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The Anatomy of a Guitar - [T-2]

By the end of this post, you will be able to know the parts of the guitar. You will also understand the value behind knowing the mechanics and the parts of your guitar as the first step to building a solid foundation & learning your new instrument.

Those of you who love racing would have seen the recent movie that came late 2019, Ford v Ferrari. Not a bad film. More importantly, it shows the genius of British race car driver and mechanic, Ken Miles portrayed by Christian Bale in the movie. The pivotal reason for Ken Miles being such a legendary driver was also because of his mechanical background. See he helped develop the racing car Ford came up to battle Ferrari for the Le Mans, his understanding of the mechanics of the car allowed him to be a super ace driver. Just like Ken Miles, if you know how the guitar and the mechanics and physics of the instrument, it would be a solid foundation for you to become an ace guitar player. Just as good as ken Miles was a driver, you can be a just as good guitar player. 

Did you hear the story of the Jimi Hendrix that he got his first real guitar from his dad, he used to walk around, be at the dinner table, while watching t.v, they even say while he was going to sleep he had his guitar strapped on all the time. And I reckon that that story is probably true. When you love your instrument with that much passion, it opens the door for you to understand it further, making you a better guitarist.

 So let's look at the anatomy of the guitar and what makes her tick. I refer to the guitar as "her" because that's how I felt about it if I ever were to give a gender to it. B.B. King named his guitars after women in his life. It doesn't matter, I guess. I know guys who will refer to their cars as a girl and some as a "hey dude." 
As you can see there is minimal differences between the acoustic and the electric guitars. The main difference has been that the acoustic using the sound hole in it's body to resonate the sound while electric guitar uses a magnetic coil called a pick-up to send the resonance of the strings as an electric signal to an amplifier to generate the sound. As you can see there are different names for the same parts; like "fretboard" and "fingerboard". There are many other such names like this as well. For example, I refer to my fingerboard or fretboard as the "neck'.

I will not go into the physics of sound generation in this post. However, I will cover that in a more detailed lesson soon. It's essential to know the parts of the guitar. Thus now it helps to open up dialogues with your music teachers, your music buddies, music retail shop, or even if you had to take your guitar to a luthier to fix it, you wouldn't be lost anymore. You can be confident of the issues of your guitar for now and for the future.

Now you know all the parts of the guitar. Now you need to understand how it relates to it's functioning. That's where I come in. In my one to one sessions, I will go through all the details, the knick and knack of it all. Then it will help you prepare for the fun that's yet to come!

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