This is a question I see/hear asked a lot. Much like confusion over modes (it’s pretty much the same question), the reason people have this question is because they’re focusing on the wrong thing! If you’re just looking at the notes, then there isn’t any obvious difference. However, if you focus on the intervals and how all the notes relate to the tonic, then the differences are really clear.

But what’s even more clear is the sounds! So give the video up there a watch and see if you can’t hear the difference.

I see people ask this question quite a bit online, and I’m usually not sure how to answer it. Often times it seems the people asking it just have a general lack of understanding as to how rhythm works. I imagine they wouldn’t have the question if that more fundamental issue was fixed, so while the video goes over some different things you can do with the metronome and talks a little bit about rhythm in general, I’d like to provide a more in-depth lesson on rhythm here.

I say it all the time, but it bears repeating: absolutes mean very little in music. This is especially true with rhythm! Rhythm is all about how long one note is compared to another, and we measure the length of a note in “beats”. How long is a beat? That depends… In a slower song, a beat could be one whole second or more. In a fast song, you could have two or three beats a second. The important thing to understand is that a beat is just a beat. It can be any amount of time, but it’s always one beat, and it is constant. Turn your metronome on… those are beats. It just clicks at a regular interval of time.

As I said before, we measure the length of notes in beats. Some notes are one beat long. Some notes are two beats long. Some notes are only half a beat long (which means you can squeeze two notes into one beat). Theoretically, notes can be infinitesimally small, but for the sake of practicality, let’s say the shortest possible note is just 1/4th of a beat, meaning we can cram four of those guys into a single beat. Try playing just one note per beat for a while. Count 1 2 3 4 as you do it (counting each number as you play each note). Now try playing two notes per beat. Count 1 & 2 & 3 & 4 & as you do it. Now try four notes per beat. You can count 1 e & a 2 e & a 3 e & a 4 e & a, but people often stumble over that, as it’s a mouthful. I prefer, instead, to simply say “watermelon” over and over, with each syllable landing on a note.

This should be pretty simple so far. Things get more complicated as you start to mix and match notes of different lengths, add in rests (which are just measured moments of silence), and combine notes in different ways. Hopefully what’s here is helpful though. I’d like to do something that really gets into the nitty-gritty of rhythm in the future, but that will take a little bit more planning.

I believe I discussed this exercise in another video, but it’sa great one, and well worth showing again.

When most people are shown a diagram for a standard open A major chord, their first instinct is to play the chord with fingers 1-2-3. But, by simply swapping fingers 1 & 2 around, you can facilitate easier changes to and from several chords that you commonly find next to the A chord!

People often talk about how complicated/frustrating it is to tune a guitar with a floating bridge, or properly floating the bridge.

It’s not hard. It’s a little tedious, but it really doesn’t take long if you know what you’re doing. Just watch me do it in roughly 8 minutes, then maybe you won’t be so intimidated by the process.

People often have a difficult time understanding the point of scales; questioning why they need to learn them, how to practice them, etc. But it seems that few of the people asking these questions actually get satisfying (or comprehensible) answers. Isn’t there some simple way to explain it? Isn’t there some way that a total beginner can see how learning scales will impact their playing and understanding of music?

Yes, there is… now that I did it.