When you first start working with other engineers, there is a lot of terminology that commonly used to describe a particular sound, effect or problem which can be of a problem if you haven’t heard any of it before.
Words like ‘fat’ or ‘thin’ are used to describe the tone of an instrument, ‘wet’ or ‘dry’ relate to the amount of reverb on a recording. All of these words you wouldn’t normally associate with sound, but they do have a very specific and widely accepted meaning across the industry, so it is an absolute necessity to understand them.
Testing1212 is a great resource when it comes to this, it’s got a definition of pretty much every phrase, term or slang word that engineers use from ‘echo’ to ‘sidechain’. Be sure to check it out and let us know of any particular pages you found helpful, and especially if there are any phrases missing!
[image via Horia Varlan]
