303: an electronic acid bass synth by Roland.

​

707/808/909: different electronic drum machines by Roland. Also see: drum machine.

​

Acoustic: simply means "related to sound". In the context of instruments, it means organic instruments that produce sound physically without having to plug it in to an electrical socket. Also see: digital.

​

Acoustic Treatment: refers to all the things you need to do to turn your studio into a great space for recording and listening to audio, such as using damping material on the walls to absorb sounds, reducing reflections, keeping out all sources of noise etc.

​

ADSR: short for "Attack-Decay-Sustain-Release", which are four parameters used to define the envelope of a sound.

​

Air: a frequency range between 10 kHz and 12 kHz that adds a kind of realism to your mix and/or mix elements.

​

Ambience: in mixing, this refers to the effects of a particular space on a sound, usually reverb and delay.

​

Amplifier or Amp: a device or plugin used to increase the loudness of a sound, often by adding extra frequencies.

​

Amplitude: the volume or loudness of a sound, measured in decibels (dB). An amplitude of 0 dB denotes silence.

​

Analog: when used in the context of signals, analog signals are those produced by natural or organic sources, such as the human voice or acoustic instruments etc. Also see: digital.

​

Arpeggio or Arp: a repeating sequence of melodic notes in rhythm, usually those belonging to a chord or mode. Used heavily in electronic music.

​

Arrangement: the entire layout of a song, including different sections and instruments, and their sequence in time.

​

Attack: the time taken for something to come into full effect. e.g., the attack of an instrument is the time taken for the note played to reach maximum loudness since the action to play the note has been initiated. In case of effects, attack is the time taken for the effect to fully apply on the input signal. Also see: release.

​

Audio: sound. Typically refers to the output sound of your track or production.

​

Audio (or Sound) engineering: a field of study related to the technical aspects of music production, such as recording, mixing and mastering.

​

Audio Interface: a hardware device that acts as a bridge between your microphone and computer and can convert analog signals from your recording or input devices to digital signals that your computer than understand and process.

​

Automation: changing the value of any parameter within your DAW with time in a programmed way as opposted to doing in manually.

​

Aux Channel: a channel on your mixer that has one or more other channels routed to it, called "send". Aux channels are used to process the audio signals from other channel(s) in parallel.

​

Balancing: the act of setting volume and pan levels for each and every track in your production for a good listening experience such that nothing sounds too loud or too low in the mix.

​

Band Pass Filter: an EQ filter that is used to completely eliminate or attenuate frequencies below and above two respective values, allowing only the frequencies in this particular range to pass through unaltered.

​

Bar: a measure of rhythmic time. A bar consists of beats, the exact number varying according to the time signature. Also see: beat.

​

Bass: lower (or deeper) frequencies of audio. Also refers to an instrument that produces sounds predominantly in this range, such as an acoustic or electric bass guitar, or a bass synth.

​

Bassline: the melody played on the bass, often forming a groove or backbone of the song along with the rhythm.

​

Beat: a smaller measure of rhythmic time. Multiple beats make up a bar, and a beat in itself can be further subdivided into multiple steps or divisions, the exact number varying according to the time signature. Also see: bar.

​

Bit Depth: the number of bits used to represent one frame of digital audio. Typically used values (in increasing order of quality) are 16-bit, 24-bit and 32-bit. The more the number of bits, the finer loudness (amplitude) values can be handled.

​

Body: the set of frequencies that give a particular sound its girth or thickness. If the body is not strong enough in the mix, that particular elements sounds thin in the mix. Also see: thin.

​

Boost: in EQ, the act of increasing the amplitude of certain frequencies of audio. Also see: cut.

​

Bounce (or Export): the process of rendering or saving the audio output of your DAW project as a distributable file.

​

BPM: beats per minute, a unit used to represent the tempo of songs, simply the count of beats contained in every minute of your track. Also see: beat.

​

Bright: when a sound (or mix) is said to be bright, it has proportionately more high frequency content. Also see: warm.

​

Bus (or Buss): a mixer channel which combines audio signals from two or more other channels. In other words, a bus is a channel to which two or more other mixer channels have been routed to, usually for the sake of adding a common set of effects.

​

Bypass: refers to the act of temporarily turning off some processing (usually an effect) on an audio signal to help you audibly compare the difference between the original input and the processed output.

​

Cent: a measure of fine pitch. A cent is one-hundredth of a semitone, i.e., one-hundredth of the pitch difference between any two adjacent notes on a standard musical keyboard. Also see: semitone.

​

Channel: a path for an audio signal within your mixer. The typical things a channel is used for is to set the loudness and panning levels for the audio signal, and to use one or more effects to process the signal. Also see: effect.

​

Chord: a combination of two or more harmonic notes played together at the same time.

​

Chord progression: the sequence of chords played throughout a song, that accompanies the main melody.

​

Chorus: in arrangement, it refers to a main section of the song that usually repeats multiple times throughout the song. In mixing, it refers to an effect that makes a single voice sound like multiple different voices in unison.

​

Clipping: the phenomenon of peaks of a digital audio signal getting cut or clipped due to the signal being louder than the maximum loudness level supported in digital audio.

​

Comping: the practice of recording multiple takes of a vocal (or other instrument solo) and then cutting and combining the best parts to feature in your song.

​

Compression: an effect that processes an audio signal to reduce its dynamic range.

​

Crossfade: the act of two overlapping sounds fading in an out respectively, leading to a seamless transition as one goes out and the other comes in.

​

Cut: in EQ, the act of cutting or attenuating one or more frequencies of an audio signal. Also see: boost.

​

Digital Audio Workstation (or DAW): a software that is used for music production and supports arranging music, playing back sounds (both pre-recorded audio as well as synthesized), mixing and mastering.

​

Decay: refers to the time it takes for a sound to fade out, typically used to control reverb and delay trails.

​

De-esser: an effect plugin that reduces sibilant sounds in vocals.

​

Delay: an effect that adds a series of time-based echoes to an input audio signal.

​

Depth: how much up front or pushed back does an element seem in the mix, typically achieved using panning and/or ambience effects.

​

Digital: when used in the context of signals, digital signals are those either converted from analog signals to a computerized format using an analog-to-digital converter, or produced by electronic sources, such as synthesizers. Also see: analog.

​

Distortion: a special kind of effect that adds extra harmonics and loudness to input signals, resulting in a more aggressive and heavier sound, like the sound produced by a distortion guitar.

​

Distribution: the process of sending your finished track to digital streaming platforms, radio etc. for broadcasting purposes. Usually, this is also brings in revenue in the form of royalties based on how many people listen to your track over a period of time.

​

Drum Machine: a hardware electronic instrument, or a software plugin that can generate synthesized drum-like sounds for programming beats.

​

Dry: an unprocessed, raw audio signal without any effects applied to it. Also see: wet.

​

Dynamic Range: the difference in amplitude between the loudest and softest parts of an audio signal.

​

Effect: refer to a wide variety of processing that can be done on an audio signal in a mixer channel, such as EQ, compression, reverb and delay, among others.

​

Electronic: a style of music with heavy use of digital synthesizers and drum machines as opposed to organic or acoustic instruments. The sounds produced by these instruments are often called "electronic sounds" when used outside any of the pure electronic genres.

​

Envelope: the waveform or characteristic of how a particular sound evolves over time.

​

Equalization (or EQ): an effect that deals with boosting, cutting or filtering specific or ranges of frequencies within an audio signal.

​

Fader: a slider (or sometimes represented as a knob) on a mixer channel that is used to set the amplitude (or level) of the audio output from that channel.

​

Filter: a type of EQ which totally eliminates or partially attenuates certain frequencies from an audio signal and lets the other frequencies through.

​

Formant: a set of frequencies that define and distinguish the tonal qualities of voices and speech sounds.

​

Frequency: an absolute measure of pitch measured in hertz (Hz).

​

Frequency Spectrum: the entire range of frequencies audible to the human ear, ranging from 20 Hz to 20 kHz.

​

Fundamental (or Dominant) Frequency: the main or predominant frequency of an sound or tone. Along with the fundamental, several overtones or harmonics are also typically present in all sounds.

​

FX: in mixing, it is a shortened form of "effects". In arrangement, it is used to refer to different long or short sound effects that add little dynamics or interesting ambience or atmosphere to your music, such as whooshing sounds, risers, falling star effect, explosive sounds etc.

​

Gain: the level of an audio signal relative to the maximum loudness level possible (considered as 0 dB). Therefore, in order to avoid clipping, all your gain values should ideally be in negative decibel values.

​

Gate: the process of abruptly lowering the level of an audio either using automation or based on a threshold value, typically used in reducing noise in the supposedly silent regions of a track. A gate automation curve would look like a square wave.

​

Glue: the process of blending in multiple elements together into a mix, achieved using reverb, delay or compression techniques.

​

Graphic Equalizer: a type of EQ with an array of fixed frequency bands that allows you to manipulate the levels for each frequency band but does not allow any other configuration. Typically seen on the hardware equalizers on music systems like CD and cassette tape players. Also see: parametric EQ.

​

Harmonics: also called overtones, are higher integral multiples of a fundamental frequency, usually present in the sound produced by almost all instruments.

​

Harmony: playing two or more notes at the same time that do not sound incongruous or discordant together. While harmony is a concept, chords are a way of implementing harmony.

​

Headroom: the difference in loudness level between the loudest peak of a digital audio signal and the maximum loudness level possible in digital audio, measured in dB. Also see: gain.

​

High-End: the higher frequencies of an audio signal, typically above 2 kHz. These frequencies are also called "highs".

​

Hertz: a unit of frequency, also shortened as Hz. Note: 1 kilohertz (kHz) = 1,000 hertz (Hz).

​

High-Pass Filter: an EQ filter that is used to completely eliminate or attenuate frequencies below a certain cut-off value, allowing only the frequencies higher than the cutoff to pass through unaltered.

​

Hook: in musical arrangement, this is a short catchy phrase, either vocal or instrumental or a combination of the two, that your listeners like the most. It helps get the audience "hooked" to your track so they want to play it on repeat.

​

Host: refers to the DAW for plugins.

​

Imaging: the act of manipulating the stereo "image" of an audio signal, meaning widening, narrowing or generally placing things in the stereo field. Also see: panning.

​

Insert Effect: effects that are "inserted" into the signal flow in a mixer channel. Multiple insert effects will process the audio signal sequentially or serially. Also see: effect.

​

In-the-Box: the practice of performing your entire music production workflow digitally using software and on your computer ("box"), a practice which majority of music producers and audio engineers follow these days due to it being super convenient, and the fact that software is able to emulate almost all the known hardware processors and equipment traditionally used in music production.

​

Key: the key of a song is the major or minor scale in which the song is based. Also called "tonic", it is the root node around which the song is composed.

​

Layering: the practice of stacking up two sounds (often complementary) to achieve a bigger composite sound. In arrangement, it could also mean adding multiple instrumental parts that play together and make your overall track much more dense (in a pleasing way, of course).

​

Lead: it is a role that a vocal or instrumental part plays in your song. The lead is the main element that drives the song, while the rest of your arrangement "follows" it, or backs it up as accompaniment. The lead typically is centered on a melody rather than harmony.

​

Level: the loudness of an audio signal, measured in dB, absolute or relative to the headroom. Sometimes, also referred to as gain. Also see: gain.

​

Limiter: a compressor with a ratio of ∞:1, or practically any ratio greater than 10:1, used to even out peaks of an audio signal without clipping.

​

Loop: an audio sample, typically a melody, chord progression or rhythm that can be played on loop multiple times within your arrangement.

​

Lossless: lossless audio formats like WAV and AIFF preserve full sound quality during encoding and therefore take up more disk size.

​

Lossy: lossy audio formats like MP3 and OGG result in significantly smaller file sizes as they use compression to leave out some information in the audio signal that are not very apparent to the human ear when missing. However, this obviously results in lower quality than lossless formats even though it might suffice for casual listening purposes.

​

Low-End: the low frequencies of the audio signal, especially those below 300 Hz.

​

Low-Pass Filter: an EQ filter that is used to completely eliminate or attenuate frequencies above a certain cut-off value, allowing only the frequencies lower than the cutoff to pass through unaltered.

​

Masking: a phenomenon when two sounds lying in the same or highly overlapping frequency bands causes one of them to be almost inaudible while only the other can be heard.

​

Master: the final audio output of your mix that is saved to disk, CD, vinyl and used for final distribution. On the mixer, it is the final output channel where all the other mixer channels are routed to.

​

Mastering: the last step in preparing the final mixed audio before export, by fine-tuning the tonal balance of the overall sound, adjusting loudness levels etc. In older times, this had more to do with preparing and transferring recorded audio to a final storage from which distributable copies such as CD, vinyl, cassette tape etc. would be made. But in modern times, it often refers to the last bit of processing performed on the master channel of your mix.

​

Melody: a sequence of notes played one at a time.

​

MIDI (or Musical Instruments Digital Interface): a format of capturing audio not in the form of audio signals, but as data pertaining to a performance, including timing data and note attributes or properties.

​

Mix: the resulting audio signal after mixing. Also see: mixing.

​

Mixer: a hardware device or software component that enables mixing multitrack audio.

​

Mixing: the process of combining multiple elements of a song arrangement (tracks) through balancing and processing with effects to make it sound consistent and pleasing as a whole.

​

Monitor: a special type of loudspeaker or headphone with a relatively flat response that is used in audio production and engineering as it helps to accurately understand what it will sound like on every other listening device. Listening to audio on monitors for the purpose of mixing is called "monitoring".

​

Mono (or Monophonic): an audio format with only a single audio channel, can also mean stereo channels collapsed into a single channel.

​

Mud: sounds that cause a lack of clarity in the lower frequencies, making it difficult to make out the different instruments playing together, e.g., kick and bass.

​

Multiband Compressor: a special type of compressor that allows applying different compression settings on separate EQ bands.

​

Multitrack: the process of recording and processing an entire song as separate tracks, one for each instrument or voice, as opposed to recording everything together.

​

Mute: to turn off the output audio signal of a mixer channel from reaching the master channel.

​

Pad: refers to soft synthesized sounds with slow attack and release that is used to add ambience and atmosphere to a song.

​

Panning: the process of placing an audio signal on the stereo field, i.e., right in the center, on the left, right or somewhere in between.

​

Parallel Processing: the act of routing an audio signal to a different mixer channel to process it separately from the original signal. Can be used to achieve a dry-to-wet balance of an audio signal in your mix.

​

Parametric EQ: a type of EQ that has a pre-defined number of configurable frequency bands for equalization purpose. You can change the frequency, level as well as the Q. Parametric equalizers are therefore more flexible to use than graphic EQs. Also see: graphic equalizer.

​

Peak: the loudest level that an audio signal reaches during its entirety or a period of time.

​

Piano Roll: a software tool used to program or sequence MIDI notes within a DAW.

​

Ping Pong: alternately panning delays left and right in the stereo field, analogous to the motion of a "ping pong" ball.

​

Phase Difference: the time difference between the starting point of two signals, especially the left and right channel audio signals. When the difference is zero, the signals are said to be in phase and they both start at exactly the same time. If the absolute difference is greater than zero, then one signal slightly lags behind the other. Depending on the phase difference, the combined signal can sound very different in mono.

​

Plugin: a piece of software that typically can not function standalone, but can be used as a tool within your DAW. It behaviourally and functionally plugs in to the DAW host.

​

Presence: a range of frequencies between 4 and 6 kHz, which often adds clarity to vocals when boosted.

​

Preset: a saved configuration on a synth, software instrument, or effect that can be used again and again to recall specific sounds or settings.

​

Project: a file containing the information related to your entire musical production. You can load this file in your DAW, make edits, save progress, and when done, export your finished track. 

​

Release: the time taken for for something to give up its effect. e.g., the release of an instrument is the time taken for the note to fade out after the action to play the note has been stopped. In case of effects, release is the time taken for the effect to stop processing the input signal. Also see: attack.

​

Reverb: an effect that adds ambience to an audio signal by adding a reverberation trail to it.

​

Roll-off: the act of cutting all frequencies above or below a certain cutoff frequency. A gentle roll off has a gradual slope while a sharp one resembles a cliff. Also see: shelf.

​

Sample: simply, an audio recording. Typically it means an audio clip or loop that is intended to be used by other artists 

​

Sampler: a tool that can make a playable instrument out of any audio recording.

​

Sample Rate: the resolution of digital audio. Standard values are 44.1 kHz and 48 Hz.

​

Sample Library (or Sample Pack): a collection of samples and/or loops, usually royalty-free, that can be used by a music producer in his/her track.

​

Saturation: moderate levels of distortion used to fatten an audio signal through the addition of harmonics. Typically used to sweeten vocals.

​

Semitone: a measure of pitch. A semitone is the pitch difference between any two adjacent keys on a musical keyboard.

​

Sequencer: a tool used to structure audio samples, programmed patterns and automation clips to form a complete song arrangement within the DAW. A sequencer could also simply refer to the Piano Roll or Step Sequencer.

​

Shelf (or Shelving Filter): the act of attenuating frequencies above or below a certain cutoff frequency. Unlike rolloff, a shelving filter does not completely cut things off but rather lowers their level, to preserve some of the original characteristics, but more subdued. Also see: rolloff.

​

Sibilance: the hissing sounds produced by the human voice when pronouncing "s". Depending on the amount of sibilance captured, a recording might sound unpleasant in a mix.

​

Signal (or Audio Signal): another word for sound.

​

Sidechaining (or Sidechain Compression): the act of triggering a compressor based on another input signal. Whenever the input signal level crosses the threshold, compression kicks in, ducking the signal level so the other source signal can be heard more prominently. Typically used in electronic music to balance the bass and the kick and prevent masking.

​

Solo: when a channel (or group of channels) are played in solo, it means all other mixer channels are muted. This is typically used to compare and contrast an element with the rest of the mix. In arrangement terms, a solo is basically an instrument playing a prominent lead line or rhythm with minimum backing from other instruments.

​

Step Sequencer: a tool used to sequence or program beats and rhythms. They have a predefined grid of slots divided into steps, or sub-divisions of a beat. You can toggle on a slot to trigger a drum kit sound.

​

Stereo: a standard format of audio with two distinct channels: left and right. A signal panned equally to both the left and the right channels are said to be centered. This is just an illusion called the "phantom center" as there is technically no actual center channel in stereo.

​

Surgical EQ: a deep and narrow cut made in EQ to eliminate a particularly "bad" or unpleasant frequency.

​

Thin: typically means a weak sound that is missing a lot of the midrange and contains too much treble. Also see: body.

​

Timbre: the quality of audio that distinguishes it from other sound sources with the same fundamental frequency.

​

Timeline: the linear structure of a musical arrangement or sequence in time visually represented within the DAW.

​

Timestamp: a point in time within your project's timeline. Can be measured either in minute:second:millisecond or bar:beat:step. Also see: timeline.

​

Transpose: the act of changing the key of a MIDI pattern or sequence (or an entire arrangement) up or down in pitch.

​

Vocals: the recording of someone's voice, singing or rapping etc.

​

Warm: a sound (or mix) is said to be warm when it has more of lower frequencies.

 

Wet: a processed signal with added effects, usually reverb and/or delay. Also see: dry.

Zero-crossing: any of the points where a wave passes the central zero line of silence.