Parts of the guitar and string names

Six strings tuned E A D G B E, from about 82.41 Hz on the thickest string to about 329.63 Hz on the thinnest.

What you are holding

Sit with the guitar on your lap and look at it from the front. The wide part is the body. On an acoustic guitar it is hollow, and the round soundhole lets the air inside move with the top. The strings are tied at the bridge, glued to the top, and rest on a thin strip called the saddle. They run up the long neck over the fretboard, cross a slotted bar called the nut, and end at the headstock, where each one winds around a tuning peg. Turning a peg tightens or loosens its string, and a tighter string sounds higher.

1 body, 2 soundhole, 3 bridge and saddle, 4 frets, 5 fretboard on the neck, 6 nut, 7 headstock, 8 tuning pegs.

Frets are piano keys in a row

The thin metal bars across the fretboard are frets. When you press a string just behind a fret, the string can only vibrate from that fret to the saddle, so it sounds higher. Each fret raises the note by one semitone, the same step as moving one key to the right on a piano, black keys included. Twelve frets make an octave, and the 12th fret sits exactly halfway between the nut and the saddle. On a classical guitar with a 650 mm string length, the 12th fret is 325 mm from the nut and the 1st fret only about 36.5 mm. The frets crowd closer together as you move up, because each one shortens the string by the same fraction, not the same distance.

Six strings, counted from the thinnest

Guitarists number the strings from the thinnest. String 1 is the thin one nearest the floor when you play, and string 6 is the thick one nearest your face. In standard tuning the open strings, from 6 to 1, are E A D G B E. In scientific pitch names that is E2, A2, D3, G3, B3 and E4, so the two E strings are two octaves apart. Many players remember the order with a sentence such as "Eddie Ate Dynamite, Good Bye Eddie". The low E string vibrates about 82.41 times a second and the high E about 329.63 times, four times faster.

The fretboard as seen in guitar tab: string 1 (high E) on top, string 6 (low E) at the bottom. Dots mark frets 3, 5, 7, 9 and 12.

String	Name	Pitch	Frequency
6	E	E2	82.41 Hz
5	A	A2	110.00 Hz
4	D	D3	146.83 Hz
3	G	G3	196.00 Hz
2	B	B3	246.94 Hz
1	E	E4	329.63 Hz

Neighbouring strings are five frets apart, with one exception. Press the low E string at the 5th fret and you get A, the same note as the open 5th string. The same is true for A to D and D to G. Between G and B the gap is only four frets, so on the G string you press the 4th fret to match the open B. Then it is five frets again from B to the high E. This is the classic way to tune by ear once the low E is right, and it also explains why some chord shapes change when they cross the G and B strings.

Guitar music is written in the treble clef one octave higher than it sounds. That keeps most notes on the staff instead of on ledger lines far below it.

BackgroundAround 1800 most Spanish guitars still had pairs of strings, called courses. During the early 1800s guitars with six single strings took over. The design most nylon-string guitars follow today was settled by Antonio de Torres Jurado, born in 1817 near Almería in Spain. He began making guitars in Seville in the 1850s, gave the body a larger, balanced shape, and braced the thin top from inside with a fan of wooden struts. He often used a string length of about 650 mm, which became one of the standard lengths. His guitars were copied so widely that the Metropolitan Museum of Art describes the concert guitar of the late 1800s as exemplified in his work.

String 6	E (low), E2
String 5	A, A2
String 4	D, D3
String 3	G, G3
String 2	B, B3
String 1	E (high), E4

From string 6 to string 1: E A D G B E. Eddie Ate Dynamite, Good Bye Eddie.

Try it

The keyboard below covers the range of the open strings, from E2 to E4. Press each open-string note when it is asked for, low E first. Then tap the E minor chord box: it uses all six strings, so you hear every open string plus two fretted notes.

Which string is string 1?
- The thinnest, high E
- The thickest, low E
- The A string
Standard tuning from string 6 to string 1 is…
- E A D G B E
- E B G D A E
- G C E A
- E A D G C F
Put the open strings in order from string 6 to string 1.
How many semitones does one fret raise a note?
On a 650 mm string, how far from the nut is the 12th fret?
Press the low E string at the 5th fret. Which open string sounds the same?
- A (string 5)
- D (string 4)
- B (string 2)
On the G string, which fret matches the open B string?
The low E string vibrates about 82.41 times a second. About how fast does the high E vibrate?
Which part holds the strings at the headstock end and keeps them spaced?
- Nut
- Saddle
- Soundhole
- Fret
Who settled the design of the modern classical guitar in 19th-century Spain?
- Antonio de Torres Jurado
- Bartolomeo Cristofori
- Giovanni Battista Doni

Key points

Strings are numbered from the thinnest: 1 is high E, 6 is low E.
Standard tuning, 6 to 1: E A D G B E.
One fret is one semitone; the 12th fret is the octave, halfway along the string.
Neighbouring strings are five frets apart, except G to B, which is four.

Sources for this course (10)

Wikipedia "Standard tuning", guitar E2 A2 D3 G3 B3 E4, fourths with a major third between G and B, written an octave higher than it sounds (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_tuning)
Wikipedia "Capo (musical device)", capotasto, Doni 1640, James Ashborn patent 1850, capo affects only the open strings (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capo_(musical_device))
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Daniel Wheeldon, "The Spanish Guitar" (metmuseum.org/essays/the-spanish-guitar)
Classical Guitar magazine, "10 Classical Guitar Innovations from Antonio de Torres" (classicalguitarmagazine.com/10-classical-guitar-innovations-from-antonio-de-torres)
Wikipedia "Antonio de Torres Jurado" (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonio_de_Torres_Jurado)
Wikipedia "I-IV-V-I" (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I–IV–V–I)
Library of Congress, Amazing Grace collection, words written 1772 to 1773 and printed in Olney Hymns 1779 (loc.gov/collections/amazing-grace/articles-and-essays/dissemination-of-amazing-grace.html)
Museum of the Bible, "How Sweet the Sound", tune NEW BRITAIN in Columbian Harmony 1829 and first paired with Newton's text by William Walker in The Southern Harmony 1835 (museumofthebible.org/how-sweet-the-sound)
String frequencies computed with f = 440 × 2^((m − 69) / 12)
fret positions computed with d = L × (1 − 2^(−n / 12)).

Checked: 2026-10-17