Mystery is cool . . . . unless you're trying to learn something.

When your desire is to learn, you want facts, you want tips, you want some what - why - how - when. 

Prior to embarking on learning music people tend to feel that it doesn't make sense. It really does though. It's just that music is made out of sound and until you've studied it you have no vocabulary for it, no way to hold an image of music in your mind, no way to make it hold still so you can ‘look’ at it. 

Here's an example: 

High and Low.
In music these words are nothing but metaphors. 

High what? Low what? 
Mostly we use these terms to refer to the pitch of a note: to the human-perceived frequency. 

• A low pitch has a slower rate of vibration
• A high pitch has a faster rate

Simple. But people forget that these are metaphors. A high note does not land up by your head while a low note lands by your feet. The ‘high’ and ‘low’ refer to the frequency, numerically speaking. 

And then we get a guitar in our hands and it's like, wait! The ‘low’ sounding string is the topmost one in the vertical line up of six strings! We confuse the location of the string with the pitch of the note.

The highest one is the lowest one. Get it right!

I can't tell you how many students I have seen disoriented by that. 

Heck some still sail right on by oblivious even after I've shown it and explained it. 

But I will keep explaining it, and reminding that you really do need to shift your thinking to the aural/acoustic necessities of our art, rather than the exceedingly visual day to day thinking that we all do. 

Here I go into it a bit more on my Guitar Lessons page. I recently revamped it and I think you'll enjoy a peruse. 

Cool thing is that once you shift your perspective towards what the medium of music requires - is made of - then it all starts to fall into place. 

It'll all make sense. 

Peace and Good Sounds,

Jay Albert
Chief Music Officer, Songdog Music

jay@songdogmusic.com

songdogmusic.com