(For Ness specifically, he both thinks it feels and sounds better with that tension, and he also has an old hand injury that the scale length helps with).
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Oh yeah that’s a pretty interesting trick now that it all adds up !
I’ve always just used a capo like most people, just to not have to think about common chords with a song 
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I love the old man reflection. “Oh yeah, I guess I do cheat.”
The stage guitar around your hips hahah. I don’t know why he just doesn’t make it a scene and sit on a stool.
I don’t speak notes. But I’m learning.
Everyone’s mind works differently. I don’t do well with arbitrary things, I need to understand specifics. I come from race engines, metal machining and furniture making. Choices made were for specific purposes. Metallurgy to meet certain demands, different species of wood for certain purposes. Clearances, thermal expansion, etc. I do HVAC for a living. Again, everything is sized and designed for specific reasons based on scientific reasons the system needs to operate. So learning music is frustrating for me because it feels extremely arbitrary to me.
Why is that note called an A? It just is.
Why is that shape named Major and that one Minor? It just is.
Why does this sound good, but that sounds awful? I just does.
When you’re building with raw materials you have to accommodate the physical properties of the material you’re working with and under the physics of the job at hand. With music, I just have to accept that we’ve created a completely arbitrary way of describing things because it’s 100% necessary to communicate, but the names and locations of the notes aren’t real things that naturally exist. Creative people invented these instruments, created a language to communicate ideas and now I have to adopt it.
It’s very hard for someone accustomed to dealing with hard data. Especially with a little dose of dyslexia added to the mix. Speaking of, I’ve just recently realized why I play so much better with black tape wounds vs any bare metal strings. I can ignore the black strings as they basically become invisible against the fretboard and I can concentrate on other things. Looking at silver colored strings + fret markers really flares up the visual component of my dyslexia and I’ll occasionally find myself completely lost on the fret board. Stop, close my eyes, wait for things to rest…then resume. With black strings I can focus on frets and ignore everything else
All of our brains work differently. I don’t think there is any correlation concerning general intelligence or effort being put forth. Some people grasp music language and concepts easily, and I’m jealous!
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This is just familiarity though. You could as easily ask why one metal is called steel, another one is called brass, and another is called monel.
Or why is the word tap used for both hitting something gently and for cutting threads?
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This^^^ 
Music is a language. As with any language, it has an alphabet, syntax and structure. It can be learned or ignored, as can be any other language. Everyone has free choice in that regard.
But if, for example, someone who speaks a single language were to say that other languages are just arbitrary noises because “they just are,” that would be an incomplete and incorrect assessment of reality.
Much has been said about making music by ear or by “speaking notes.” The thing is: playing bass is speaking notes — we just articulate them with our hands, ears and brain.
How each player ever gets to the point of being able to make music with a bass is a personal choice. But just as music is a language, playing bass is a dialect of it.
Learning how music is constructed and why it works is a valuable skill. And if that means learning a new language, despite its quirks, so be it. The results are worth the effort.
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There is reason behind everything in Music, nothing is random. I am dyslexic/neuro divergent myself btw.
For Major and Minor, it seems like “it just is”, but you can feel the difference in emotion when it switches between the two. here is a good example. The song stays on an E chord throughout, but uses a minor chord in the verse, and major in the chorus. And you can feel the difference when it switches.
Major chords sound happy; minors sound sad.
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Do you ever lie awake at night wondering if there is a dog?
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Yeah absolutely!
One thing I haven’t seen using much here is the Do Re Mi system. To some it makes complete sense especially when Key changes and transposition is happening all the time. I guess it’s really useful when you know every notes and scale on your instrument.
I heard that a few times when my Keyboard player would shout it out to the guitar player the Do Re Mi notes riff and he just got it, when we shift or change keys, I wish I’m that fast. 
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Yep, it’s called solfège. It used to be commonly taught to children in grade school. It probably still is now. Many choral singers use it too. Instrumentalists typically don’t use it.
Solfège never came up when I was a music theory major in college. We were taught to audiate by singing the note names of a given key.
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It’s not arbitrary at all. It’s all physics and mathematics.
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Totally! I found this video fascinating as it described Pythagorean tuning and how it came about, and how we got from that to 12tet.
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Whoa, this statement is waaaaaaay deeper than you (potentially) thought it was!
Have you been sampling the brandy cabinet, Eric??
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It’s really not how it works
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Was gonna say. Talk about something going both ways
Yes, yes it is.
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It’s a joke not a scientific paper on a learning disability 
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Then there’s the idea of how human brains interpret different mathematical patterns.
See, brother, I’m deep like that.
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I just got it.
If we get in to the arbitrary nature of physics and mathmatics, I will need that bottle of brandy.
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