Lines on the Guitar: Strings and Frets Explained

Lines on the Guitar: Strings and Frets Explained

At the beginning the guitar is a bit like the Amazon, full of impenetrable cross thatched lines. Don’t bring out your machete yet, there are ways to navigate this jungle!

Vertical lines are made by the strings, then horizontal lines made by something called frets. These are metal bars. They don’t exist on some stringed instruments like the violin, double bass or cello. The word fret itself is interesting because in most dictionaries you’d be hard pressed to find an entry regarding guitar frets. It can mean a worn or eroded place, but in the context of the guitar it is the division from one note to another.

In all, this cross thatching effect can look very confusing to an untrained eye. So I will break it down into smaller parts.

Horizontal Lines

A closer look! Guitar diagrams are always drawn with the
lowest string at the bottom.

There are six strings on the guitar. From the guitarists perspective, looking down the strings run thickest (lowest note) to thinnest (highest note). Six strings together can look intimidating, but most guitarists intuitively don’t look at it like this. They know the strings are in order, and they know it is a logical order. Because of that, I break the strings down into pairs. This means there are just three things to remember!

Low:

The low strings are E and A. E is the thickest string and is the one you will always look down on first. A is the next thickest string.

Middle:

D and G are in the middle. On an acoustic guitar, it is easy to recognise G, because it is the thinnest copper string and is right next to the two silver strings. On classical guitars, it is not “wound” or it does not have metal around it, and on electric guitars is sometimes not wound. However, it then is the closest string to the wound ones.

High:

The two highest (and thinnest strings) are B and E. E is really easy to identify as it is the last string! B, therefore is second to last.

If you wish, you can also learn a pneumonic. From lowest to highest, a popular one is “Every angry donkey gets better everyday.” Each word, of course has the first letter of the string.

Vertical Lines

Frets are metal bars running vertically along the neck of a guitar. These are really helpful, as they show exactly where a note is on a guitar. On most guitars, you will have 18-24 frets, of which maybe 13 are usable. This is because some guitars have a cutaway to allow access to the frets, on others these don’t exist, and the neck meets the body at the 12^th or 13^th fret. This makes the other frets (for most) unplayable.

The most common dot pattern on a neck.
Diagram created by author. You're welcome!

As the frets get closer to the body and the bridge of the guitar, they get smaller. This is a phenomenon that may be confusing at first. Frequency waves get faster at smaller intervals. This means the tightness required reduces in order to produce a higher note. The result is tiny frets!

It is possible to navigate frets by using the dots imprinted on the guitar neck. They are often on the top of the guitar neck as you look down, and on the face of the guitar neck so people you play with can “read” your hands.

On most guitars, this is the sequence.

3^rd, 5^th, 7^th, 9^th frets have a single dot, and the 12^th has two dots. Then the 15^th, 17^th and sometimes 19^th frets have single dots. So remember the only even number to have dots is the 12^th fret (unless you have 24 frets, which is rare). If you think this is hard, just think about bowed instruments that give you nothing. A word of caution, some manufacturers go rogue with their dots!

Evan Burgess teaches guitar in Gloucestershire. For a lesson contact entslrs@gmail.com