Numbers in Guitar Chords & Shapes

Video Transcript

MICHAEL PLUNKETT: Hi. This is Michael Plunkett on behalf of Expert Village. So, we're still taking a look at our basic chord chart shape for the guitar here, and we've already looked at the frets and the string numbers and now, we're going to look at how we'll actually put markings on it. Before we do that, we need to first understand how the finger markings are written. This is assuming that you're left handed, you can just reverse it otherwise but just think of your hand, lay it out like this. We, as guitarists, unless if you're like Jimi Hendrix, we won't probably use our thumb, so we don't actually give that one a number. We won't worry about that one. And so, we'd start from our index finger, and we'll just label that number 1. Number 2 is going to be our middle finger, 3 is our ring, and 4 is going to be our pinkie. And so, we use this number system when we're writing notes up up on the chord chart. So, for instance, I might put 1. I might put a 2 here, and a 1 here, and I'll draw it as a dash like that; otherwise, it won't show up very well on here. So, that's telling me that I'll want to put my first finger, my index finger on the 4th string or the D string. And then I'll count down here, and it's on the 2nd fret. And I would also put my 2nd finger on the same fret on the B or second string. And that's going to look like this: first finger, 2nd fret, 4th string, second finger, 2nd fret, 2nd string.

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