Matt, the Music Shop Guy

Intro

1. Learn Vocabulary - Learn some new vocabulary before you start the lesson.

• hit
• tuning key
• pick
• amplifier

• toy
• day job
• coveted
• counter

• gearhead
• tune

2. Read and Prepare - Read the introduction and prepare to hear the audio.

During the day, musicians who don’t work at music stores shop at music stores. There are lots of toys to play with and you can pick up a few tips from the people who work at the store since they are, of course, musicians and most likely cooler than you because they work at a music store, which of all the day jobs musicians have, is one of the most coveted.

When Matt isn’t performing with his band, he helps people figure out what guitars and accessories they need. So last time Jason went to his favorite local music store, he brought along a camera to ask the man behind the counter a few questions.

3. Watch - Watch the video without reading the dialog.

Dialog

1. Watch and Read - Watch the video and read the dialog at the same time.

2. Study - Read the dialog again to see how the vocab words are used.

Jason: I’m Jason and I’m here at the music store with Matt. How’s it going, Matt?
It’s going well, Jason, thank you.

Can you tell me about a day in the life of a person who works at a music store?
Well, we sit behind the counter a lot, we say hello to people that come in through the door. We tune guitars from time to time and get pedals out of the cases and basically typical things you would imagine go on at a music store.

So what is tuning a guitar? I don’t know if our members necessarily know what that is. Can you show me real quick?
Yes, I can. I have guitar here as a matter of fact…And you hit the note and you can’t see it from there, but the little graph thing will point when you’re in tune and you tune the key here to get the guitar in tune, and that’s how that works.

Can you show me some pedals real quick and talk about what they do?
Yeah. They do different things. For instance, there will be a filter pedal and you can use it as a tool to make your guitar make weird sounds. That’s about as in-detail as I can describe it.

It makes your guitar sound weird?
Precisely.

Awesome. And so in addition to fancy stuff, I bet you guys sell a lot of little stuff like these picks?
We sell a lot of strings. We sell a lot of picks. We sell a lot of used, cheap amps and guitars. We sell some things like speakers and keyboards.

Would you say that most people come in just to buy little strings and cables and stuff like that or are a lot of people looking for bigger stuff?
Some days we survive off of string sales. Other days we sell ten guitars and make a bunch of money, so it just depends. No consistency.

Well, thanks for talking to me, Matt.

Quizzes

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Lesson MP3

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