the next to the top string is A, is the fifth string and so on. In order for me to tell you what I do, and how you can do it to, we have to share a common language. These string names are the start of that conversation, the rest of the language is called notes on frets in lesson three. "