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52 Part I: You Got a Right to Play the Blues TEAM LinG
Grid: The six vertical and five horizontal lines correspond to the strings
and frets on the guitar neck — as if you stood the guitar up on the floor
and looked straight at the front of it.
Vertical lines: The left-most vertical line is the low sixth string; the rightmost
line is the high first string.
Horizontal lines: The horizontal lines represent the guitar’s fret wires,
and the space between the horizontal lines is the fret. The top line is
thicker because it represents the nut of the guitar.
Dots: The numerals directly below each string line indicate which lefthand
finger you use to fret that note:
• 1 = index
• 2 = middle
• 3 = ring
• 4 = little
X’s and O’s: An X above a string means the string isn’t played. An O indicates
an open string that’s played.
If a chord starts on a fret other than the first fret (which happens a lot in
blues guitar because of its reliance on barre chords, discussed in Chapter 4), a
numeral appears to the right of the diagram, next to the top fret line to indicate
in which fret you actually start.
Figure 3-6:
A chord
diagram
with its
parts
labeled.