LAB_03 / VOCABULARY
Prompt vocabulary: what each word signals
Mechanical definitions: what the tool tends to do when a word appears in the Styles field. No poetry.
0 terms
Drums
dry drums- Tells the tool to render the kit with no reverb tail: hits stop dead and the drums sit at the front of the mix.
no room- Strips room reflections from around the kit. Works in Styles as a constraint or in Exclude as room reverb; the result is a close, matte drum sound.
chopped break- Signals a sampled breakbeat cut into slices and reordered, instead of a straight programmed pattern. Pushes the tool toward jungle and breaks phrasing.
ghost notes- Asks for quiet secondary snare hits between the main backbeats. Adds human-sounding detail without changing the core pattern.
rolling hats- Requests continuous fast hi-hat subdivisions with rolls: constant motion at the top of the kit. Core trap signal.
half-time- Places the snare on beat 3 instead of 2 and 4, so the groove feels half as fast as the tempo. Opens space for the 808.
boom bap kit- Points the tool at a sampled 90s hip-hop kit: dusty kick, cracking snare, swung hats. Implies vinyl texture and a looped pattern.
programmed drums- Declares drum-machine sequencing rather than a live drummer: exact repetition, tight grid, no fills unless you ask for them.
brushed snare- Asks for a snare played with brushes: soft attack, airy sweep. Pulls the whole kit toward a live-drummer reading.
sparse percussion- Caps the number of percussion elements and leaves air between hits. Counteracts the tool's tendency to fill every gap.
kick and snare only- Hard limit on the kit: no hats, no shakers, no toms. The most direct way to force a minimal drum arrangement.
Low end
808- Names the pitched drum-machine bass that acts as kick and bassline at once. The tool also reads it as genre information: trap and its branches.
sub-bass- Asks for energy in the lowest band, below roughly 60 Hz: felt more than heard. On its own it implies a synth sub, not a bass guitar.
sliding 808- Makes the 808 glide from note to note instead of retriggering each hit. Produces the bending tails typical of dark trap.
glide- Reinforces pitch movement in the bass: notes bend into each other instead of stepping. Pair it with 808 or sub to aim it at the low end.
sustained sub- Asks for long held sub notes with minimal movement: a floor under the track rather than a bassline. Useful when the drums already carry the motion.
walking bassline- Signals melodic motion in the bass: it walks from note to note instead of holding the root. Expect a written phrase, not a static sub.
low end pressure- Asks for weight and density in the low band as a mix trait, without dictating the instrument. The tool answers with more sub level and longer bass tails.
808 carries the low end- Splits the job: short punchy kick on top, 808 holding all the sub. Prevents kick and bass fighting in the same band.
dub bassline- Points at slow melodic bass with space between notes, dub lineage. Implies room for echoes to answer in the gaps.
Sources
detuned pluck- Asks for a plucked synth or string sitting slightly off pitch. The detune reads as unease; without it the tool defaults to a clean, perfectly tuned pluck.
bell motif- Signals a short bell figure repeating as the lead element. The word motif keeps it a fragment; without it the tool tends to write a full melody on the bell.
chord stab- One short percussive chord hit, not a sustained pad. Classic garage and jungle source; the tool places it on the grid instead of letting it ring.
dusty sample- Tells the tool the melodic source should sound lifted from old media: filtered, lo-fi, slightly unstable. It dirties the source, not the whole mix.
field recording- Asks for real-world ambient sound as a layer: street, rain, machines. The tool uses it as a background bed, not as an instrument.
chant as texture- Allows voice but demotes it to an atmospheric layer. The load-bearing part is as texture: it keeps the tool from writing lyrics or a lead vocal.
found sound- Requests non-musical objects as percussion or texture: hits, clicks, scrap metal. Pushes the tool away from stock drum samples.
muffled piano- A piano heard through a wall or a closed lid: dark, felted, no bright attack. Without muffled the tool serves a bright concert grand.
Space
dry- No audible reverb; the source sits right at the front. The strongest anti-cinematic signal there is; pair with close-mic to lock it in.
close-mic- Puts the microphone on the source: detail, breath, zero room. Reinforces dry and tells the tool proximity matters more than space.
room- Short early reflections, a small identifiable space. The middle rung: more real than dry, far from a hall. Qualify it: tight room, small dusty room.
cavernous- The space swallows the source: long decay, distant image. Signals scale and menace; drums lose punch in it, so aim it at pads and textures, not the kit.
dub delay- Echoes that repeat, filter down and sink into the mix. The tool reads it as an effect and as a genre signal at the same time.
slapback- A single fast echo with no tail. Adds dimension without wash; reads as vintage rather than atmospheric.
washed reverb- Reverb as a permanent layer the sources float in, edges blurred. Trades definition for atmosphere; expect softer transients everywhere.
narrow- Squeezes the stereo image toward mono. Reads as old, pressurized, claustrophobic; it also keeps the low end tight.
wide- Stretches pads and textures to the edges of the stereo field. Use it on atmosphere; asking for a wide low end costs punch.
Texture
tape hiss- A constant bed of analog noise over everything. Marks the recording as old tape; the tool adds it as a layer that fills the silence between hits.
vinyl crackle- Clicks and surface noise from a worn record. Signals sampled-from-vinyl provenance; more rhythmic and irregular than tape hiss.
saturated- Mild analog overdrive across the source: denser harmonics, rounder peaks. Warmth and aggression without reading as distorted.
bit-crushed- Digital degradation: reduced bit depth and sample rate, harsh aliased edges. Reads as broken machine, not warm tape; the opposite corner from saturated.
worn- General wear on the source: dulled highs, unstable pitch, softened attacks. Vaguer than tape or vinyl; useful when you want age without naming the medium.
degraded- Stronger than worn: the medium is audibly failing. Expect dropouts, warble and grit treated as part of the sound, not as a flaw.
clean digital- Explicitly requests zero dirt: full bandwidth, stable pitch, silent background. Useful as contrast when everything else in the prompt leans degraded.
Feel
swing- Shifts the off-beats late off the grid by a consistent amount. The universal knob for making a pattern feel played rather than typed.
shuffled- Leans the subdivisions toward triplets: an uneven, skipping gait. Stronger and more specific than swing; central to UK garage.
laid-back- Asks for a relaxed feel: hits placed slightly late, nothing rushing. The tool lowers urgency across the whole groove, not just the drums.
behind the beat- Places the snare or hits late relative to the grid: the drag that reads as human. More precise than laid-back because it names the mechanism.
quantized- Locks every hit exactly to the grid. Use it when you want machine placement on purpose; it kills human timing variation.
rigid- Asks for mechanical repetition with no timing or velocity variation. Combined with quantized it produces a deliberately cold, sequenced feel.
dragging- Signals a groove that pulls back, almost late everywhere: heavier and slower-feeling than the tempo says. Too much of it reads as sloppy.
tense- Pushes the groove on top of or ahead of the beat: urgency without raising the tempo. The tool tightens spacing and shortens decays.
loose- Allows small timing differences between elements, like players listening to each other. The opposite pole of machine-tight.
pocket- Names the locked relationship between kick and snare that everything else hangs on. Asking to keep the same pocket throughout stops the tool from drifting between sections.
Structure
repetitive motif- Tells the tool to keep one short figure cycling instead of composing new material. Repetition is the point; tension has to come from texture and mix.
no melodic development- Blocks the tool's default arc of melody that builds and resolves. Written as a negative in the prompt or in Exclude; pairs with repetitive motif.
sparse arrangement- Few elements at once, with air between them. Signals restraint to a tool that otherwise fills every register.
dropout- Asks for moments where elements vanish and return: the mix cut down to sub and hats, a bar of near silence. The tool uses it as structure instead of a chorus.
loop-based- Frames the whole track as a loop that evolves by adding and removing layers, not by sections. The most direct instruction against song form.
Vocabulary works in context: assemble full blocks with the prompt builder.