What is a Position:
Up to this point you have been playing almost all of your notes on the guitar in what is called the first position. This is also called the open first position or the “home” position.
A position is just a fancy term for shifting your right hand to play up higher on the fingerboard.
The Third Position:
If you would start playing with your first finger on the 3rd fret, and then play upwards from there – in other words, play the 3rd fret, 4th fret, 5th fret and 6th fret, you would be said to be playing in the Third Position.
So your 1st finger plays the 3rd fret, 2nd finger plays the 4th fret, 3rd finger plays the 5th fret and 4th finger plays the 6th fret.
Additional Positions:
Are there other positions? Yes there certainly are. There is one position for each fret, for as high as you can reach.
First Position:
1st Finger = 1st Fret
2nd Finger = 2nd Fret
3rd Finger = 3rd Fret
4th Finger = 4th Fret
Second Position:
1st Finger = 2nd Fret
2nd Finger = 3rd Fret
3rd Finger = 4th Fret
4th Finger = 5th Fret
Third Position:
1st Finger = 3rd Fret
2nd Finger = 4th Fret
3rd Finger = 5th Fret
4th Finger = 6th Fret
Fourth Position:
1st Finger = 4th Fret
2nd Finger = 5th Fret
3rd Finger = 6th Fret
4th Finger = 7th Fret
And so on….
Wrapping It Up:
So playing in a position is just like moving your hand to the desired fret, say the 5th fret, which would be the 5th position. You would play the 5th fret notes with your 1st finger, you would play the 6th fret notes with your 2nd finger, the 7th fret notes with your 3rd finger and the 8th fret notes with your 4th finger.
Now let’s look at a short video of playing the scale in the third position:
Note how we start with the 4th finger rather than the 3rd when playing that first note on the 5th string. Now some explaining to do. This is not really the C scale, because we are in a different position than the C scale in normally played. (if you need to review the C Scale do so now.)
We are really playing the C scale 3 frets higher. We are really playing the Eb Scale – but more on that much later.
Now let’s look at how the notes in the video look on the musical staff:
Looks pretty complicated doesn’t it? It only looks that way because of all the sharps. Just concentrate on the TAB staff for right now.
Notice that we go from the 3rd fret to the 6th fret. Also notice the fingering in the circles below the tab. Just as we talked about above, in this article, the 1st finger plays the 3rd fret, 2nd finger 4th fret, 3rd finger 5th fret and 4th finger 6th fret.
The Reason to Play in a Higher Position:
The major reason we play in higher positions is to be able to play notes higher in tone on the guitar fretboard. Otherwise if we just played notes in the first position and had to occasionally play some higher notes, we would not be able to shift our hand fast enough to catch the high notes and go back to the lower notes.
Quite often if we say, play a song in the Key of C, in the open first position (which is what you are used to playing), you may only need to shift up to a higher position to play 2, 3, or 4 notes and then come right back to your “home” position of the open first position.
We will have a lesson demonstrate this. Don’t worry, it is very easy, even though this sounds difficult here. You will play mostly in your home position and just go to the 3rd position to grab a few notes and then back to home.
Tags: guitar positions, how to play guitar, how to play positions on the guitar, playing up the neck, the third position
