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Deejay dictionary A-Z


Deejay Dictionary

33 & 1/3 Rpms
The speed of a 12" record

45 Rpms
The speed of a 7" vinyl record.

Aux
Auxilary channel, often accepts rca connections and are unbalanced audio signals on a device

Break
Section of a song, often just drums

Bpm
Beats per minute
The tempo of a track

Crossfader
The horizontal placed slidepotentiometer used to control the intensity between tracks. 

Cue
The listeningchannel where the signal only is outputted for the discjockey and this is where the testlistening is made before the record is finaly mixed.

Dubplate
Vinyl record often produced as a single copy direct engraved by a dubplatemastering engineer.

Drop
The break in a song, or often a bridge inbetween a chorus and the verse.

Eleven
This is an expression for the highest gain on a potentiometer. Full volume or intensity. On max.

Fader
The Slide potentiometer that controls the volume of a channel or the crossfade between tracks

Filter
Low pass filter that filters out the high frequency. High pass filter that filters out the low frequencies or band pass that filters out the low and the highs leaving the mid.

Gain
The intesity of volume on a track

High impediance
The signal strength of a audio source

Velocity
intesity when hiting a key on a keyboard. How fast the key is beeing hit is the same as mesuring how hard it is beeing pressed.

Mixtape:
A blend of songs made on a cassette tape, sometimes just a songs without mixing.
Used today as an word for a mix. 

PA
Public adress

Paradise garage
Night club where the garage scene was invented 

Phono
The phonegraph. Often indicated on a inputchannel for a vinyl record player. Those have a different level than auxchannels.

Rpm
Revolutions per minute.
The amount of revolutions of a record every minute. This is the standard of how fast the speed of a record is.

Selectah
Jamaican word for a dj

Send
A signal can be sent thru a auxsend from a mixer to a audiosource such as a effect device.

Slipmat
The feltmat placed inbetween the record and the vinylplatter.
Used for making the platter spinn freely as the vinyl is held when cueing/backcueing.

Studio 54
Legendary disco club

Sync
The syncronizationbutton on a dj controller that adjustes 1 track so it plays on the same beat and tempo as on the other channel.

Tonearm.
The arm where the cartidge styli is connected on a turntable. The are s-shaped tonearms and there are straight tonearms.

Pitch
The speed of a record. Can also mean the tunesetting for a musical source.

Urei
An old mixer often used in disco dj setups. The most famous model was the 1620 urei mixer.

White label:
Comes from those unsigned  records. Means, the record is released without a music publishing and is by the artist or the group himself.

Warehouse
Legendary nightclub in chicago where the house music genre got is name

X-fader
the crossfader

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