One of the earliest variants of guitars is the classical guitar. Classical guitar has qualities different from those of acoustic and electric guitar. You can easily find such guitars at Guitor Planet or you can compare different guitars and make a final decision.
So if you are you planning on buying a classical guitar or you already do have the guitar, you need to know some basic things to play the guitar. In this article, I am going to write comprehensively about the classical guitar string and the notes on it. So, without further due, let’s get started.
Things You Need to Know About Classical Guitar
Strings of A Classical Guitar
The nature of the best classical guitar strings is what makes it different from an acoustic guitar. While the acoustic guitar has steel strings, a classical guitar has nylon strings. Since a standard classical guitar comes with nylon strings, a classical guitar is also known as nylon-string guitar.
Once there was a time when the number of strings of a guitar was five ADGBE. This was until the 18th century. With technological development and constant experimentation, a new six-string guitar was invented the added string being E. And since then, the six-string guitar has remained a standard.
So as you can guess, a classical guitar also comes with six strings E, A, D, G, B, E. It is the descending order in which I have written down the names of the strings. If you place the guitar on your lap (consider you are about to play it), the top-most string is tuned to E.
E is the thickest of all the six strings. After E comes the 5th string A. The 4th is tuned to D, 3rd in G, 2nd is B, and the 1st one is E the thinnest of all respectively.
There are lots of easier ways to remember the order of the strings. You can remember the following lines:
Eddie Ate Dynamite Good Bye Eddie
Eat All Day Get Big Easy
Every Amateur Does Get Better Eventually
Memorizing these lines is a convenient way to remember which string is tuned to which letter.
If you want to start with first string (E-B-G-D-A-E), that is, ascending order, you can memories these following lines.
Each Bad Girl Deserves An Eggplant
Every Boy Gets Dinner At Eight
Easter Bunnies Get Dizzy At Easter
Elvis’ Big Great Dane Ate Everything
These lines are always available to you. You can pick one of these lines to memorize. However, if you can come up with a line you can associate with most, it would be great for quick learning.
Classical Guitar Notes
Now that you know about the strings, it’s time to know the most important aspects that will help you create a tune that sounds really good. Those letters are also known as notes. But it doesn’t end here. To understand the concept of notes, I will use some examples.
You have probably seen that there are many vertical lines on the fretboard. These are called frets. In a classical guitar, you will see 12 frets, put simply, 12 notes. Now we don’t define these 12 notes by letters starting from A to J. Rather the first 7 letters, A-B-C-D-E-F-G-H, are used to define the notes.
A guitar is like a Piano as both are based on a chromatic scale. If you see a piano, you will notice that after a white key comes a black key. So consider, ABCDEFG are to define the white keys, so we need 7 black keys- a total of 14 keys. But this contradicts what I said earlier, that is, there are 12 notes.
The thing is you will notice that in two places, black doesn’t come after a white key. Within ABCDEFG, no black keys come after B and E. So it would seem like: A BC D EF G. The gap between the letters means a black key in a guitar.
So it is circular. Let’s take the example of the E string.
The 1st fret is F (notice F is the letter following E and no sharp is there between E and F)
2nd is G sharp (similar to the black key in a piano)
In terms of guitar, we call it sharp);
- 3rd is G
- 4th is G sharp
- 5th is A (the circular pattern at work)
- 6th is A sharp
- 7th is B
- 8th is C (notice no sharp here, as no gap is between B and C)
- 9th is C sharp.’
- 10th is D
- 11th is D sharp
- And 12th is E
Let’s consider another example to make it clear. Consider the A string. In case of this A string, the note on the 1st fret is A sharp; 2nd is B; 3rd is C; 4th is C sharp; and following the A BC D EF G pattern, we end up with 12th fret being A.
Final Words
The guitar is probably the most popular musical instrument. The number of people having a guitar is probably more than the number of people having any other musical instrument. Learning guitar is not as hard as you might think. Nowadays it’s even easier to learn and improve your skill as you have access to a variety of online lessons that are offered on platforms like Guitar Zoom. Those classes can provide you with all the essential basics and techniques to advance your knowledge.
The most common mistake people do while learning guitar is they don’t give enough concentration of the notes right from the beginning. Now that you have read this article I believe, you know how the strings and notes work. But the important thing is you must memorize the notes to excel at playing the guitar.
I’m a 20-something stay-at-home mother and wife. I have an amazing husband, a beautiful daughter, two loving dogs, and a lazy cat. I wouldn’t change my life for anything! I love to read, listen to music, cook and blog!
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