No jargon defined with more jargon. Each entry is short enough to read between takes.
A display that shows text scrolling at reading speed so a performer can read it while looking straight ahead. In music production it shows lyrics near the microphone instead of a script near a camera.
The third-generation Virtual Studio Technology plugin format created by Steinberg. It is the standard way third-party instruments, effects and utilities load inside a DAW on Windows and macOS, using one shared plugin folder per system.
A digital audio workstation: the software you record, edit and mix in. Cubase, Logic Pro, Ableton Live, Pro Tools, FL Studio, Studio One, Reaper and Cakewalk are the ones most vocal sessions run on.
The moving marker showing the current position on a DAW timeline. Everything time-based in a session is measured against it, which is why a prompter that reads the playhead stays accurate through rewinds and loops.
The play, stop, record, rewind and loop controls of a DAW, and the clock they drive. Plugins can read the transport state, which is how a lyrics display knows whether the song is running and where it is.
Building one final vocal from the best parts of several takes. The editor chooses per line or per phrase and crossfades between them, which is far quicker when every take was sung with consistent phrasing.
Recording over a specific section of an existing take without re-recording the whole track. The singer needs a couple of lines of lead-in to match the energy and phrasing of the surrounding material.
Looping a section and recording a new take on each pass, stacking them in lanes to comp from later. Every lap starts at the same point, which makes it the fastest way to gather usable options.
Stacked rows holding multiple recorded takes on one track, letting you audition and select between them. Most modern DAWs create them automatically when you record over an existing region.
A plain-text lyric format with a timestamp at the start of each line, used by karaoke players, media players and lyric-video tools. Timestamps are written as minutes, seconds and hundredths in square brackets.
Performing over a backing track with the lyrics displayed and usually highlighted in time. Commercial karaoke relies on pre-timed lyric data, which is a different mechanism from a prompter following a live DAW timeline.
A record of how the tempo changes across a project, rather than a single fixed BPM. Because DAW positions are measured in bars and beats, anything reading the timeline follows the map automatically.
Beats per minute — the speed of the music. Useful for estimating how long a line of lyrics has to be sung, which is how you tell whether a lyric actually fits the melody before the session.
The number of syllables in a lyric line, which determines whether it fits the melodic phrase. Counting is the quickest way to spot a line that reads well on paper but cannot be sung in the space available.
The match between the natural stress of spoken words and the stresses of the melody. Good prosody makes a lyric feel inevitable; bad prosody makes a singer fight the line even when every syllable technically fits.
The most memorable part of a song — often the title line, sung at the point the listener is most likely to remember it. Hooks are usually short, repeated, and built from plain, concrete language.
The melody and lyrics written over an existing instrumental. Topline writers work fast against a finished track, which is exactly the situation where memorising a brand-new lyric is unrealistic.
A rough vocal recorded as a reference for arranging and editing, not intended for release. Scratch takes are usually cut quickly, often by the writer, and often before the lyric is finished.
The control-room microphone that lets an engineer speak to the performer in the booth. Every talkback interruption ends a take, so anything that reduces the need to explain where the song is speeds up the session.
An acoustically treated space for recording voice, isolated from the control room. Because it is isolated, the performer's only sources of information are the headphones and whatever screen faces them.
The action that makes a DAW re-read its plugin folders and pick up newly installed items. Hosts scan at startup and on demand, so a plugin installed while the DAW was open will not appear until a rescan.
An absolute time reference in hours, minutes, seconds and frames, used to align audio with picture or with other machines. Distinct from bars and beats, which describe musical rather than clock position.
Re-recording dialogue in a studio to replace or add to production sound, matched to picture. ADR sessions are prompt-driven by nature, since the performer is reading lines against a moving reference.
The delay between audio entering a system and leaving it, introduced by buffering and by processing. Plugins that do not process audio, such as a lyrics display, report no additional latency.
How many samples the audio interface processes per cycle. Small buffers reduce monitoring latency for the singer and raise CPU load; large buffers do the opposite and suit mixing rather than tracking.
A pre-built DAW project containing your usual tracks, routing, plugins and window layout. For vocal work a template with the prompter already inserted and sized saves the same five minutes every single session.