The guitar is a fretted string instrument that really belongs to the percussion family. Got that? There are fretless string instruments as well; the harp and even the piano would be examples. The fretted neck of the guitar gives us the ability to play more than one note on each string. This way we don’t need as many strings as the harp or the piano.

The pitch we get by striking a string is determined by three main factors; the diameter of the string, the amount of tension it is under, and its vibrating length. The diameter of the string is determined by what gauge of strings we have on our guitar . The tension is controlled by the tuning gears; tighten the string and it gets higher, loosen the string and it gets lower. Both of these factors are constants that do not change in the course of playing a song (generally– don’t get me started on retuning or especially restringing on the fly!).