Glossary

Acapella—A piece of audio that contains only the vocal part of a song. From the Latin ‘A Cappella’.

Amplitude—The strength of a vibrating wave. In sound, the loudness of the sound; in digital audio, the signal level.

Bar—A term meaning the grouping of a number of beats in music, most often four beats. Also known as a measure.

Bass—The lower range of audio frequencies, also referred to as low-end.

Bass-line—Refers to the lowest playing instrument in the music. Can be the main feature in many genres of dance music.

BPM—Stands for Beats-per-Minute. The measurement for the tempo or speed of a piece of music.

Breakdown—The section in a song where the drums drop out or decrease. In dance music, usually intended to provide the ‘story’ or theme leading up to dancing sections.

Chorus—The part of a song that is repeated and has the same music and lyrics each time; the chorus will usually give the central story of the song.

Clip (Ableton Live)—Live’s name for a single piece of audio or MIDI.

Clipping—The action of deforming a waveform during overload. Samples or signals are unable to be written at their intended amplitude and are flattened against the recordable boundaries.

DAW—Digital Audio Workstation. A computer-run application for digital audio manipulation, such as Ableton Live, Avid ProTools and Apple Logic Studio.

Decay—In terms of reverb, how long it takes the tail of audio to reach –60dB of its original volume.

Decibel (dB)—Relative measurement for the volume (loudness) of sound. Measured as a multiple of the logarithm of the ratio between levels.

Delay—An effects processor that applies repetitions of incoming audio at specific intervals, creating a distance effect. Sometimes referred to as echo.

DIY—Short for ‘Do It Yourself’. In terms of acapellas, it means somebody has created their own acapella using a combination of phase-cancellation, filtering and editing.

Drop—A recent nickname for the section of dance music that has drums in it, particularly referring to the first instance of it.

Dry—Describes a sound with no effects processing being applied to it.

Envelope—How a sound or audio signal varies in intensity over a time span.

Equalisation (EQ)—The process of adjusting the tonal quality of a sound, by making volume adjustments to certain frequency bands.

Export—To render a production session into a single destination, such as a WAV file.

Fade—A gradual reduction or rise of the level of the audio signal.

Feedback—The amount of delayed signal sent back to the input of a delay line, used in repeat-echo effects.

Filter—An effects processor that removes signals with frequencies above or below a certain point (called the cut-off frequency).

Flat—One of the black notes on a piano keyboard, one semitone down from its relative white note. Not all white notes have a flat version.

Formant—An element in the sound of a voice or instrument that does not change frequency as different pitches are sounded.

Frequency—A measurement for the number of occurrences per second. In audio, it describes the cycles per second of a waveform.

Gain—The amount of increase in audio signal strength, often expressed in decibels (dB). Reductions are expressed as minus amounts.

High-Cut—Only allows the frequencies below the desired frequency to pass through (also known as Low-Pass).

High-Pass—Only allows the frequencies above the desired frequency to pass through (also known as Low-Cut).

Hz—Abbreviation for Hertz, a unit of measurement that represents frequency, or the number of cycles per second.

Intro—Short for Introduction, used to describe the lead in before a dance track reaches its core sections.

kbps—Kilobytes per second. In audio, usually meant to represent the quality and audio fidelity of an .mp3 file.

Key (music)—The tonic note and chord that gives a subjective sense of arrival and rest. The chord in a piece of music that feels like the ‘home’ or ‘centre’ of the song.

kHz—An abbreviation of kilo-Hertz, i.e. 5kHz = 5000Hz. Used to make large Hz values more manageable.

Kick Drum—Another term for Bass Drum. In dance music, this usually is the loudest and most important drum element.

Level—The amount of signal strength; the amplitude, especially the average amplitude. Often referred to as volume.

LFO—Low Frequency Oscillator. Its signal can be used as a source to create looping patterns that affect the values of other audio signals such as level and filtering.

Limiter—A severe and fast-reacting compressor designed to protect audio hardware and systems by preventing levels above a certain amplitude.

Loop—A repeating section of audio where each repetition is identical.

Low-Pass—Only allows the frequencies below the desired frequency to pass through (also known as High-Cut).

Low-Cut—Only allows the frequencies above the desired frequency to pass through (also known as High-Pass).

Major Scale—A selection of notes that often make a piece of music feel happy, excited or playful.

MIDI—Short for Musical Instrument Digital Interface; a digital signal system (a system of number signals) used to communicate performance information to and from musical instruments making music.

Minor Scale—A selection of notes that often make a piece of music feel sad, cool or thoughtful.

Mix—The signal made by blending individual signals together.

Monitors—The speakers facing back onto the stage; or in the case of studios, the main playback speakers.

mp3—A means of compressing a sound sequence into a very small file, to enable digital storage and transmission. Much of modern dance music is now stored in .mp3 format.

Mute—To temporarily prevent a track’s audio signal from reaching the master channel.

Octave—A difference of pitch where one tone has a frequency that is double or one-half of the frequency of another tone. Interpreted by the ear as the ‘same note’, at different heights of pitch.

Outro—The final and concluding section of a piece of music.

Peak—The highest point in the audio waveform.

Pitch—The perception of frequency by the ear (a higher or lower property of music).

Preset—A set of factory-set parameters to give one effect on a signal processing device.

Q—The narrowness or broadness of the frequencies affected by an EQ change. Also referred to as resonance.

Remix—An alternate version of a song where a producer (usually not the original artist) has re-worked some or all the available audio stems to present the song in a different arrangement or style.

Resonance—The narrowness or broadness of the frequencies affected by an EQ change. Also referred to as ‘Q’.

Reverb—Short for reverberation. The persistence of a sound after the source stops emitting it, caused by many discrete echoes arriving at the ear so closely spaced in time that the ear cannot separate them.

Ride—Short for Ride Cymbal, a high-frequency drum often used in dance music to increase energy without overtly changing the rhythm.

Sampling (audio editing)—To record a short segment of audio for the purpose of playback later.

Sample (digital recording)—To measure the level of a waveform at a given instant.

Scale—In music theory, a scale is any set of musical notes ordered by fundamental frequency or pitch. Usually defined as a set pattern of semitones and tones.

Semitone—The distance between one musical note and its closest neighbouring note.

Sharp—One of the black notes on a piano keyboard, one semitone up from its relative white note. Not all white notes have a sharp version.

Shelf—A frequency response of an equalisation circuit where the boost or cut of frequencies forms a shelf on a frequency response graph.

Side-Chain Compression—A form of compression where the affected audio receives its compression trigger from an alternate audio signal.

Snare—Short for Snare Drum, the medium size drum directly in front of a sitting drummer that has metal strands drawn across the bottom head that rattle when the drum is hit.

Solo—A circuit in a console (or control in a DAW) that allows just one channel (or several selected channels) to be heard or to reach the output with all others muted.

Splice—To create an edit point and split a piece of audio into two, so as to move them independently of each other.

Stereo—A recording or reproduction of at least two channels where positioning of instrument sounds left to right can be perceived.

Sync—The running of two devices or audio streams in time with one another.

Synthesiser (or Synth)—A musical instrument that artificially (using oscillators) generates signals to simulate the sounds of real instruments or to create other sounds not possible with real instruments.

Tempo—The rate at which the music moves measured in Beats-per-Minute (how many steady even pulses there are in the music per minute).

Time Signature—The rhythmical properties of a piece of music. It defines how many beats appear in a bar (or measure) of music, and determines the subdivisions of those beats.

Tone—Twice the distance between one musical note and its closest neighbouring note.

Transient—The initial high-energy peak at the beginning of a waveform, such as one caused by the percussive action of a pick or hammer hitting the string, etc.

Transition—The process of moving from one piece of music to another.

Vocal—A musical performance by the voice, usually singing.

Volume—See ‘Level’.

Warp, Warping—The function in Ableton Live that allows one to change the natural speed of audio without changing the pitch, and vice versa.

wav—Waveform Audio File Format, a standard file format for storing an audio bitstream on digital Devices.

Waveform—The shape made by the fluctuations of a quantity over time. The waveform is displayed graphically on audio clips in most DAWs.

Wet—An audio signal that is completely affected by a signal processor and contains none of the original ‘dry’ signal.

Window—A portion of a file shown on a screen, usually appearing as a menu on top of the current page of data.