1. The Basics

Like any hobby or subculture, the guitar world has a whole pile of terms to describe everything in it. It's not hard to imagine someone on a forum writing, "I've been GASing for a reliced nitro LPB strat with a wenge soft V neck, SS6100 frets, and a bone nut." To which you might be like, "WUT?" It can take a while to pick up All The Terms. So as not to overwhelm, this Basics section will only introduce terms for The Big Chunks, then introduce more specific terms in each subsequent section. A good place is with the parts of a guitar.

Anatomy of a guitar A great place to start is by learning the names of all the parts of a guitar. Even if you think you know them all, take a peek!

Tuning

Keeping your guitars in tune is obviously an important part of playing the guitar. There are a number of ways to do that. Myself, I really love my clip on Snark tuner .

How to use a Guitar Tuner This post covers both the types of tuners and how to use them.

If you're in a pinch or don't want to dig out the tuner, you can tune your guitar relative to itself (provided you're using standard tuning).

5th Fret Tuning Tuning with the 5th fret

Tuning a Guitar Using Harmonics Tuning with harmonics

Next: Intro to Modding and Building Guitars

That's it for the basics! Learn about modding and building guitars in part 2 →