What are the guitar string notes?

I’ve had a few requests for some information for guitar beginners on the names of the guitar string notes. There are six guitar strings, and they are named from the lowest sounding to the highest sounding as E – A – D – G – B – E. This sentence will help you remember the names: Eddie Ate Dynamite, Good Bye Eddie. The first letter of each word gives you the name of note for each guitar string.

Sometimes someone will forget which direction the names go, but as long as you can remember that after Eddie ate the dynamite, he blew up. The names of the strings go up from the lowest sounding string to the highest sounding string.

I know, I know…the string that sounds the lowest is physically highest, and the one that sounds highest is physically lowest.  Just remember that when we talk about the note names, we are referring to their sound, not their physical location.  So whenever we talk about ‘up’ and ‘down’ on the guitar, we are usually talking about sound. So think about the sound of the notes, instead of their physical location. Going up a string means that you move to the string that sounds higher. Going up a fret means moving to a fret that sounds higher. It's actually very simple.

I’ve prepared a chart which shows the relationship of the guitar strings to the note names, how they are written on the staff, and how they relate to the notes on the piano. Notice that the guitar notes here are not written on treble clef, but on octave treble clef. This means that the notes sound one octave lower than regular treble clef.

So now you have an idea of what the guitar string notes are.  Stay tuned for some more diagrams that will give you all the names of all the guitar notes on each of the frets.