Music Glossary W
Music Glossary W is a collection of music industry terms, words, and phrases, that begin with the letter “W”, from Wah Pedal (Wah Wah) to Wow.
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Music Glossary W Terms
Guitar effect device where the frequency of a bandpass filter is varied using a foot pedal control, giving a distinctive ‘Wah Wah’ sound.
Unit of electrical power equal to 1 Joule per second. Watts can be calculated using the formula:
P = IVo8loo
Where:
- P is Power (Watts)
- I is Current (Amperes/Amps)
- V is Voltage (Volts)
A wave file is a PC audio file format.
A waveform is the characteristic shape of a graphically displayed audio signal.
The distance over which a wave repeats itself exactly once.
Unit of magnetic flux.
Noise measured within the audio frequency range using a selective frequency measuring device.
An audio signal that includes an audio effect or processor.
Originally these are pre-production vinyl pressings that don’t have a final printed label.
The term is now often used to cover short-run club vinyl.
A random noise signal that has the same sound energy level at all frequencies.
In Music Marketing, Windowing is where an artist delays releasing their music to streaming and broadcast services, creating a Release Window, forcing fans to buy the product if they want to listen to the music immediately.
In simple terms, it is the selective release of music tracks. This can be:
- a release to radio and TV before a retail release
- a release to retail before freemium streaming release
The accurate timing of digital audio is critical to the synchronisation of interconnected digital audio equipment.
A ‘Word Clock’, or ‘Wordclock’, is the ‘metronome’ that controls digital audio timing. The word clock also identifies the start and end of each digital word or sample, and which channel (left or right) samples belong to.
Clock source used by your audio interface to synchronize “words” of sample data.
A form of employment agreement/contract, such that ownership is removed from the actual author/creator of a work. Any work produced under a work-for-hire agreement, belongs to the employer of the author, not the author. This is because the work is produced entirely under the remit of their job.
Copyright must be legally assigned to the employer by way of a signed, written contract. The contract must explicitly state that the author gives up any copyright claim or ownership of works created in relation to the agreement. Verbal agreements are completely insufficient and will not hold up in court.
Work-for-hire agreements or clauses don’t just apply to songs. They are used for all manners of creative works, including advertising jingles, songwriters, content for some production music libraries, images and artwork, video or film production.
Unwanted frequency modulation introduced by the recording/reproduction process. Normally Wow is used to describe frequencies between 0.1 Hz and 10 Hz.
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