An electric guitar relies on an amplifier to produce sound and has a much different construction from an acoustic (non-electric) guitar, but its basic structure and the way it is played is quite similar to any other guitar. The following steps will show play notes on electric guitar.
Instructions
1. Look at the strings on an electric guitar. The vast majority have six strings of different thickness and are arranged in order of thickness with the thickest string on top and the thinnest string on the bottom.
2. Examine the tuning of the guitar. The most common tuning for a guitar and the one that beginners should start out with is EADGBE. This gives the tuning of the open (unfretted) strings in ascending order of pitch. The thickest (lowest pitch) string is tuned to the E below middle C and thinnest string is tuned to the E two octaves above the first string.
3. Observe the frets on the guitar. These thick metal wires or bars go across the finger boards and are positioned so that holding (fretting) the string at each successive fret increases the pitch of the string by a half-step.
4. Use the dotted frets as a reference guide. Most guitars have a dot on the odd numbered frets going up to 15 or so except for 11. Instead, the 12th fret is marked with two dots. The 12th fret is especially important because it is the octave of the open string.
5. Practice an E major barre chord. This is one of the first guitar chords learned and is formed by putting the index finger across all six strings at the root fret. The ring finger frets the fifth string two frets up from the root fret, the little finger frets the fourth string two frets up from the root fret and the middle finger frets the third string one fret up from the root fret.
