My list of music terminology...
What Is Music?
Music is different sounds arranged and mixed together to make a rhythmical loop or song.
What Is A Song?
A song is a musical composition that contains lyrics or instrumentation.
What Is A Song Called Without Words?
A song without words is called an instrumental.
What Is Singing Without Music Called?
Singing without music is called "a cappella" or sometimes it's written "acapella".
What Is Music Production?
Music production is the art of recording, arranging, mixing and mastering sound into song form.
What Is A DAW?
DAW stands for "digital audio workstation". It's the music software musicians use on computers.
What Is Multi-track Recording?
Multi-tracking or multi-track recording is recording each instrument on it's own separate track within a music program (software).
What Are Stems?
Stems are the different (solo) audio instrument tracks from a multi-track recording.
What Is Sampling?
Sampling is when you take a piece of one song and use it in another.
What Are One-Shot Samples?
One-shot samples are singular sound samples.
What Are Loops?
Loops are short pieces of music (samples) that are repeated within a song.
What Does Royalty Free Mean?
Royalty free means you don't have to pay any royalties (money) for use of a piece of music or sample.
What Is MIDI?
MIDI stands for "musical instrument digital interface". It's how midi controllers (keyboards) communicate with the computer.
What Is A MIDI Controller?
A MIDI controller is hardware connected to a computer used to trigger sounds and control things within music software.
What Is A MIDI Keyboard?
A MIDI keyboard is hardware that connects to a computer to trigger sounds of an instrument within music software.
What Are Plugins?
Plugins are extra effects and virtual instruments for music software.
What Is A VST?
VST stands for "virtual studio technology". It's extra plugin effects for music software.
What Is A VSTi?
VSTi stands for "virtual studio technology instrument". It's an extra instrument plugin for music software.
What Are Presets?
VST / VSTi presets are pre-made control settings for an effect or instrument plugin.
Tip
On your computer you should make a folder for presets and then organize them by the VST / VSTi names so they are easy to find and load into your plugins.
("Preset Banks" or something like that and then folders for each VST / VSTi.)
What are FXP files?
FXP files are VST / VSTi preset files for music plugins.
What are FXB files?
FXB files are bank files for VST / VSTi presets.
(An FXB file holds many FXP files so you only have to load one file of presets.)
What Is Mastering?
Mastering is making a song (or audio) sound it's best after production like fixing flaws or making it louder and preparing it for various formats.
What Is A Mastering VST?
A mastering vst is used in post production and it contains more than one type of effect like brickwall limiting, parametric EQ or dynamic EQ.
What Is A Waveform?
A waveform is the visual of the audio signal.
What Is DC Offset?
DC offset is the value of the waveform. An unbalanced waveform eats up headroom. You want as close to 0% as possible to have a balanced waveform.
What Is Headroom?
The space between your audio signal's highest peak and 0 dB.
What Is The Loudness War?
The "Loudness War" is a term used to describe when a musician tries to make their recorded music louder than another musician's music.
