Eddie Ate Dynamite, Good Bye Eddie, AKA Easter Bunnies Get Dizzy After Easter

 

This is something that a lot of us newcomers have trouble with: how the hell do we memorize the strings?

Notice in the diagram above (this is the right-hand orientation) that the strings are not the same width, so starting with the fat string, the order of the strings is E A D G B E. Starting with the thin string, it's E B G D A E. 

There's even a mnemonic for both: 

E A D G B E

• Eddie 
• Ate 
• Dynamite 
• Good 
• Bye 
• Eddie

In the opposite direction you have:

E B G D A E

• Easter 
• Bunnies 
• Get 
• Dizzy 
• After 
• Easter.

But you still have to memorize six strings. Or do you?

The two outer strings are both E. The fat string is low E, the thin string is high E.

If you can remember the two mnemonics, and you can remember that the fat string is the low E, and the thin string is the high E, in reality you only need to remember four strings.

After you do enough drills, you'll realize that you will quickly remember that the next string after low E is A, and that the string next to high E is B. 

In reality, your real struggle is going to be trying to remember which of the two middle strings is the D and which one is the G. 

And what about us lefties?

It works the same way, just remember the fat string is up, if your chord diagrams don't show fat strings to one side, you assume E A D G B E unless stated otherwise. 

You can usually tell lefty chord diagrams since they'll either use the fat string notation, or they'll show E B G D A E on top. 

This is how Lefty Fretz shows you a C chord:

Just by seeing the fat string on the right side you can tell this is a left handed chord diagram, so from left to right it'll be E B G D A E, from right to left it'll be E A D G B E.