Atoms

Wave and particle models of sound are complementary, not competing

Waveform shape determines timbre — the tonal quality distinguishing instruments at the same pitch

Wavetable synthesis stores one cycle of a waveform and replays it at a variable rate to set pitch

WBMX FM and the Hot Mix 5 DJs were the radio platform that spread Chicago house beyond its initial club context

We do not perceive all frequencies as equally loud even at equal physical amplitude

We recognise shapes as identical despite rotation, scaling, or distortion

Wearing wrist braces during sleep holds the wrists in the optimal healing posture for circulation

Web Audio API, WebMIDI, and Tone.js are the browser-native stack for interactive music apps

WebChucK runs ChucK in the browser via WebAssembly and the Web Audio AudioWorklet

WebGPU has three shader stages: vertex computes positions, fragment computes colors, compute runs a function N times

Weekly curation-and-critique of new-media projects builds a practitioner's reference library and critical vocabulary

West Coast synthesis adds harmonics to simple waves; East Coast synthesis filters them from complex waves

Where a variable is declared determines its scope: outside functions is global, inside is local

White noise contains all audible frequencies at equal amplitude, making it an ideal filter source

White, pink, and brown noise differ in how power is distributed across the frequency spectrum

Working with plenty of headroom throughout the DAW signal path prevents the need to fix overloaded mixes by turning them down — a problem with no solution

Wrapping SuperCollider lines in outer parentheses makes a code block that evaluates as one unit on a single keypress

You recognize future garage by its palette of pitched vocal chops, warm filtered reese bass, dark atmospheres, and vinyl crackle

! in mini-notation replicates a step n times at equal duration

'Broken techno' is the harder Detroit-rooted variant of broken beat produced by techno artists adding jazz elements and breaks

'Intelligent techno' / IDM emerged as a reaction against rave commercialisation, repositioning techno for home listening

'Liveness' adds instant audience-performer feedback, shared risk, improvisation, and ephemeral uniqueness that playback cannot replicate

'Tekkno' was the harder German techno variant of the early 1990s, claimed to derive from EBM rather than Detroit

"Royalty-free" and Creative Commons are different licensing models, and neither simply means "free to use"

@ in mini-notation elongates a step proportionally, weighting its duration relative to neighbours

0 dBm is 1 milliwatt; it implies an impedance context unlike dBu

1995 DnB was defined by a productive conflict between 'elegant urbanity' (jazz-influenced) and 'ruffneck tribalism' (hiphop/ragga/dub)

1V/oct pitch is exponential, f = f₀·2^V, with audio oscillators baselined at C4 (261.63 Hz) at 0 V

2 Live Crew's obscenity case ended with rap ruled protected speech, a landmark for recorded music

32/64-bit floating-point arithmetic in DAWs provides vast internal headroom but does not protect against plug-in overloading

3D geometry in p5.js needs a light source to convey shape and depth; ambient vs directional/point light differ

7th extensions are the most useful chord color in electronic music; minor-7 and major-9 define the deep-house/dub-techno pad sound

A 2D Perlin noise field can displace every point in a regular grid to create organic cloud-like structure

A 4040 binary divider generates integer subharmonics of a master oscillator, creating harmonic series or rhythmic subdivisions

A bandpass filter's Q is its center frequency divided by its bandwidth — high Q means a narrow, resonant peak

A basic hi-hat patch routes white noise through a highpass filter and a VCA controlled by a decay-only envelope

A bind group links GPU resources to shader binding points and must be created from a layout and set before each draw or dispatch call

A blurred copy of the image added back via screen or add blend is a cheap bloom/glow effect

A boom bap hi-hat line runs steady 16ths with a cowbell on bar-2 beat 1 and an open hat on bar-2 beat 4

A Bounding Volume Hierarchy cuts ray-intersection cost from linear to roughly logarithmic by skipping missed subtrees

A busy drum pattern works best when the melodic elements are sparse, and vice versa

A cabasa sample substitutes for an open hi-hat in UK Garage because it adds energy without the harshness of an open hat

A CD4049 CMOS inverter wired as an analog amplifier sweeps from clean preamp to fuzz

A characteristic gabber/early-hardcore sound first appeared on T99's 'Anasthasia' (1991)

A Chaser steps through a sequence of functions with configurable timing, direction, and loop mode

A chord is in root position when the root is in the bass; first and second inversions place the third or fifth in the bass

A chord-stab sounds all tones together with a tight envelope; an arpeggio plays them sequentially, turning harmony into rhythm

A class is a template; an instance is one concrete object created from that template

A clear base pulse must be established before it is broken — an unbroken pulse is static and an unbroken lack of pulse is formless

A Clip Slot is the container; firing it via OSC triggers play/pause regardless of whether a clip exists

A CMOS oscillator drives a Piezo disk directly but cannot drive a loudspeaker — the disk is the correct low-power output

A CMOS Schmitt Trigger inverter with one resistor and one capacitor makes a square-wave oscillator

A Collection runs multiple QLC+ functions simultaneously as a single triggerable unit

A color constellation maintains its character when transposed to a different key, just as a melody does

A color space's primaries define which physical red, green, and blue it can produce

A color space's white point defines what full-intensity (1,1,1) looks like in the real world

A color's expressive weight shifts with its position in the composition field — low blue is heavy, high blue is light

A complete visual design can be built from one hue using only lighter and darker variations in HSB

A complex oscillator pairs two oscillators so one FM- or AM-modulates the other to enrich a simple wave

A composition of lines and points acquires more pronounced balance by the addition of a plane, because lighter weights require the heavier