Venue: Victoria School
Dates: 8th, 20th, 29th Sept 2006
Each of us did our own research on basic information about guitars, and had a group sharing and discussion of our research findings:
Various parts of an electric and acoustic guitar as shown below respectively:
Reference source: http://www.guitarlessonworld.com/lessons/lesson1.htm
Body: The box provides an anchor for the neck and bridge and creates the playing surface for the right hand. On an acoustic/classical, the body includes the amplifying sound chamber that produces the guitar’s tone. On an electric, it consists of the housing for the bridge assembly and electronics (pickups as well as tone and volume controls).
Bridge: the metal (electric) or wooden (acoustic/classical) plate that anchors strings to the body.
Finger-board/Fret-board: A flat, planklike piece of wood that sits atop the neck, where you place your left-hand fingers to produce notes and chords. The finger-board is also known as the fret-board, because the frets are embedded in it.
Frets (in the context of guitars): Thin metal wires or bars running perpendicular to the strings that shorten the effective vibrating length of a string, enabling it to produce different pitches.
Head: The section that holds the tuners(hardware assembly) and provides a place for the manufacturer to display its logo.
Neck: The longs, club-like wooden piece that connects the head to the body.
Nut: A grooved silver of stiff nylon or other synthetic substance that stops the strings from vibrating beyond the neck. The strings pass through the grooves on their way to the tuners in the head. The nut is one of the two points at which the vibrating area of the string ends. (The other is the bridge.)
Output jack (electric only): The insertion point for the cord that connects the guitar to an amplifier or other electronic device.
Pickups (electric only): Bar-like magnets that create the electrical current, which the amplifier converts into musical sound.
Strings: The six metal (for electric and steel-string acoustic guitars) or 3 metal and 3 nylon (for classical guitars) wires that, drawn taut, produce the notes of the guitar. Although not strictly part of the actual guitar (you attach and remove them at will on top of the guitar), strings are an integral part of the whole system, and a guitar’s entire design and structure revolves around making the strings ring out with a joyful noise.
Tuners: Geared mechanisms that raise and lower the tension of the strings, drawing them to different pitches. The string wraps tightly around a post that sticks out through the top, or face, of the head. The post passes through to the back of the head, where gears connect it to a tuning key. Also, known as tuning machines, tuning pegs, tuning keys and tuning gears.
How Guitars work
String vibration and string length:
In a guitar, just like any instrument, the part that moves in regular, repeated motion to produce musical sound is the vibrating string. A string that is that the guitarist brings to a certain tension and then set in motion (by plucking action) produces a predictable sound – for example, the note A. If the guitarist tunes a string of his guitar to different tensions, he will get different tones. The greater the tension of a string, the higher the pitch.
Another way to change a string’s pitch is by shortening its effective vibrating length, and guitarists do so by fretting, which refers to pushing the string against the fret-board so that it vibrates only between the fingered fret (metal wire) and the bridge. This way, by moving the left hand up and down the neck (toward the bridge and the nut, respectively), the guitarist can change the pitches comfortably and easily.
Using both hands to make a sound:
The guitar normally requires two hands working together to create music. To play middle C on the guitar for example, the guitarist must take his left-hand index finger and fret the 2nd string (that is, press it down to the finger-board) at the first fret. This action, however, doesn’t itself produce a sound. He must then strike or pluck the 2nd string with his right hand to actually produce the note middle C audibly.
Frets and half-steps:
The smallest interval (unit of musical distance in pitch) of the musical scale is the half step. On the guitar, frets – the horizontal metal wires (or bars) that are embedded in the fret-board, running perpendicular to the strings – represent these half steps. To go up or down by half steps on a guitar means to move the left hand one fret at a time, higher or lower on the neck.
(With reference from Guitar for Dummies 2nd Edition)
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