All guitars have strings, the vibrations of which generate the tones from the instrument. The number of strings varies from one guitar to another. Most of the guitars have 6 strings and are placed on the fret board in order of their decreasing width. The thinnest string known as the first string has the highest note and the sixth string has the lowest note.
A combination of notes gives rise to chords on the guitar. There are three types of chords; major, minor, and sevenths. A major chord is a chord, which has a major third above its note or pitch. A minor chord is a chord, which has a minor third above its note or pitch. A seventh is a musical interval that spans over seven diatonic scale degrees. Chords are mainly played by rhythm guitarists. Most songs can be sung with a guitar accompaniment, using a set to basic chords, such as C, A minor, F, G, D, and B7.
On paper, the guitar chords are represented by standard notation, tablature (tabs), or as chord diagrams. The graphical symbols that are used are vertical lines depicting guitar strings and horizontal lines that represent the frets on the guitar. The top horizontal line is considered the nut that is zeroth fret. An X above vertical line denotes a string that is not to be played while an O indicates a string that is to be openly played (without being fretted.) A curved line denotes that a single finger is to be used to hold multiple strings. |
