Tuesday, 23 September 2014

Guitar Terms (in the order they appear in the review). Please note that these are my explanations of the terms and are designed for ease of understanding. They are by no means exact definitions of the terms.

Gibson: a company that makes guitars, owner of Epiphone

Les Paul: a model of electric guitar made by Gibson

Mahogany: a wood commonly used in the making of guitars

Body: refers to the "big" part of a guitar which holds the pickups, switches, and electronically components

Fretboard: the part of the guitar that is "long and thin" which the strings run along and are pressed against to produce various pitches. Similarly, a "fret" is a division on the fretboard which identifies the space where a single pitch on a given string will be produced.

Tone: you can think of this as the feel of the sound. Tones can be sharp with lots of treble, or fat with lots of bass, or anything in between. The best way to experience different tones is by playing a song on your iPod and then changing the different settings such as "flat" "rock" "bass". This can be done in iTunes as well. Now picture these changes to the sound of a single guitar and you have the basic concept of tone

Resonant (or Resonance): to me this means how well something rings. While really it has something to do with vibrations, you can think of this term as having to do with how long/well a material, or group of materials will resonate (or ring/vibrate)

Pickup: the metal square/rectangular objects in the body of guitar. They "pick up" the vibrations of the strings and transfer them into electrical signals which and amplifier turns into sound we hear

Humbucker: a type of pickup

D'Addario: a brand of guitar strings

Elixir: a brand of guitar string that coats their strings to protect against breakage

Action (of a guitar): refers to the given amount of space between string and fretboard when no pressure is applied. The action has to do with the feel of the guitar when you play it

Tuning: a term referring to when the strings of the guitar are at their correct pitch, and match one another. When a guitar is "out of tune" it is like a blurry image, it just doesn't sound (or look in the case of an image) as clear or good. Harmonies used to make chords aren't formed correctly.

Epiphone: a company owned by Gibson that makes cheaper models of Gibson guitars