Glossary
Here is a brief reference of FAWM terminology for fawmlings (and long-time fawmers with failing memories).
This is merely a list of common phrases you might encounter in forum discussions, song liner notes, or comments, as well as terms which have confused people in past FAWMs. If you can’t find an explanation here, feel free to ask in the forums!
To help you find things more easily, the glossary is organised into three sections:
- FAWM culture
- Musical terminology
- Technical jargon
FAWM culture
10x10 A challenge to write a medley of ten songs that are each 10 seconds long (partially inspired by TMBG's "Fingertips" and The Beatles' "Medley")
afawmmodations (n.) Allowances friends and families must make to a participating fawmer so he/she can continue to write and record songs without distraction.
A is for ABBA (n.) Forum game where players must post the name of a band beginning with the letter of the alphabet which comes after the first letter of the band posted previously. Because repeating names isn’t allowed, the game gets harder to play as FAWM progresses. There’s a companion version of the game where players post the names of fake (made-up) bands.
archive (v. and n.) To click on the Archive button on your profile in order to generate a web page containing all your song listings, liner notes, comments received, and soundboard messages all gathered together in a single web page; the page of HTML that is generated when you do this so that you can save it to your device. Please note that your archive does NOT contain the audio files of your songs; you should make backups of those before posting them.
“Argh! My eyes!” (phr.) Involuntary exclamation made by all fawmers on Valentine’s Day (February 14th).
casiocore (n.) Any song in any genre recorded for FAWM which employs a Casio keyboard; the humbler the better (back in 1982 the VL-Tone VL1 worked out just fine for the German band Trio). Bonus points if you found yours in a thrift store.
catcore (n.) Any song in any genre recorded for FAWM which includes a cat as a collaborator. Mojo took part for many years as a fawmer in his own right.
century club (n.) A distinguished order of fawmers who have left at 100 or more comments on other people's songs (the club has different levels for multiples of 100: 200 comments, 300, 400, etc.)
coffee (n.) Songwriting fuel. Remember, it’s essential to stay hydrated during those all-day writing sessions!
collab (v. and n.) To work on a song with another fawmer; also the end result of doing this. Songs which are collabs are identified by a little “handshake” icon overlaid on the user avatar on the Songs page. Multiple collaborators can work on one song and the song will count as a complete song towards the challenge target of fourteen songs for each collaborator.
commentsFirst challenge (n.) A songwriting challenge where fawmers leave comments about a song before it was written. The fawmer undertaking the challenge must then write a song that fits the comments which have been made.
cowcore (n.) Any song in any genre recorded for FAWM which employs a cowbell. Make Christopher Walken happy!
double FAWM (n. and v.) The act of writing not just fourteen songs in the month of February, but twenty-eight. And the results thereof.
Easyshed (n.) A spam account set up in 2019 to promote an Australian prefabricated building company (allegedly entirely without their knowledge). Fawmers decided to write songs involving sheds and added Easyshed as a collaborator. They therefore became the only spammer ever to “win” FAWM with fourteen songs credited to their account. In fact with over 30 songs they even managed a double FAWM.
exquisite corpse (n.) A multi-fawmer collaboration where the first person records a minute of a music, then sends the last ten seconds of it to the next participant, who adds another minute of music that dovetails with the end of that section and sends the last ten seconds of their contribution to the next participant, and so on and so on. The results change in much the same way as the message does in the game of Telephone, and the results are almost always extraordinary. See also kaiju.
FAWM (n.) February Album Writing Month, e.g., this site / songwriting challenge.
fawm (v.) 1. To participate in the annual FAWM challenge. 2. to decide a song is "good enough" and move on to writing the next one [ex. "Man, I really just fawmed that one."].
FAWM escape velocity (n.) The point at which there are more FAWM songs written in February than there is time in February to listen to them all [see escape velocity].
FAWM D. Rockingfeller Foundation (n.) A donation on behalf of another fawmer who is perhaps unable to contribute financially, thus granting them "rock hand" status and an enormous sense of well-being.
fawmbassador (n.) A fawmer who actively promotes FAWM during the off season.
fawmbo (n.) A gung-ho fawmer, determined and/or desperate to post 14 songs by the end of FAWM.
fawmburger (n.) Any meal (or handful of food) hastily prepared and eaten while fawming.
fawmer (n.) You, me or any FAWM participant.
fawmidable (adj.) The state of the task at hand, daunting. e.g., needing to post 14 songs in the final 12 hours of February.
fawmism (n.) Colloquial vernacular used in the FAWM community.
fawmku (n.) FAWM-related haiku (a three-line poem of five syllables, then seven syllables, then five syllables)
fawmling (n.) newcomer to the FAWM challenge (first-time fawmer).
fawmonos (v.) It's January 31, let's gooooo!
fawmpilation (n.) annual compilation CD of 14 FAWM songs (from 2005-2011).
fawmpulsive (adj.) The state of being consumed by FAWM, e.g., checking the forums or your song comments every five minutes, writing music (or about music) instead of caring for the duties of everyday life.
fawmstock (n.) See FOP.
fawmtronica (n.) Electronic music written for FAWM, often made using synthesizers and samplers.
FAWK (n. or v.) All-out rock by a fawmer.
feast (v. and n.) To write two or more songs in a short period of time. Songs written during these intense bursts of creativity can be identified by the same stopwatch icon that indicates a skirmish song.
filk (n and v..) Folk music which celebrates the culture of science fiction and fantasy fiction. Also, the act of writing a filk song. Filk is a very popular genre amongst fawmers.
filker (n.) One who filks (q.v.) Many fawmers are also filkers.
FOP (n.) FAWM Over Party, e.g., informal regional gatherings of fawmers generally held in March or April. Fawmstocks are wider regional gatherings, often in the summer.
founding fawmer (n.) @burr Settles, @ericdistad, Willis Fireball, or Matt Hopper [participants in the original FAWM 2004].
Helga (p.n.) A Bavarian rubber duck who made her debut circa FAWM 2009, has traveled the world visiting other fawmers, and has become a sort of mascot for the community.
infawmnia (n.) The inability to sleep due to songwriting anxiety and/or addiction to FAWM. Just make sure you have a pen and paper next to your bed when the muse throws a song at you at four in the morning. You might tell yourself it’s such a banger, you’re sure to remember it, but trust us: you won’t. Write it down! (Most seasoned fawmers have a collection of notes written on scraps of paper which turned out to be incomprehensible the following morning.)
kaiju (n.) Godzilla-sized version of an exquisite corpse (q.v.) created over the entire course of the FAWM challenge. The only limit on the number of participants is time. Not for the faint-hearted.
Mornington Crescent (n.) A popular forum game based on the version played in the long running BBC Radio 4 show, I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Clue. Players must announce to which station on the London Underground (a.k.a. “The Tube”) the game should progress next. Both ridiculously simple and intimidating in its arcane complexity, it’s great fun to play and as Dame Judi Dench commented in her introduction to The Little Book of Mornington Crescent (Orion Books, 2000): “I shall never forget the excitement of my first move between Totteridge and Cockfosters, when Bartlett’s Pass was imposed, during a particularly vicious game in the Green Room at the Old Vic in 1957.”
MUFF (n.) Mandolinists Unite For FAWM. Founded by Calum Carlyle. Promotes the use of instruments from the mandolin family.
muse tools / the muse (n.) A collection of computational creativity tools built for fawmers.
Nic Cage (n.) That time when an established fawmer created an alter ego pretending to be the actor Nic Cage and the real Nic Cage not only showed up to find out what was going on, but created an account and submitted one of his songs.
nice lyric, but… (n.) “...this could never be a song.” A song comment made by a fawmling which rapidly became a meme within FAWM because any lyric can be a song, as any fule kno.
pen and paper (n.) Songwriting essentials. Make sure that they’re within easy reach at all times during February so you can write down that idea you just had. You might tell yourself at 4 am that the concept or riff you just woke up with is so earth-shatteringly epic you’ll have no trouble remembering it tomorrow morning, but we all know that’s not how this works. Write it down, NOW.
phone (n.) The songwriting equivalent of a multi-tool. It can act as your DAW, dictation machine, field recorder, beat maker, video camera, note-taking device, musical instrument, and as a source of infinite distractions. With a phone, you pretty much have everything you need to take part in FAWM.
rock hands (n.) The “devil horns” icon (just think of Ronnie James Dio) which appears alongside a fawmer’s username to indicate that they have made a donation to keep the site running.
skirmish (v. and n.) A one-hour timed group songwriting challenge! Songs submitted for a skirmish can be identified by a stopwatch icon which appears underneath the song title, in front of the ID of the fawmer responsible.
Sloan (p.n.) A sloth (see slothcore) who made his debut in FAWM 2023, as a companion to the duck (see Helga)
slothcore (n.) A music genre invented by fawmer Candle in FAWM 2021, generally ambient in nature. It’s defined as "very slow (like 20 - 40 bpm), dirty & with long pauses to simulate naps. Perfect music for that overworked college/university student in your life." The genre has spawned several compilation albums. Sales raise funds for two sloth conservation projects in Costa Rica.
snacks (n., pl) Songwriting fuel; brain food. Forget that diet; it’s February. Your muse has gotta eat.
spam (n.) The bane of every FAWM moderator’s existence. Even when it spawns its own meme. See Easyshed.
strangle disco (n.) A music genre "invented" in FAWM 2007, often featuring Beethoven samples, disco or hip-hop beats, and wordplay.
strugglebus (n.) The vehicle responsible for feelings of apathy, exhaustion, or generally feeling uninspired during FAWM. As in “I’ve been run over by the strugglebus.”
unzung hero (n.) What a fawmer becomes when that fawmer: 1) receives their first comment of the FAWM season, 2) has at least one comment on each song e.g., no zongs, 3) causes a fellow fawmer to reach a "zongless" state.
zong (n.) A zero-comment song. Not to be confused with the term introduced by Dr. Seuss in "Oh The Thinks You Can Think".
zong-busting, zonging (v.) To comment on zongs.
Musical terminology
alternate tuning (n.) Abandoning your instrument’s standard tuning can be a fertile source of inspiration. Your guitar doesn’t have to be tuned E-A-D-G-B-E, low to high. Many other tunings are available. Favourites with other fawmers include D-A-D-G-A-D, C-G-C-G-C-E (known as open C, used extensively by Jimmy Page and Devin Townsend) and D-A-D-G-B-E (known as drop D, which is about as metal as it gets). @headfirstonly likes Robert Fripp’s New Standard, or “Crafty” tuning of C-G-D-A-E-G but wants you to know it’s very hard on your guitar strings.
backbeat (n.) An emphasis on the second and fourth beats of the bar. One-TWO-three-FOUR!
bpm (n.) Beats Per Minute. The tempo of your track. Most DAWs default to 120 bpm because that’s the sweet spot for popular music; slothcore has a tempo of between 20 and 40 bpm. Drum and bass is between 160 and 180 bpm. The Hit ‘Em genre which went viral in 2024 came to Matmos’s Drew Daniel in a dream and has a very specific tempo of 212 bpm. John Cage’s composition Organ2/As Slow As Possible is probably the slowest piece of music ever written. A performance of the piece in Halberstadt, Germany began in 2001 and is not expected to finish until 2640. The most recent chord was played on February 5, 2024 and the next will be played on August 5, 2026. That’s a bpm of approximately 0.000000761614623.
bridge (n.) Also known as the middle eight. The high point of your song, the part where everything changes character, the guitar solo kicks in, or simply the place where James Brown wants to take you.
chord progression (n.) See diatonic scale.
chorus (n.) Also known as a refrain. A part of a song which repeats both melody and lyrics, and is usually designed to be the most exciting bit. If you’re lucky, it’ll go in and stick and become an earworm (q.v.). You don’t have to stick to having a single version of the chorus, of course. In Jimi Hendrix’s The Wind Cries Mary the wind whispers in the first chorus, cries in the next, and screams in the last. Change things up!
diatonic scale (n.) A seven-note scale where the notes are separated as follows: tone, tone, semitone, tone, tone, tone, semitone. On modern keyboards, the white keys form a diatonic scale. Also known as a heptatonic scale. The numbers in chord progressions refer to the number of the root note in each chord according to the diatonic scale being used. So in the key of C major, the primary chords are C (I), F (IV) and G (V).
earworm (n.) A catchy song. A song so catchy, in fact, that it wriggles into your brain and refuses to leave. You find yourself humming it all day and as you try to get to sleep. And when you wake up the next morning, it’s still there. 17th-century dances known as “maggots” gained their names from the catchy nature of the tune; Edgar Allan Poe wrote about being earwormed in The Imp of the Perverse (1845). In neurological terms the phenomenon is known as Involuntary Musical Imagery (IMI) and some recent research indicates that an earworm can be alleviated by chewing gum (yes, really).
hook (n.) The part of the song that makes you remember it. Even if you don’t want to.
odd meter (n.) A time signature that contains both simple time signatures (with top numerals of 2, 3, or 4 and bottom numerals of 2, 4, or 8) and compound time signatures (with top numerals of 6, 9, or 12 and bottom numerals of 4, 8, or 16).
genre (n.) The practice of fitting any given piece of music into arbitrary boxes. If you really need to know what category to use to describe your music, that’s absolutely fine, but you shouldn’t stress about it. And there will always be somebody who pops up to tell you that, actually, your music should really be categorised as (insert genre you’ve never heard of) instead.
interval (n.) The difference in pitch between any two notes, expressed in terms of the number of notes in the diatonic scale it takes to get from one to the other. For example, a minor second is a semitone; a major seventh is five tones plus a semitone.
intro (n.) The bit at the beginning of the song. Prog bands used to love their extended introductions, which happen once and are over. You don’t have to have an intro, though. A conflicting school of thought espoused by the band Roxette says Don’t Bore Us—Get To The Chorus! and many popular songs do just that.
lift (n.) A way of building excitement in a song. Adding more cymbals to the drum part, changing the key upwards, sound effects like rises and hits or just shouting incoherently at the crowd are all ways of getting everyone in the audience to go nuts.
one and three (phr.) “Friends don’t let friends clap on one and three.” Clapping on the first and third beat of a bar instead of the second and fourth beats (a.k.a. the backbeat) causes intense pain to most musicians. Don’t do it. Ever! Watch Harry Connick Jr effortlessly add an extra beat to a bar to shift an audience clapping on one and three so that they suddenly find themselves clapping on two and four—and spot the drummer at the back literally punch the air in delight when the shift happens…
outro (n.) The bit at the end. Repeat chorus, slow fade, or final, resounding chord? That’s up to you.
pentatonic scale (n.) A musical scale with five notes per octave. Blues and rock music is heavily reliant on various forms of pentatonic scales. Humans have been using them for a very long time indeed—at least 40,000 years.
prechorus (n.) A transition between verse and chorus, usually used to build excitement.
pitch (n.) How we hear a sound of a particular frequency (q.v. below) which can be applied to a musical scale. In most (but not all) Western music, A4, the A above Middle C is defined as having a frequency (q.v.) of 440 Hz (cycles per second).
refrain (n.) See chorus.
shuffle (n.) See swing.
structure (n.) The different parts of your song. There are some common structures (such as verse-chorus-verse-chorus-bridge-verse-chorus) which are used a lot, but who says you need to follow convention?
swing (n. and v.) A subtle change to the spacing of beats in a bar so that they are not uniform or regular; some might happen early, some happen late. This establishes the feel or groove of the composition. It’s difficult to describe, but you’ll know it when you hear it working.
take (n.) A single attempt at recording an entire performance, or an element of it. Some fawmers like @ductapeguy have completely mastered the “one take is all it takes” approach. Some of us haven’t.
time signature (n.) The two numbers, one over another, at the beginning of a piece of music notation. The top number indicates how many note values there are in the bar and the lower number tells you which note value to use. 4 / 4 means the music has four quarter notes (crotchets) per bar. 7 / 8 means that there are seven eighth-notes (quavers) in each bar.
trainbeat (n.) a drum pattern in 4/4 with a distinctive rhythm beloved of country music writers.
verse (n.) A part of a song where new lyrics are sung each time a particular melody is used. The place where stories are told and scenes are set.
Technical jargon
amplifier (n.) An item of electrical equipment which makes the amplitude of the input signal larger. A.k.a. amp.
amplitude (n.) When a signal (such as an electronic voltage or a sound wave) varies regularly over time, its amplitude measures how much it changes in one cycle.
chiptune (v.) A genre of music which is made using emulations of the music or noise chips which were built into old 8-bit or 16-bit video games or arcade machines. A good chiptune sounds like it’s just escaped from your NES or Mega Drive. A vast chiptune culture now exists and enthusiasts can use online tools such as BeepBox to create their own authentic-sounding works or add one of many free chiptune VSTs to their favourite DAW.
chorus (n.) An audio effect that is achieved by splitting an audio input into two and very slightly delaying one of the two resulting signals (by 20 milliseconds or more) to produce a shimmery, wobbly effect that sounds really good on a guitar.
circuit bending (v.) The practice of modifying electrical equipment in order to change the noises it makes. As well as drum machines and synthesizers, a popular item subjected to this is the Speak and Spell toy made by Texas Instruments. Here’s a circuit-bent Speak and Spell being used by They Might Be Giants for an electronic version of their hit Istanbul.
compressor (n.) An audio effect that is used to reduce the dynamic range (q.v.) of a recording. The most common type uses downward compression, which reduces the volume of loud signals above a certain threshold. Less commonly used is upward compression, which increases the volume of audio signals below a certain threshold. Compression is used to make recordings sound louder and give them more punch. That’s why we can guarantee that any radio station you listen to will be applying a compressor to its output signal. Unfortunately they don’t always do a good job of this. If you get the amount of time it takes for the compressor to kick in (its attack) and the time it takes to stop working when the input signal drops below the threshold again (its release) wrong, you’ll be able to hear the compressor doing its job, and you don’t want that. Unless you’re making Electronic Dance Music (EDM) in which case we call it pumping, and it’s done on purpose to emphasise the beat (usually by sidechaining the kick drum).
comping (v.) The act of compiling a decent-sounding take from the best bits of several other takes.
comp track (n.) A track that sounds okay that has been compiled from bits of other takes, all cobbled together.
DAW (n.) Short for Digital Audio Workstation. Software which turns your computer or phone into a multi-track recording studio. Macs come with Garageband already installed. On PCs, Cakewalk can be downloaded for free. Other DAWs include ProTools, Logic, Reaper, Ableton Live, and FLStudio.
delay (n.) An audio effect which adds an echo to the original audio signal. Early delays were in mono. A ping pong delay does this in stereo by bouncing the echoes back and forth between the left and right channels. A multi-tap delay takes its name from original tepe echo machines like the Watkins Copicat or Binson Echorec (beloved of Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour) which had more than one playback head (the “tap”) that would add a delay at a different time; you could switch each head on or off to get different rhythms from the resulting echoes. And that’s how the aforementioned Mr Gilmour gets the distinctive dotted eighth note rhythm in Run Like Hell. Modern multi-tap delays allow you to position each tap at a different point in the stereo mix and can synchronise their delay times to the bpm set in your DAW.
dynamic range (n.) The difference (measured in decibels (dB) between the quietest part of a recording and the loudest part. A vinyl LP has a maximum dynamic range that’s under 70 dB. A cassette tape has a maximum dynamic range of 75 dB. Most commercial CDs have an effective dynamic range of 120 dB, which is more than enough to capture a full symphony orchestra really going for it (a maximum dynamic range of around 80 dB).
eq (n.) Short for equalization. The process of cutting some frequencies of a recording or boosting others to improve the tonal balance of the end result, shape the sound to give prominence to the most important elements of the recording, and prevent such undesirable things as harshness, mud, rumble, or boxiness, and prevent vocals sounding nasal or pinched.
field recording (n. or v.) The results of going outside and recording what you hear. Also: the act of doing the same. Field recordings have been a part of popular music for decades. Examples include The Return of the Son Of Monster Magnet by the Mothers of Invention, Revolution #9 by The Beatles, The Dead Flag Blues by Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Une Topographie Sonore: Col De Vence by Thomas Köner, and almost anything by Boards of Canada or Matmos. Field recordings can add a lovely extra layer to ambient music.
flanger (n.) An audio effect that was originally achieved by the engineer pressing his finger on the flange of the reel of one of a pair of tape players running together so that the signals became ever so slightly out of synch. The basic principle is the same as a chorus (q.v.) but the audio signal is delayed by 10 milliseconds or less. The wibbly quality you get as a result used to be very popular with bass players. And with Prince (who used his Boss BF-2 on drums as well as guitar) .
frequency (n.) The number of times a periodic oscillation (such as an audio signal) repeats in one second. The higher the frequency, the higher the pitch (q.v.) or musical note.
FUC (n.) FAWM Ukulele Club. Founded by Tim Fatchen. Promotes ukulele compositions.
gain (n.) The level of an audio signal going IN to an amplifier or effect. See also Volume.
gain staging (v.) The practice of making sure that the signal level in your recording chain is consistent from one device to the next. Not doing this can introduce unwanted noise into your recordings.
generation loss (n.) The degradation of an analog audio signal that happens when a copy of a take is made on a new track (a process known as bouncing down). The high frequencies in the recording are usually lost first and the more bouncing down or copying you do during an analog tape recording, the worse the effect. This does not happen when using digital files, as the copy made will be exactly the same as the original.
Hertz / Hz (n.) Unit of measurement of frequency, given in cycles per second. 1,000 Hz is one kilohertz. Human hearing is normally described as ranging from a low of 20 Hz to a high of 20 kHz. A4, the A above Middle C has a frequency of 440 Hz. This is an arbitrary standard, though. 17th- and 18th-century baroque music was written when A was 415 Hz. It was raised to 435 Hz In the 19th century and in the 1960s Leonard Bernstein used to make his orchestra tune to 442 Hz. Some European orchestras tune to 444 Hz. This is not at all confusing. It means we are quite literally taking the music higher.
high cut filter (n.) An audio effect and a type of eq which cuts (i.e. removes) all sounds in a signal above a certain frequency (most commonly between 10 to 12 kHz.) It may also be referred to as a low pass filter for exactly the same reason. This is not at all confusing.
humanization (n.) See quantization.
K (abbr.) Short for the unit of frequency measurement the kilohertz, or thousands of cycles per second. “That piano’s got a nasty spike at two K there” is how an audio engineer will inform you that an excess of sound at a frequency of 2,000 Hz is making your piano recordings sound tinny.
limiter (n.) An audio effect often used in mastering that is an extreme form of a compressor. As its name suggests, it limits the loudest sound in your recording to a specific volume and no louder. Limiters aren’t always subtle, and brick wall limiters are sometimes used because of the particularly over-the-top effect they can have on a recording. A noise gate is the opposite of a limiter; it attenuates signals below a certain threshold (useful if you’re recording guitar through a noisy amplifier, for example).
loudness (n.) The perceived volume of a recording. You may be old enough to remember the loudness wars of the 1990s when record labels insisted that the latest release by their best-selling artists had to sound louder than everyone else’s. This was done by crushing the dynamic range out of recordings, but surprise surprise: this made them almost impossible to listen to and sales suffered as a result. One band even went so far as to pay for an album that their record company had released at the height of the loudness wars to be remixed and remastered several years later because they (and their fans) hated the original version so much.
low cut filter (n.) An audio effect and a type of eq which cuts (i.e. removes) all sounds in an audio signal below a certain frequency (most commonly between 100 to 200 Hz.) It may also be referred to as a high pass filter for exactly the same reason.
LUFS (n.) Loudness Units, Full Scale. What a recording’s perceived loudness is measured in. Most mastering software will match levels to a loudness target that you set beforehand. CDs are normally mastered to -9 LUFS; streaming services prefer something quieter around -14 LUFS and television programmes usually work quieter still, at around -23 LUFS. The Youlean Loudness Meter is an app and/or a free plug-in for your DAW that will show you how loud your own recordings are in LUFS. One aspect of mastering (q.v.) involves making sure that the loudness of each track on an album doesn’t vary too much.
mastering (n. and v.) Originally the name given to the process of preparing a tape recording to be cut onto a vinyl record (in such a way that the record player’s stylus wouldn’t get kicked out of the groove by the bass and the frequency response of the medium was used to the artist’s best advantage) but is now used to describe the general act of preparing it for final release. This is an arcane process but in general terms it involves controlling the dynamic range of the recording to make it sound better, ensuring that the song sounds loud (but not too loud - see loudness and LUFS above) and making sure that the listener will pay attention to the part of the arrangement that the artist wants them to.
mechanical noise (n.) Recording engineer jargon for the sounds made when you hit the microphone stand with your guitar or the squeaks made by an un-oiled piano pedal, for example. This is best avoided.
metadata (n.) Additional information that is saved inside an audio file which identifies the artist, the song title, the genre of music that the piece belongs to, as well as copyright information and even contact details. The free audio editing software Audacity lets you do this when you create the file but if you forget, mp3tag is a very powerful, free metadata editor which will let you edit multiple audio files at the same time and even allows you to embed your album artwork inside each file (although this does increase the file size). Tip: We recommend adding the track name and your artist name to the metadata of each file you create as a bare minimum.
MIDI (abbr.) Short for Musical Instrument Digital Interface. A way of transmitting performance information to electronic instruments or receiving it from an instrument and recording it so that the performance can be played back again later. Most DAWs have separate ways of dealing with tracks of audio information and MIDI data, and you can’t record one on the other sort of track.
noise floor (n.) The hiss of electrical noise that all pieces of electrical equipment generate. This means that the quietest sound that you can record is usually significantly louder than the complete silence of 0dB. Ye cannae change the laws of physics, cap’n.
non-destructive editing (n.) Most DAWs save the recordings you make as separate digital files and any edits you make to them (shortening the recording, splitting it, moving it about in the track, or applying effects with a plug-in) are internal to the DAW, not the data it’s using. Edits will therefore not change the original file in any way and this is referred to as non-destructive editing. So experiment away! If you don’t like the results, you can undo the changes you made and try something else. If instead your recording software changes the file so that you can’t get the original recording back, this is known as destructive editing. You don’t want that. Editing tape is destructive editing (although it could be argued that if you keep all of the bits that normally end up on the cutting room floor, then potentially it isn’t).
phaser (n.) Audio effect that splits the input signal into two and then (as the name suggests) alters the phase of one so that it interferes with the other. The resulting swirly filtering effect was first made popular by the Small Faces and soon became so widely used that half a century later it’s still a pop music cliché.
plosive (n.) The explosive little puff of air you make when you say a word beginning with a ‘p’ or a ‘b’. Your microphone will change plosives into nasty thumping sounds, which sound horrible. Singing past your microphone rather than at it can reduce their strength; moving further back from the mic (like they do in The King’s Speech) also helps. Better still, get a pop filter (q.v.).
plug-in (n.) An extra bit of software that you add to your DAW (q.v.) so that it can do things that the stock version can’t. Examples include posher controls for eq (q.v.), more sophisticated reverbs (q.v.) and delays (q.v.) or dedicated plug-ins for mastering (q.v.) such as Ozone by iZotope.
pop filter (n.) A fabric screen placed between the vocalist’s mouth and the microphone in order to reduce plosives (q.v.) or ‘pops’. You can make one yourself out of a coat hanger and pantyhose. Pop filters have the added benefit of reducing the amount of moisture in the vocalist’s breath that gets into the microphone, but please remember to wash them regularly, or they will start to smell. The pop filter, that is, not the vocalist. Although personal hygiene is also a good thing.
predelay (n.) The amount of time in milliseconds between a reverb (q.v.) receiving an input signal and the first reflections being generated by the effect (or received back at the microphone, if you’re doing this for real). Synchronising the predelay so that it synchronises to the bpm of your track will turn a weird muddy mess into the Good Stuff.
proximity effect (n.) The tendency of a microphone to progressively emphasise sounds in the bass frequencies the closer the sound source is to the microphone. Late-night talk radio hosts are all trained to milk this effect for all it’s worth.
quantization (n.) Adjusting the timing of each note of a recording (usually MIDI information) so that it falls closer to (or exactly) on the timing grid in your DAW. In some genres this is a desired effect, although it can result in the beat sounding robotic and lifeless. The opposite practice, where notes are moved off the grid by random amounts is known as humanization, because most human beings don’t always play with such uncanny accuracy.
reverb (n.) Abbr. of reverberation: The wash of indistinct noise reflected back at the listener inside a suitable space with reflective surfaces such as a cathedral, a tiled bathroom, or the disused NATO oil storage tanks at Inchindown in Scotland (you need to watch that YouTube video, because they sound amazing!). Reverb is different to delay (q.v.), which is heard as discrete echoes of the original sound. Reverb can also be referred to jocularly as sploosh, ‘verb, or simply wet. Valhalla DSP’s Supermassive VST plugin is free, and quite possibly the only reverb you’ll ever need. Some fawmers are of the opinion that you can never have too much reverb, but we would advise applying a low cut (q.v.) at about 200 Hz and a high cut (q.v.) at about 12 kHz to any audio signal you send to yours, or you’ll end up with a muddy, washed-out mix.
ring modulator (n.) An audio effect which, when applied to vocals, makes the speaker sound like a Dalek from the long-running television show Doctor Who. Easy access to such an effect is why many songs featuring Dalek vocals have been written for FAWM over the years.
room noise (n.) The background noise in a live recording that gives the listener a sense of the space in which the performance was recorded. In general, recording studios are designed so that room noise is minimised (or is at least made aesthetically pleasing) so that it can then be added back in artificially using digital effects such as reverb (q.v.). In a recording made in a concert venue, you might want to keep more of the sound of the room as a way to convey the excitement of the audience attending the gig.
sidechaining (v.) The art of making an audio effect only activate when it receives a signal from another track in your DAW. Sidechaining the compressor on the keyboard pad of your dance track so that it only works when it hears the kick drum and adjusting the compressor’s attack and release times so that they synchronise with the beat will create the pumping effect that’s so popular in the genre.
transient (n.) The first part of a waveform, which (in the case of something like a snare hit or a kick drum) can be of very short duration but very high amplitude. Transients are good things, in general. Unfortunately some file compression algorithms aren’t all that great at preserving them and if you’re too heavy-handed applying a limiter (q.v.) to your master you will kill all of its transients and mess up the track.
volume (n.) The level of an audio signal coming OUT of an amplifier. See also gain.
VST (n.) Short for Virtual Studio Technology. A software standard for plug-in (q.v.) audio technology that can be added to your DAW (q.v.) introduced by Steinberg Systems in the 1990s.