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Welcome to the Songstufff Glossary!
Find the meaning to common, and not so common terms in this broad ranging glossary. Covering a diversity of Music related terminology including Music Technology, Music Theory, Music Law, Acoustics, and Electronics, the Songstuff Glossary is an ever-growing collection. Everything from Absorption to Zero Level.
We're continually adding new descriptions, so if you have a suggested description please Contact Songstuff.
Glossary items are listed in alphabetical order. Please use the navigation block below to browse the glossary items.
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New Glossary Listings
Arco
Indicates the use of a bow.
Andante
Indicates a medium tempo of between 76 and 108 bpm
Aeolian Mode
Commonly called the Natural Minor Scale, Aeolian mode is the sixth mode of the major scale.
The Aeolian mode for the scale of C major is A, B, C, D, E, F, G, A
Adagio
Medium slow in tempo, approximately 66 - 76 bpm
Action
The term 'Action' is used to decsribe the height of the strings from the fretboard of a stringed instrument.
Absolute Pitch
Absolute Pitch is simply another name for Perfect Pitch, the 1 in 10,000 people ability to tell the pitch of a note without using a reference note for comparison.
AABA
AABA is a shorthand notation for a common song form where A is the main theme and B is a bridge theme. AABA means that the main theme A is played twice, foloowed by the bridge, B, before a testatement of the original theme A.
Sections are of the same length, often 8 bars each giving 32 bars in total.
Crosstalk
When one signal "spills" or "leaks" onto another signal during the transmission process. For example when two audio cables are routed adjacent to each other and signal leaks from one onto the other.
This most commonly happens with poorly shielded cables carrying signals with sharp transient spikes. This is due to unwanted conductive, inductive or capacative coupling between the two cables (or anywhere on the cirtcuit).
Crosstalk is also applied to unwanted spill (bleed, leakage) from an unwanted acoustic sound source into a microphone, for example bleed from a singer's headphones onto a vocal recording, or hi-hat hits onto the snare microphone. This is effectively acoustic coupling.
FSK Sync
An old form of clock sync. Commonly used with the early Atari sequencers and drum machines.
SMPTE -VITC
Vertical Interval Time Code, a.k.a "vitsee", means SMPTE timecode that is placed into the space between video frames. Once "burned in" between frames it is called BITC or "bitsee".
