Atoms

A snare roll foreshadows a trance transition by escalating in velocity, frequency, and volume

A soft knee makes compression progressively engage below the threshold, producing more transparent results

A solid source's resolution sets mask edge quality: higher resolution gives smoother edges

A Solo Frame in QLC+ enforces mutual exclusion so only one button is active at a time

A source assigned to a layer becomes that layer's texture, so one source can feed many layers independently

A spectrogram is a time-frequency power map created by computing the STFT frame-by-frame and plotting energy per bin

A spectroscope displays a signal's spectral content — amplitude vs. frequency — in real time

A spectrum analyzer supplements limited low-frequency monitoring by visualizing octave balance at the bottom end

A Speed Dial widget adjusts multiple functions' fade and duration speeds in real time with tap tempo

A static DC voltage (offset) can open VCAs, transpose pitch, reset sequencers, and bias any CV destination

A strong focal point is created by contrast, isolation, or convergence — not by competing elements

A Strudel voice must be tagged `.analyze('hydra')` to contribute to the FFT — an untagged voice is inaudible to the visuals even if loud in the speakers

A sub oscillator one or two octaves below the main oscillator adds low-end weight without audibly changing the main timbre

A sub-30 ms Haas delay widens a mono signal but is mono-incompatible and lopsided

A sub-synth reinforcing a bass can thin the low end when its waveform is out of phase with the bass fundamental

A supersaw lead is built from two detuned saw-wave oscillators with many voices and a subtle LFO pitch modulation

A swing setting of 60–65% produces the rolling feel characteristic of UK garage

A SynthDef is a reusable named synth recipe; a Synth is a running instance of it

A SynthDef is a reusable recipe for sound; a Synth is one execution of that recipe

A synthesized snare combines a pitched sine transient with white noise through a fast filter envelope

A synthesized snare combines a tuned membrane tone with a decaying noise component

A Synthwave bassline is built by following the root note of each chord

A Synthwave lead should be simple enough to whistle after one or two listens

A tan() wave drives motion that shoots off-screen and returns from the opposite side, unlike a bounded sin() wave

A tempo-matched delay sinks into the groove; an unmatched delay pops out as a distinct echo

A tempo-synced square-wave LFO on pitch produces a rhythmic octave-jumping lead

A three-terminal voltage regulator (78xx) turns a noisy wall-wart into a clean, fixed supply voltage

A three.js Mesh is the combination of a Geometry (shape) and a Material (appearance) and nothing is drawn until both are combined

A Tidal pattern is a function from a time arc to a list of events, not a stored sequence

A TidalCycles pattern is built in two layers: a mini-notation sequence as source material, then transformations applied to it

A tone response curve encodes intensity non-linearly to match human brightness perception

A too-fast release causes audible pumping; a too-slow release causes the compressor to ride gain continuously

A tool's affordances and omissions silently shape the musical ideas a performer can conceive

A trance gate rhythmically chops a sustained chord to add motion

A trap hi-hat roll is 32nd notes whose velocities are sculpted into accents to make a stuttering texture

A triggered drum sample must be timing- and phase-aligned to the original by hand, or it cancels instead of reinforcing

A uniform buffer holds per-draw-call constants visible to all shader invocations, unlike per-vertex attributes or writable storage buffers

A VAE generates sound by encoding a spectrogram to a latent point, decoding it, and inverting the STFT

A variance schedule beta_t controls how quickly noise accumulates across DDPM timesteps

A VC Slider in Playback mode combines function start/stop and intensity control in one fader

A VC Submaster Slider scales the intensity of all other widgets in the same frame

A VCV Rack polyphonic cable carries up to 16 channels so one patch chain voices multiple notes

A very short reverb behaves like EQ or a sustain enhancer rather than a spatial effect

A vignette darkens frame edges to concentrate attention inward and give a generative field coherence

A visual pulse is amplitude-following, not beat-locked, and will drift from the musical grid

A vocoder imposes a voice onto a synth carrier to produce robotic 80s-style vocals

A voltage-controlled amplifier driven by an envelope generator shapes a sound's loudness over time

A voltage-controlled filter at maximum resonance self-oscillates into a sine-wave oscillator

A voltage-controlled oscillator's frequency is set by an applied control voltage, not just a manual knob

A VPT playlist auto-crossfades through a clip sequence, requiring each clip to outlast twice the crossfade

A VPT preset stores the whole live state of layers and sources, not a rendered image

A walking bass outlines the harmony by passing through chord tones and chromatic approach notes between roots

A wavefolder reflects a wave back on itself past a threshold, creating high harmonics instead of clipping

A waveform and its set of harmonics are two equivalent descriptions of the same sound

A wavetable oscillator scales a phasor by the table size to index a stored waveform array

A WebGPU canvas context must be configured with a device and the device's preferred texture format before drawing

A WebGPU draw call requires setPipeline, setVertexBuffer, and draw called in sequence on a render pass encoder

A WebGPU render loop re-records and re-submits a command buffer each frame; requestAnimationFrame or setInterval drives the cadence

A WebGPU render pass with loadOp 'clear' and a clearValue fills the attached texture with a solid RGBA color

A WebGPU uniform is a shader global held constant for every invocation of one draw call