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The words, defined once.

58 terms across guitar, voice and the music vocabulary neither instrument owns. One sentence each, and the page where the word is already in use.

Updated

A word means different things on different instruments. Register is a way of setting up the vocal folds and a region of the neck. Support is breath management and how the guitar is held. So each of those words gets one entry per instrument that uses it, rather than one entry vague enough to be useless to both.

The vocabulary is authored once, in Suede Sing, and copied here unchanged. Sing is the definitional source for every voice and music term, so those words are listed below as links to its glossary rather than defined a second time on a second site. The guitar senses are defined here, because this is where they are used.

Guitar words

16 terms, defined on this page. Jump to A, B, C, D, F, O, P, R, S, T.

Anchor fingeralso pivot finger, guide finger

A finger left on the same string and fret while the others move, so two chords share a fixed point.

The chord-change drills name the anchor finger for each pair of shapes, so the hand pivots instead of resetting. See it in use.

Barre chordalso bar chord

A chord whose lowest notes are stopped by one finger laid flat across several strings at once.

F and B minor are the first barre shapes the chord lessons ask for, and they are where hand position stops being optional. See it in use.

Bend

Pushing a fretted string sideways across the neck to raise its pitch, usually by a semitone or a tone.

A lead line bends into the note a singer would have slid up to, and the tuner shows how far the bend actually went. See it in use.

Capoalso capotasto

A clamp across all six strings at one fret, which raises every open string by the same number of semitones.

A song in a key your voice prefers can often be played with the shapes you already know and a capo moved up the neck. See it in use.

Downstroke and upstrokealso down-up, downpicking

A stroke toward the floor and a stroke back toward the ceiling, which sound different because they reach the strings in opposite order.

Patterns are written as a row of downs and ups, and the metronome guide counts the ups on the off-beats. See it in use.

Fret

One of the metal strips across the neck, and the space behind it where a finger stops a string.

Every number in a tab is a fret number, so third fret on the fifth string names one note and nothing else. See it in use.

Open chordalso open position chord, cowboy chord

A chord played near the nut that leaves one or more strings ringing unstopped.

The first chord set is all open chords, which is why they sound fuller than anything played further up. See it in use.

Palm mutealso palm muting

Resting the picking hand's palm lightly on the strings near the bridge so the notes sound short and damped.

The riff lessons ask for a palm-muted verse and an open chorus, which is one shape played two ways. See it in use.

Power chordalso fifth chord

A chord of a root and its fifth with no third, which leaves it neither major nor minor.

The riff lessons are built on power chords, which is why one shape slid along the neck plays a whole song. See it in use.

Pull-offalso hammer-on, slur

Sounding a note without a new pick stroke by lifting a fretting finger off a ringing string, or, in the other direction, by tapping a finger down onto it.

Lead lessons write pull-offs and hammer-ons between two frets, so three notes come out of one pick stroke. See it in use.

Register

A region of the neck and of pitch — the low strings, the middle of the board, the high frets — rather than a mechanism that switches.

Lessons name the register a phrase sits in, and the same shape moved up the neck is the same chord in a higher one. See it in use.

Riffalso lick, hook

A short repeated figure that identifies a song, usually played rather than sung.

The riff lessons build a recognisable song out of one figure repeated, which is the fastest route to playing something someone else knows. See it in use.

Strum

A single movement that sounds several strings across the neck rather than one at a time.

Strumming patterns are written as a hand that keeps moving in time while some strokes miss the strings on purpose. See it in use.

Supportalso posture, holding position

How the instrument is held and balanced, so the fretting hand is free to move instead of holding the guitar up.

The first lessons set sitting and standing position before any chord, because a guitar held on the wrong leg makes a barre chord feel impossible. See it in use.

Tabalso tablature

A six-line notation where each line is a string and each number is the fret to stop it at.

Practice material is written in tab rather than on a stave, so a shape can be read without reading pitch. See it in use.

Tone

The sound a particular instrument, setting and touch produce, separate from which notes are played.

The clean-tone guide works through pick attack, hand position and amp settings as the three things that move it. See it in use.

Voice and music words

42 terms, defined in the Suede Sing glossary. Each link opens that page at the word. They are listed here so a singer reading a voice lesson on this site is never left with a bare word, and they are not restated here so that one definition of each word exists rather than two.

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