Reference

Glossary

Every term taught on this site, with the lesson where it's introduced. 56 terms so far.

Accent: A note played louder than the notes around it to make it stand out.
Audio: Recorded sound, captured by a microphone or from a file. It's a picture of the sound wave. You can edit it, but you can't change the instrument that made it.
Backbeat: A strong hit on beats 2 and 4, usually from the snare or clap. Almost all pop, rock, and hip-hop has a backbeat.
Bar (measure): A group of beats. The numbers across the top of the Tracks area (called the ruler) are bar numbers.
Beat: The steady pulse you tap your foot to.
Bounce: Exporting your project (or part of it) as a single audio file that plays anywhere, without Logic.
Bus: A path inside Logic that carries sound from one channel strip to another. Sends travel on buses, the same way aux sends travel to an effect on a board.
Channel strip: The vertical column of controls for one track in Logic. It does the same job as one channel on a soundboard.
Clap: A hand-clap sound used in electronic and hip-hop music, often layered with or instead of the snare.
Count-in: One bar of clicks before recording starts, so you're ready to play on beat 1.
Cycle: A section of the song that plays over and over. It's shown as a yellow bar in the ruler.
DAW (Digital Audio Workstation): Software for recording, creating, editing, and mixing music on a computer. Logic Pro is a DAW.
Drum Machine Designer: A Logic software instrument that holds a whole electronic drum kit. Each kit piece is on its own key and gets its own row in the Step Sequencer.
Drummer: Logic's virtual drummer. You pick a genre and a drummer character, and it plays a realistic, human-sounding part.
Drummer region: The yellow region a Drummer track creates. It holds the performance settings, not individual notes.
Eighth note: Half a beat. There are 8 in a bar of 4/4, counted 1 & 2 & 3 & 4 &.
Fill: A short burst of extra drum hits at the end of a section that leads into the next one, often in the last bar.
Four-on-the-floor: A kick on every beat (1, 2, 3, 4). It's the foundation of house, techno, and disco.
Genre: A category of music defined by shared sounds, rhythms, and traditions, such as house, hip-hop, trap, or rock.
Grid: The vertical lines in an editor that mark bars, beats, and smaller divisions. Notes line up with the grid.
Half-time feel: A groove where the snare hits only on beat 3 instead of on 2 and 4, so a fast tempo feels half as fast. Common in trap.
Hi-hat: Two cymbals that sound a short “ts” when closed and a longer “tssss” when open. It keeps time and fills the space between the kick and snare.
Hi-hat roll: A quick burst of very fast hi-hat hits (sixteenths or faster), a signature of trap.
Kick (bass drum): The lowest drum. It gives a beat its weight and usually lands on strong beats like 1.
Loop: Making a region repeat over and over to the right until it hits another region or the end of the song.
Metronome: Logic's click track. It plays a click on every beat so you can stay in time.
MIDI: Musical Instrument Digital Interface. Instructions, not sound: which note, when it starts, how hard it was played, and how long it lasts. A software instrument turns those instructions into sound.
MIDI keyboard: A piano-style keyboard that sends MIDI to the computer. On its own it makes no sound. The software instrument makes the sound.
MP3: A compressed audio file format. It's much smaller, a little lower in quality, and easy to share and stream.
Musical Typing: A Logic feature that turns your computer keyboard into a small piano keyboard. Useful when a MIDI keyboard isn't handy.
Open hi-hat: A hi-hat hit with the cymbals apart, so it rings longer. In house music it often lands on the “&” between kicks.
Pattern region: A region made for the Step Sequencer. It repeats its pattern and can be looped like any region.
Pencil tool: A tool for drawing new notes by clicking in the Piano Roll.
Piano Roll: Logic's editor for MIDI notes. Pitch runs up and down (a piano keyboard is on the left), and time runs left to right. Each note is a bar: where it starts is when it plays, and its length is how long it lasts.
Playhead: The vertical line that shows where you are in the song. Logic plays and records from the playhead.
Plug-in: A piece of software that adds a sound or an effect to a channel strip, such as an EQ, a compressor, or an instrument.
Project: One Logic file that holds everything for one song: its tracks, recordings, settings, and mix.
Q-Strength: How far quantize moves each note toward the grid. 100% puts notes exactly on the grid. Lower values move them only part of the way, which keeps some human feel.
Quantize: Moving MIDI notes to the nearest grid line (for example, the nearest 1/16 note) so they're exactly in time.
Quarter note: A note that lasts one beat. There are 4 in a bar of 4/4.
Region: A block on a track that holds recorded material. MIDI regions hold notes. Audio regions hold sound waves.
Session Player: A virtual musician in Logic that plays a part for you and follows your settings. Logic's Session Players include a Drummer.
Sixteenth note: A quarter of a beat. There are 16 in a bar of 4/4, counted 1 e & a 2 e & a… Most beats in this course are built on 16ths.
Snap: The setting that decides which grid line a note jumps to when you draw or move it, such as 1/4, 1/8, or 1/16 note.
Snare: A sharp, cracking drum in the middle of the range. It usually lands on beats 2 and 4.
Software instrument: A virtual instrument that lives inside Logic, such as a piano, synth, or drum kit. You play it with a MIDI keyboard.
Step: One box in the Step Sequencer. By default each step is one sixteenth note, so 16 steps make one bar.
Step Sequencer: A Logic editor where you build a beat by switching boxes (steps) on and off in a grid, like a classic drum machine.
Stereo Out: The main output channel strip in Logic. Every track ends up here. It works like the main mix fader on a soundboard.
Swing: Delaying every second sixteenth (the “e” and the “a”) slightly, so the rhythm bounces instead of marching. 50% is straight; higher values swing more.
Tempo / BPM: How fast the beat goes, measured in beats per minute (BPM). 60 BPM is one beat per second.
Time signature: How many beats are in each bar. 4/4 means 4 beats per bar, and it's the time signature for almost all the music in this course.
Track: One horizontal lane in a project that holds one instrument or one sound source. Each track has its own channel strip.
Variation: A small change to a repeating pattern, such as a missing kick, extra hi-hats, or a fill, to keep the listener interested.
Velocity: How hard a MIDI note was played, from 1 (softest) to 127 (hardest). Higher velocity usually means louder and brighter.
WAV: A full-quality audio file format. It's large, and it's what producers send to each other.