ProCollabs Slang & Music Lingo
Chops - refers to a player's strong technique or endurance.
Clipping - a synonym for distortion. With vocals, mic'd acoustic instruments, Front of House mixes, and monitor mixes, clipping is almost always deemed to be undesirable, and it is minimized by reducing gain levels, using compression devices, adding "pads" (attenuation circuits), etc. With electric guitars, electric basses, Hammond organs, electric piano, and other electric instruments, performers often purposefully add clipping to the signal by boosting the gain or using an overdrive pedal.
DAW - a digital audio workstation (or DAW) is a computer program that is exclusively designed for the recording, editing and playing of digital audio files. A DAW allows you to edit and mix multiple audio sources simultaneously on a musical timing grid and to visually see how they line up over time.
Demo - a recording that is meant to give a sample or an introduction to an artist's music; could be done by a Project Director, or an auditioner to pitch an idea to a project, or to work out an arrangement.
Dry - a signal/track that has no reverb effect, or more generally, a signal/track that has not been processed with any effects unit. Vocals are almost always recorded "dry", and then the reverb or other effects are added in post-production. Electric guitars and electric keyboards are often, but not always recorded with their effects (distortion, chorus, etc.) already added.
Wet - a track that has effects applied, such as reverb. Basically the opposite of dry.
Ear Candy - pleasant sounding music.
Earworm - a song that repeats annoyingly in someone's ear.
Feedback - the resonance loop created when a microphone or guitar pickup is placed close to a highly amplified speaker, often creating a howling or screeching sound. In most cases, musicians and sound engineers seek to avoid feedback with microphones and acoustic instruments; with electric guitar, especially in heavy metal and shred guitar playing it may be done on purpose.
Gig - a public performance, a slang term which refers to a paying musical engagement at a venue, usually of a single night's duration.
Hook - a motif that is used in popular music to make a song appealing and to "catch the ear of the listener".
Intro - opening section of a song or tune.
Jam - or "jam session" in jazz, blues, rock, or related genres, refers to an informal gathering of musicians improvising together.
Mash-up - a recording that mixes together tracks from two or more different songs or instrumental pieces.
Mixdown - the process near the end of the recording process in which all of the tracks of recorded music (e.g., 12, 24, or even 48 tracks of recorded vocals, guitars, keyboards, etc.) are blended and placed onto the Left and Right channels of a standard stereo recording. A "remix" occurs when the same initial tracks are given a new "mixdown", thus blending the tracks in a different way, adding different effects, etc.
Refrain - a repeating phrase that is played at the end of each verse in the song.
Register - a portion of the range of the instrument or voice.
Remix - a second or subsequent "mixdown" of a set of recorded tracks.
Sep - a separate or individual track.
Solo - alone; i.e., executed by a single instrument or voice.
Stem/Stem Mixing - is a method of mixing audio material based on creating groups of audio tracks and processing them separately prior to combining them into a final master mix. Stems are also sometimes referred to as submixes, subgroups, or busses.
Sync tone - a beat or sound at the beginning (and sometimes end) of a track. Its purpose is to help align tracks in a DAW.
Take - in a recording session, a period of playing or singing which is recorded is called a "take".
Track - a synonym often used interchangeably in reference to various nouns in music, including the sector on a CD containing a block of data, an audio channel (often a "backing track", or "background track"), and even the song itself.
Verb - an abbreviation for "reverb" which typically refers to the electronic reverb effect.
