How to: play a guitar (Basics)

Before you start learning chords and jamming out, you need to know the basics.
First of all you need to know the parts of the guitar. At the head of the guitar or the headstock there should be six knobs attached to the six strings. They are the tuning pegs. Right under the head is the nut. There are the frets which are the small metal bars crossing all the way down the neck of the guitar. There are small dots on the third, fifth, seventh, ninth, twelfth, fifteenth, seventeenth, nineteenth, and twenty first frets. They are called the fret markers. Near the end of the body, where the strings feed into is called the tailpiece. Underneath the strings directly above the tailpiece is the bridge and then the pickups. Looking at a right handed guitar, on the right side is the selector switch and the volume and tone controls. Either underneath them or on the bottom of the guitar is the output jack.
You also need to learn about the strings. The strings are very easy to remember once you have a memorizing pattern. They are: E,A,D,G,B,E. One E is the thickest or the lowest sounding string. It is the sixth. A is the fifth string. D is the fourth. G is the third. B is the second. The other E is the thinest or highest sounding string. It's the first. Some memorizing patterns are Eat All Day Get Big Easy or Elephants Are Darn Good Bubblegum Eaters.
Once you get the strings memorized you can learn about the frets. While the strings divide the guitar from left to right, frets divide the guitar into sections from top to bottom. If you look at your guitar from above, you can see that the strings and frets together form a grid that covers the entire neck of the guitar.
In one week I will continue my How To on How to play guitar.