It is nine at night, the house is finally quiet, and there is a guitar across your knees. Maybe it arrived last week in a box. Maybe it has been leaning in a corner for three years, wearing a thin coat of dust and a little bit of guilt. Either way, you have picked it up, and right now it feels less like an instrument and more like a piece of furniture with strings. That is normal. By the end of tonight you will make it sound like music. First, you need to know what you are holding.

The parts that matter

A guitar has a lot of pieces, but only a handful come up when someone tells you what to do. Learn these six and every instruction later in the course will land.

The headstock is the flat piece at the far end, away from your body. Sticking out of it are the tuning pegs (also called tuners or machine heads), the little keys you turn to raise or lower a string's pitch. Where the headstock meets the long neck, the strings pass over a small ridge called the nut. Running down the neck are thin metal strips called frets; the spaces between them are where your fingers press. The big hollow part (or solid slab, on an electric) is the body, and the strings anchor to it at the bridge.

The six strings are numbered by thickness, and this trips up beginners constantly. The thinnest string, nearest the floor when you play, is the 1st string. The thickest, nearest the ceiling, is the 6th. Their note names from thickest to thinnest are E, A, D, G, B, E. A classic memory hook is "Eddie Ate Dynamite, Good Bye Eddie." Everything in this course works the same on an acoustic or an electric, so play whichever one you own.

The eight parts and the string numbers every later instruction will use.

Holding the guitar

Sit in a chair without arms, feet flat, back straight. Rest the narrow waist of the guitar body on your right thigh so the instrument sits upright against your stomach, the neck angled slightly up toward the ceiling. Your right forearm drapes over the top edge to reach the strings. Do not hunch over to watch your hands; tilting the guitar back to peek is the fastest route to a sore neck.

Your fretting hand (the left, for most players) wraps the neck from underneath. Keep the thumb resting on the back of the neck, roughly behind your first two fingers, not hooked over the top. That thumb-behind position gives your fingers room to curl and press cleanly. If you are left-handed, you can learn on a standard right-handed guitar (many do) or buy a left-handed model; this course describes a right-handed setup, so mirror the hand names if yours is reversed.

Is your guitar fighting you?

Some beginners struggle because of their hands. Others struggle because the guitar itself is set up badly, and no amount of practice fixes a bad instrument. Knowing the difference saves you weeks of misplaced blame.

Five issues stop beginners cold. Strings set too high off the neck make every note ache to press. Old, dead strings sound dull and refuse to stay in tune. A guitar that will not hold its tuning may have worn pegs or, more often, brand-new strings still stretching. Sharp fret ends poking out the side of the neck catch your hand. And a guitar that is simply too big for your frame makes every reach a strain.