Our back-to-school musical dictionary

School’s back in session... your tan lines have almost disappeared and beachy breezes are a thing of the past. The good news in all of this is that your batteries have been recharged! With your highlighters, your notebooks and a full backpack, you’re ready to take on the school year!

As you are always in our thoughts and since we know that you are already reminiscing about vacation, we decided to make life easier. Even if Karaoke Version is a bubble of fun and entertainment, practicing an instrument and improving can sometimes take a wee bit of work and brain power. That’s why we concocted a little dictionary with all of the little, difficult musical terms that make you cringe like nails on a chalkboard.

BPM: It’s no coincidence that the three-letter abbreviation, Beats per minute (also referred to as tempo) is also used in medicine to determine heart rate. In the case of music, BPM is regarded as the pulse of the song. Each musical style can be grouped by a typical BPM. For example, the tango evolves around 50 BPM, house music averages at 125 and when the splittercore panics, it is between 500 and 1000.

CDG: This is not a reference to the Co-director of Greatness or a term for the contribution to the development of debt. This is nothing more than a karaoke video format that is widely used and accepted by such karaoke software as KaraFun. For info, Karaoke Version also provides KFN, WMV AND MP4.

Click track: This is both your greatest ally and your worst nightmare. This is the track that produces the sound of the metronome. It is used to set and follow the tempo of the song (the famous BPM mentioned above), it allows you to stay on track should you choose to follow it like a shadow. Should you choose not to follow it, you can only blame yourself for any musical consequences: a metronome is never wrong and never skips a beat.

Custom Backing Track: This one’s the lethal weapon of Karaoke Version. Not only do you have at your disposition thousands and thousands of tracks, but you can also personalize them to your needs and liking: vary the sound balance (the famous pan), mute (cut out the sound) of certain individual tracks in order to only keep certain instruments, or completely remove others, listen to only one track (the symbol "S" pour solo) then move on to the next, add a countdown to the click… You are the master of the song!

Instrument Preset: This is a prefinished adjustment. On Karaoke Version, you’ll notice it under the choice of type of tracks (drums, bass, guitar, vocals, etc.).

Pan: This one is all about the balance of sound between left and right. In the case of a Custom Backing Track, you can vary it according to your liking.

Playback: You’re thinking... "This one is a cinch! It’s the art of lip-syncing a little ditty on stage before anyone notices." That’s the overall idea, except that the sound is adjusted to the instruments, allowing you to sing over said instruments. A playback is nothing more than a musical accompaniment on tape. That’s also the main idea behind karaoke: accompanied with music and without voice in order to sing over the playback. Another example, a guitar playback includes all instruments except the guitar in order to play along with yours in the middle of all the music. It’s the perfect tool in order to work on your sense of rhythm placement etc.

Published on: September 6, 2016