The Questions You've Been Too Afraid To Ask

you ever have a question about music you've been too afraid or embarrassed to ask well all shame is going out the window i got you guys to send me those kind of questions on instagram and today i'll be answering them let's get to it to kick things off verlium aggressively asks what the hell does a compressor actually do you can find a piece of gear called a compressor and multiple places in the path that your guitar signal takes it functions more or less the same at each of these places but let's talk about using it as a stompbox when i plug into this pedal and turn it on it makes it so that the loud stuff i play and the quiet stuff are closer to each other in volume the way it does this is when i play something loud it turns the signal down and when i play something quiet the signal is turned up difference between the quiet and loud or the dynamic range is lessened my signal is in a way compressed let's put this into practice i'm going to play something without my compressor turned on watch the waveform and take a listen to how it sounds check out that same thing but this time i'll crank up the compression [Music] it's more subtle difference than other effects and it's kind of tricky to explain the difference in sound to me it just kind of is more contained i'll keep my compression pedal turned on at all times though i won't use it to the extreme that we heard in the example and it's worth noting that this is a fairly simplified explanation there are a number of other settings that you can adjust when it comes to compression my pedal keeps it quite simple but other more elaborate units allow you to select the threshold at which it starts turning things down how fast it kicks in how much you turn things back up stuff like that next up tater troll32 asks bra why is it that a piano is not classified as a string instrument the answer is twofold answer one is that it actually technically is there is an instrument classification system called the hornbostel sac system that takes musical instruments and places them in groupings based on how they generate sound a chordophone is an instrument that creates sound by a string being put into motion and vibrating these are also called stringed instruments guitar for example i pluck my string this string starts vibrating it creates a sound this is a chordophone on a piano you press a key that key causes a little hammer thing to strike a string that string goes into motion technically according to the horn bossel sac system a piano is a chordophone it's a string instrument answer number two if someone came up to you and said hey i can only play string instruments well you would assume that they play guitar mandolin bass violin ukulele that kind of thing you would never assume that that guy also plays piano the commonly held definition of things is important and we just don't think of pianos as stringed instruments because they're played differently they sound different and in a practical setting it just makes sense to think of them as something else before we move on i'm going to take a quick second here to let you know about the sponsor of today's video skillshare skillshare is an online learning community with thousands of inspiring classes for anyone who loves learning and is looking to explore their creativity one of the things i've come to learn in my musical journey is that in order to put as much into music as i do i have to be able to balance out with other things and skillshare has been a big part in me finding joy in a wide range of topics for example i've come to quite like gardening never thought i would and i had no experience but last year i watched gardening 101 with geraldine levine and boom i was harvesting propagating and maintaining like the guitar garden dad i was destined to be let me tell you the wealth of information on skillshare is endless if you're looking to pick up some singing tips learn color theory for graphic design or if you want to learn how to store and dry the dill from your garden skillshare is a great place to start dad free with new classes added weekly and subtitled in a number of different languages i'm a huge fan of what they have to offer and this sounds like something that's interesting to you be one of the first thousand people to use the link in the description for one month free trial or you can use promo code samurai guitarist for that same offer anyways let's get back to it all right fw aiden asks what does it mean when a chord looks like a fraction for example g over a7 so first of all g over a7 wouldn't be a thing it would be an a7 over g however i am going to make a note here that we will address later let's start out by looking at just the a7 here the implication when you see this chord is you take the a make that your lowest note in your chord and then build on top of that whatever chord you're to build for an a dominant seven you take your a make that your lowest note and then build a dominant seven on top of that which would give you a c sharp e g in practice though as long as the a is on the bottom it doesn't matter what order the other notes are in you can double them switch them around whatever if i play an a dominant seven in the open position on my trusty ol acoustic guitar i would have an a e g c sharp e again okay onto those slash chords if i see an a7 over top of g this is telling me to play my a7 chord but instead of playing a as the lowest note i now have to play a g is the lowest note which would give me something like this g a e g c sharp e simply put play the chord on the left side of your slash and then put the note that's on the right side of the slash as the lowest note in that chord now at the beginning of this question i said i was going to make a note on g over a7 that note is poly chords a poly chord is when you play two chords stacked on top of each other so if you had a g major triad over top of an a7 it would look like this and it would sound like this they aren't especially common but this is a situation where you might see a g over top of an a7 and as you see it's notated a little bit differently it be boys asks how on earth do you count 5'4 when we see a 5'4 time signature that means that each bar has five beats in it but we don't count it one two three four five instead we break this down into groupings of two and three to feel the underlying pulse and there are two ways that we can do this first of all we can feel those five notes in groupings of three then two that would sound like this one two three one two one two three one two one two three one two or we can switch it around so that we count the two first and then the three that sounds like this one two one two three one two one two three one two one two three both have a different feel to them and you should be able to get a sense for what that underlying pulse is when you listen to a piece of music however some composers will also write their time signature as three plus two over four or two plus three over four to clarify how they want that beat felt this user wants to know if i can explain playing the changes in bebop playing the changes is the same regardless of genre the idea is that as the chords go by underneath your solo the note choices that you make with your solo will highlight the different chords as they change the opposite of this would be taking a scale and then picking notes out of it to make your solo without any regard for what the chords are doing underneath now this becomes especially challenging in a genre like bebop jazz where the chords and the key is constantly changing underneath you can't just take one single scale and throw it over top like a blanket instead you need to be playing the changes or it's gonna sound pretty bad moving on luke dodd asks wtf is a mode i straight up don't get it okay i'm gonna give you the shortest most simplified easiest answer as this concept goes fairly deep and the implications are fairly substantial for what we do on guitar if i have a major scale it would sound like this i started on the donut and ended on the donut an octave higher but what if i instead started on the ray and then ended on the ray note an octave higher that would sound like this [Music] you can start and end your major scale on any of the seven different notes and these are the different modes of the major scale if i start on re and end on ray that's a different mode than if i start on me and end on me the way that we use this information on guitar is unique to our instrument and to truly understand it requires us to build an understanding of theory from the ground up but that would be the long and short of it if you do want the full in-depth answer go check out my theory bundle over my course platform samurai guitartheory.com and use promo code modes to get those two courses for the normal price of one kate wilms asks do my electric guitars ever sound bad she says hers always somehow sound not right slash in tune this definitely happens and sometimes it's just a mental thing where you think that you're the worst musician in the world yeah that happens to all of us however there are also sometimes where your tuner says that you're in tune but you're pretty certain that you're not in tune in which case you probably have an intonation issue when you plug in your tuner hit your notes it tells you if your open strings are in tune or not but you also want to make sure that when you fret the notes those notes are also in tune if my open g is in tune but then i go and play the g on the 12th fret and find out that that's not in tune that means i need to intonate my guitar to make it in tune with itself this will be moving your saddles back and forth until you find the sweet spot where the string is in tune both open and fretted this can be a bit of a tedious process but it is important if you're having a tough time with it i would recommend just going and getting your guitar professionally set up moving on manuel myra asks why does his amp have a standby switch now i've recently found out that myself and i suspect many of my fellow guitarists have been using this thing wrong for ages i always thought it was a silent switch that you would flick when you're going to be away from your amp for a while if you're taking like a set break or something turns out this is not at all what this is for and using it as such is actually not good for your amp so instead in these situations just turn off your amp entirely or turn the volume down the way that you are supposed to use a standby switch is when you're turning on your amp flick it on wait a couple minutes for it to warm up and then flick your standby switch why does the standby switch even exist i'll be honest i don't really understand the technical side of it i'm not especially interested in it but if you are i'll put up a link in the description that goes into great detail about it major tom ludatic wants to know what the difference is between analog and digital alright i just looked at the proper definition of this and ccri.edu defines these as such an analog signal is a continuous signal that represents physical measurement whereas digital signals are discrete time signals generated by digital modulation if i have my guitar here when i strum it that sound is picked up by my pickups sent down this cable here off to my amp which then projects it into the air that sound is picked up by my microphone and then sent down a microphone cable at this point my entire signal has been analog and back in the day this would then be sent to tape and it would stay analog all the way however today my microphone cable is going into my audio interface which then converts the signal into ones and zeros for my computer to read and it is now a digital signal some people swear that keeping your signal as analog as possible sounds better for example you can buy compressor units that are significantly more expensive than plugins which are digital recreations of those compressors okay how about this one why is garbage music like limp bizkit so awesome i think one of the main roles of music is to make you feel something and if you feel the thing that that music was intended to make you feel that music could be classified as good sometimes it's a complicated emotion through someone like i don't know tom waits i can feel a rough beauty contrasted with sorrow at the same time whereas other times it's a very simple emotion that you're meant to feel and there's a time and place for that too like if fred durst is yelling at me breaks stuff and i feel like breaking stuff then that music did what it set out to do and i personally wouldn't classify that as garbage whereas if some pop country song was trying to make me feel love and romance but instead i felt like i wanted to stuff my ears full of sawdust and then pour hot candle wax over top of it so i would never hear that hot mess of a song again i would classify that as garbage let's wrap this up last for today devdes diddley asks do i ever struggle with feeling like whether or not this kind of work matters when i was in college i actually would think about this every now and then there are doctors out there who are saving lives there are farmers growing the thing that we need to sustain ourselves there are people inventing things that help the world what am i doing with my life hitting some strings attached to a piece of wood this is not necessary for survival but i've come to realize that if the only thing in life is survival that's a pretty sad existence if you go through the world in black and white without any color what kind of life is that really the arts add the flavor to life the joy they're one of the things that separate us from animals they make it so that we're not just surviving but actually living and knowing that i can contribute even just a little bit more color to someone's life is very important to me and so no i don't struggle anymore thinking about whether all of this is important and here's the thing if not even a single person ever listens to what you do if your music brings your life a little bit more flavor then that is extremely valuable and that's something that i don't think should ever be diminished ladies and gentlemen there you have it those are a bunch of music questions that you were too afraid to ask i hope that the answers didn't scare you remember to check out the sponsor of today's video skillshare it's always a pleasure for me to work with companies whose products i use as much as i do theirs they really do offer some great stuff and if you want to see if it makes sense for you use the link in the description or use promo code samurai guitarist to get a free trial thank you all for watching to check out another video like this one hit that link up there if you're new here hit that subscribe button ring that bell and stay tuned for a wide range of music related content until next time look after yourselves look after each other look after the planet i'm samurai guitarist and i'll see you again soon

Channel: samuraiguitarist

Views: 158,993

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Id: IHzHmoBR3bI

Length: 13min 53sec (833 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 01 2022