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Glossary

Jazz

Jazz is a musical movement which dominated the 1900s. It is mainly an American form and remains popular to this day. Jazz can be defined… Read More »Jazz

Expressionism

Although not as important as Impressionism, Expressionism was a prominent early twentieth century movement. Stylistically, expressionistic music was very atonal and dissonant. It was a… Read More »Expressionism

Action

Action is the strings’ playablility along the neck. Action is affected by the strings’ distance from the neck, the neck straightness, and string gauge.

Tempo

The tempo is how fast or slow the song is. It is measured by beats per minute (bpm). 60 bpm is a slow tempo. 130 bpm is… Read More »Tempo

Rhythm

Rhythm is the duration of time that the note is sounded or a variation of the length and accentuation of a series of sounds or… Read More »Rhythm

Tonic

The tonic is the first scale degree of a diatonic scale (for example, the major scale, is a diatonic scale). Sometimes it’s called the 1st… Read More »Tonic

Compressor

So what exactly is a compressor? A compressor is a signal processor that is used to reduce the dynamic range between the softest and loudest parts of the audio signal. Think of the sound of your guitar as a wave. There is a peak where it is at its highest level and a trough where it is at its lowest. In the example below you will see signal wave with two lines running through it. The upper line represents the highest peak you can go to before your signal distorts or clips. This we will call the ceiling. The lower line represents the quieter or lower part of the signal that either is inaudible or gets drowned out by the rest of the band playing. This we will call the floor.Read More »Compressor

Flange

Flange was created by accident in a studio. It was found that if you played back a reel-to-reel tape of the guitar track and held up the… Read More »Flange