{"id":828,"date":"2022-04-23T20:19:37","date_gmt":"2022-04-23T20:19:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.finalguitar.com\/?p=828"},"modified":"2022-04-23T20:19:37","modified_gmt":"2022-04-23T20:19:37","slug":"when-is-a-fret-not-a-fret-a-blog-covering-the-different-points-you-should-know-about-guitar-fretboards","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.finalguitar.com\/blog\/when-is-a-fret-not-a-fret-a-blog-covering-the-different-points-you-should-know-about-guitar-fretboards\/","title":{"rendered":"When is a Fret Not a Fret? A blog covering the different points you should know about guitar fretboards."},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe width=\"100%\" height=300vh src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/TSPOE3E0uaA?autoplay=1&#038;mute=1\"><\/iframe>What is a guitar fretboard?<\/p>\n<p>A guitar fretboard is the part of the neck that contains the frets. The fretboard is also called fingerboard. It is typically made of ebony or rosewood, but can be made of any other material.<\/p>\n<p>The size and shape of it depends on the type of guitar you play. Some guitars have small fretboards, others have large fretboards. The fretboard also determines what kind of sound a guitar produces when played.<\/p>\n<p>Is a Fret Not a Fret?<\/p>\n<p>Frets are not just plain old metal bars inserted into a neck. They have to be carefully cut, shaped and smoothed before they can be fitted onto the neck of your guitar.<\/p>\n<p>What is a Fret?<\/p>\n<p>A fret is nothing more than a small piece of metal (usually steel) that has been hammered into place on the neck of your guitar. It acts like a barrier that prevents the strings from vibrating freely, causing them to buzz and make noise when pressed down against the wood.<\/p>\n<p>Why Are Frets Important?<\/p>\n<p>Frets are very important because they allow you to play certain notes without having to press down as hard on the strings. This makes playing much easier and more enjoyable for everyone involved! By using fre<\/p>\n<p>When I was a wee guitar player, I used to think that a fret was a fret. It didn&#8217;t matter if it was on the E string or the G string, it was just a fret.<\/p>\n<p>And, for the most part, this is true. A fret is a fret. However, the guitar has several points which are not frets, but are important to know about nonetheless. These points are nut, bridge and bonus point-the 12th fret.<\/p>\n<p>The Nut<\/p>\n<p>This is the very first (0) fret on your guitar. It&#8217;s simply there to hold your strings up above the fingerboard so that you can press down on them without hitting the neck of the guitar and creating an ugly noise.<\/p>\n<p>The Bridge<\/p>\n<p>This is the very last fret on your guitar, and it serves similar purposes as the nut; i.e., holding your strings up above the fingerboard so that they can be pressed down without making ugly noises and whatnot.<\/p>\n<p>We all know a fret is the thin piece of wood that separates the strings on a guitar neck. In fact, without it, we wouldn&#8217;t be able to play in tune and have an easy time playing chords. But have you ever wondered who invented these little things?<\/p>\n<p>Frets were invented by the ancient Egyptians and later used in the Greek kithara. The kithara was an instrument similar to the lyre, but with more strings and a larger body. The Romans adopted the Greek instruments and called it cithara. The frets of Roman guitars were made of gut, and there are some acoustic guitars today that still use gut strings instead of steel.<\/p>\n<p>Martin&#8217;s First Guitar Had Frets<\/p>\n<p>In 1818, Christian Frederick Martin Sr. opened his first guitar workshop in Markneukirchen, Germany, where he soon became famous for making high-quality guitars. He was among the first to use X-braces inside the sound hole and made his first guitar with frets in 1834. To this day, C.F. Martin &#038; Co. continue to make some of the finest guitars in the world in Nazareth, Pennsylvania.<\/p>\n<p>The guitar fretboard is the perfect place to start learning music theory. The neck of the guitar is divided into notes, which are then played by pressing down on the string with either your left or right hand. To find these notes look for the dots on the guitar&#8217;s neck. Dots are placed on frets that correspond with note names. To play a note, press down on a string behind one of those dots at any given fret.<\/p>\n<p>After you learn where these notes are on the guitar you&#8217;ll be able to play them and make music!<\/p>\n<p>The fretboard of a guitar consists of what is called \u201cfrets\u201d and \u201cfret-spaces\u201d. The frets are the metal wires that run perpendicular to the strings across the width of the neck. The fret-spaces are the slots in between the frets, they are usually marked by markers on the side of the neck.<\/p>\n<p>The fret numbers start at 1 as you move up from where the neck meets the body of your guitar. As you can see in the picture below, there is no fret zero. This is because there really isn&#8217;t a place on a guitar&#8217;s neck that would be considered &#8220;before&#8221; or &#8220;below&#8221; fret 1. So even though we never say &#8220;fret 0&#8221;, fret 1 is in fact placed at what would be considered &#8220;before&#8221; or &#8220;below&#8221; what we would call fret 1 if we were to create one.<\/p>\n<p>Frets range from 1 to as many as 24 on some instruments. The most common number of frets is 20, however, and that&#8217;s where I&#8217;ll keep most of my focus for this article.<\/p>\n<p>The fretboard or fingerboard, is a part of most stringed instruments, like the guitar and violin. The fretboard is situated on the neck of the instrument. The fretboard is made out of hardwood and can be a different color depending on the type of instrument you are playing, such as rosewood or ebony. The material that the fretboard is made out of affects the sound of the instrument and also the feel when playing.<\/p>\n<p>The frets are those little metal bars that run across the fretboard, parallel to each other, that allow you to play notes. They are not to be confused with the actual strings.<\/p>\n<p>Every time you put your finger down on one of these metal bars it raises your pitch just a little bit so that you are able to play in tune. If you want to play something lower than what your open strings give you then you need to press down on one of these frets.<\/p>\n<p>The guitar fretboard is the upper surface of the neck that contains the metal wires that players press their fingers against to form notes and chords. It\u2019s a crucial part of any guitarist\u2019s instrument, so it pays to know some of the basics about this part of your guitar.<\/p>\n<p>The term \u201cfretboard\u201d can be misleading because it doesn\u2019t actually contain any frets. These are on the neck of the guitar, underneath the fretboard, and each fret is a raised piece of metal that creates a divider between two notes. The only thing directly on top of the fretboard is a strip of inlayed material that spans the length of the board and displays dots at different points along its length to indicate where each fret is located.<\/p>\n<p>There are many different types of wood used for fretboards; rosewood and ebony are popular choices for electric guitars, while maple and rosewood are often found on acoustic guitars. Some guitars may have painted fretboards rather than natural wood ones, but there are some disadvantages to using paint on these boards. For one thing, after thousands of finger presses over time, paint can chip off around the edges of frets and make a guitar look old and worn out. Paint can also affect<iframe width=\"100%\"\" height=300vh src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/mQZ-c3_EDj4?autoplay=1&#038;mute=1\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What is a guitar fretboard? A guitar fretboard is the part of the neck that contains the frets. The fretboard is also called fingerboard. It is typically made of ebony or rosewood, but can be made of any other material. The size and shape of it depends on the type of guitar you play. Some [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.finalguitar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/828"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.finalguitar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.finalguitar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.finalguitar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.finalguitar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=828"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.finalguitar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/828\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":829,"href":"https:\/\/www.finalguitar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/828\/revisions\/829"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.finalguitar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=828"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.finalguitar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=828"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.finalguitar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=828"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}