Guitar string notes and names: E A D G B E

The six guitar string notes, in standard tuning, are E, A, D, G, B and E, read from the thickest string to the thinnest. Those are the guitar string names you will see on every tab, every chord chart and every tuner, and they are the same on an acoustic, an electric and a classical guitar. This page gives you the six names with their numbers and their pitches, two sentences to remember them by, the one piece of numbering that confuses everybody, and then every note each string gives you as you go up the neck.

The six strings, from thickest to thinnest

Hold the guitar as you would to play it. The thickest string is at the top, nearest your face, and the thinnest is at the bottom, nearest the floor. Read them in that order and the notes are E, A, D, G, B, E.

The two outer strings are both an E, two octaves apart. That is worth noticing on day one, because it means anything you learn about one of them is already true about the other: the same note names, in the same order, at the same frets.

The number after the letter is the octave, and it is how a tuner tells two E strings apart: the low one is an E2, the high one an E4. The frequency column is the pitch a tuner is aiming for, with A4 at 440 Hz as the reference the whole set is built from. You do not need to memorize a single one of those numbers, and they are here because people look them up.

How to remember the string names

Use a sentence whose initials spell the six letters. Say it out loud while you play the open strings, rather than reading it off a screen, because what you are building is the link between a sound and a name.

Two habits make the difference between knowing the list and knowing the strings. Name each string out loud as you play it, one pass, every time you pick the guitar up. And name them in a random order rather than always going up: ask yourself which string is the D, find it, play it. A minute a day for a week is enough, and an hour in one sitting is not.

Which string is the first string?

The thinnest one. This is the single most common point of confusion on the instrument, so it is worth stating plainly: the 1st string is the thin high E, and the 6th string is the thick low E. The numbering runs from thin to thick, which is the opposite of the order you read the note names in.

It gets worse before it gets better, because the drawings disagree with each other. On a chord diagram the six strings are vertical lines and the thick low E is the one on the left. On a tab the six strings are horizontal lines and the thick low E is the bottom one. Neither of those puts the first string first.

• Low, high, thick and thin never lie. When you read an instruction, translate the number into one of those words immediately. Sixth string means the thick low one, first string means the thin high one.
• High and low are about pitch, not position. The high E string is the one nearest the floor, because high means a higher note. People say top string for both strings, which is why it is better to say thickest and thinnest.
• Count from the floor. The string nearest the floor is 1, and you count upwards towards your face. That is the whole rule, and it takes a week to stop feeling backwards.

Reading a diagram or a tab is a short skill in its own right, and it is the next one to pick up once the names are in place: how to read guitar tabs covers the six lines and what the numbers on them mean, and how to read chord diagrams covers the grid, the dots and the X and the O.

Acoustic, electric and classical: same notes

People search for electric guitar string notes and for acoustic guitar string names as though they were two different lists. They are the same list. E A D G B E is standard tuning, a set of six pitches, and it does not belong to one kind of guitar. A nylon string classical, a steel string acoustic, a twelve string, a solid body electric and a semi hollow are all tuned to those notes, which is why a chord chart works on any of them.

What changes from one instrument to another is everything except the notes. Nylon strings feel softer and are gentler on a beginner's fingers. Steel strings are louder unplugged and harder on the hands. An electric is quiet on its own and loud through an amplifier. A twelve string doubles each course, with the lowest four doubled an octave up, so it has twelve strings and still only six note names.

Every note on each string, fret by fret

The open strings are the starting point, not the destination. Move up one fret and the note goes up one half step, and the twelve notes repeat in one fixed order for the whole length of the neck. Six rows below, one per string, from the open string to the twelfth fret.

Two names in a cell are two names for one fret. A#/Bb is a single note that a song in one key writes as A sharp and a song in another writes as B flat, and your finger goes to the same place either way. Which spelling is correct depends on the key, not on the guitar.

Two things in that table are worth more than the rest. The table stops at the twelfth fret because that fret is the open string again, one octave up, so nothing after it is new. And there is no sharp between E and F, nor between B and C: those two pairs sit one fret apart while every other pair of natural notes is two frets apart. Learn those two tight spots and half of the confusion about the neck goes away.

If you would rather hear the notes than read them, the interactive guitar fretboard draws the same map, plays any fret you tap and can quiz you on it. That is the better tool for learning the neck; this table is the better one for checking a single note with the guitar in your hands.

Bass, ukulele and 7 string guitar

Once you know what the six guitar strings are called, the other instruments in the family stop being mysterious. Most of them use notes you already know, in a shorter or a longer list.

The bass is the easy one: four strings, E A D G, the bottom four notes of a guitar an octave down. Everything you learn about the two thickest guitar strings transfers straight to it. The bass tuner opens on four strings and has the five string preset in its menu.

The ukulele is the one with a surprise in it. Standard tuning is G C E A, and that G is the HIGH one, above the C and the E beside it, so the four strings do not rise in order from thickest to thinnest. It has a name, reentrant tuning, and it is why a strummed ukulele chord sounds like a bright cluster rather than a stack from the bottom up. The ukulele tuner has that tuning, the low G variant and the baritone.

Tuning the strings to these notes

Knowing the names is one job, getting the six strings onto those pitches is another, and the second one takes two minutes every time you pick the guitar up. There are three ways to do it, and they all end in the same place.

1. With a tuner and a microphone. The fastest and the most accurate. The online guitar tuner listens through your microphone, names the note it hears and shows how far off it is in cents, so you can see which way to turn before you touch anything.
2. With a clip-on tuner. It clamps onto the headstock and reads the vibration through the wood rather than the sound in the room, which is what players use on stage and in a noisy house.
3. By ear, with the fifth fret method. The fifth fret of one string gives you the note of the open string next to it, all the way up, with one exception: for the B string you use the fourth fret of the G string instead. That exception is the narrow gap between G and B showing up again.

All three methods, step by step, are on how to tune a guitar, including the harmonics version of the ear method and what to do when a guitar refuses to stay in tune.

And once the six strings are where they belong, the names start paying for themselves. A chord is built from note names, so knowing which string is the A is what makes a chord diagram mean something rather than look like a pattern: basic guitar chords is the next step.