Technical Terms

Don’t understand a word in one of my posts? It’s probably defined here. If not, feel free to comment on my posts and ask me what a word means.

Action- The action of a stringed instrument is the distance between the fingerboard and the string, which determines how easy it is to sound notes when pressure is applied with the fingertips.

Bridge- A bridge is a device for supporting the strings on a stringed instrument and transmitting the vibration of those strings to some other structural component of the instrument in order to transfer the sound to the surrounding air.

Cent- The cent is a logarithmic unit of measure used for musical intervals. Typically cents are used to measure extremely small intervals, or to compare the sizes of comparable intervals in different tuning systems, and in fact the interval of one cent is much too small to be heard between successive notes.

Flat (Tuning)- Flat means slightly lower than pitch. If two simultaneous notes are slightly out of tune, the lower-pitched one (assuming the higher one is properly pitched) is said to be flat with respect to the other.

Intervals- In music theory, the term interval describes the difference in pitch between two notes.

Jamming (Jam Session)- A jam session is a musical act where musicians gather and play (or “jam”) without extensive preparation or predefined arrangements.

Reverb- Reverberation is the persistence of sound in a particular space after the original sound is removed. Many amplification devices imitate this effect.