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Glossary of Terms

Accompaniment
An instrumental or vocal part designed to support or complement a melody

Chord
A chord is simply the combination of different music notes played together at the same time to produce a tone. There are many different types of chords. In a song, chords usually make up the background rhythm. On a piano or keyboard, chords are usually played with the left hand, while the melody is usually played with the right hand.

Intelligent Chords are automatically generated chords by Creative Prodikeys DM to accompany the melody played on the keyboard.

Fixed Chord Progression is a set of chord changes, or harmonies, around which a composition has been written or played. Band musicians commonly use this for practicing music improvisation skills.

Chord Root
The most fundamental note of a chord, often the bass note, which usually contains the other members of the chord in its overtones.

Chord Type
Variation of related note arrangement to form a chord. The different chord type includes: Major, Minor, Seventh, Suspended, Diminished, Augmented etc.

Digital Audio Format

MIDI
MIDI (or Musical Instrument Digital Interface) is an international hardware and software standard for exchanging data (such as musical codes and events) between electronic musical devices and computers from different manufacturers. Instruments equipped with MIDI can communicate with each other and with computers.

The music keyboard on your Creative Prodikeys DM is a MIDI instrument. When you press the keys on your MIDI keyboard, no sound is actually produced. Only MIDI messages, which contain data such as the keys and the duration for which they are pressed are generated. These MIDI messages are then transmitted to a MIDI-compatible device (such as your audio card) that produces the sound you hear. This is why it is possible to easily replace one instrument sound by another on your MIDI keyboard. MIDI messages can be recorded, saved as MIDI file and edited using a MIDI sequencer.

MP3 (MPEG 3)
A member of the MPEG compression family, MP3 (MPEG Layer 3) is a commonly used compressed digital audio format. MP3 encoding transforms digital audio files (like the songs on your CD) to provide reasonable audio quality in relatively small file sizes.

WAV (Wave)
An uncompressed digital audio format, WAVE files are used often in systems running Microsoft Windows, and are of high audio quality.

EAX Audio Technology
EAX technology delivers advanced audio functionality and performance, adding sophisticated audio processing capabilities, interactive and high-definition sound to digital entertainment. EAX technologies are implemented across a range of audio hardware solutions, system software, application software, and application programming interfaces (APIs) from Creative. With EAX technology-enabled products, you can shape and customize your audio experience. Certain EAX features provide advanced audio capabilities for music composition and sound design. EAX technology is redefining the audio experience.

Environmental Effects
A collection of environment presets, simulating real-life audio environments, such as Concert hall, Cathedral, and Auditorium, is made available for your audio playback enhancement. For example, the Concert Hall preset will make you feel as though you were listening to music in a Concert Hall.

Ending The closing bars of a music piece to end the song.

Fill-in Harmonies, melodic and rhythmic phrases used to close in or cover an "empty" section of a melodic line in the music.

FunTunes FunTunes are a set of music loops (Accompaniment, bass, drums, phases and sound effects) programmed onto the MIDI keys on Creative Prodikeys DM for playing music instantly.

Harmony The simultaneous combination of notes and the ensuing relationships of intervals and chords.

Intro An abbreviation for "Introduction", refers to the opening bars of a piece of music setting up the rest of the song

Key The tonal center based on the tonic (foundation) note of the scale. Music written in Major keys tends to be bright and cheerful. Music written in Minor keys tends to sound sorrowful and melancholic.

Learnable Songs Songs programmed to let users learn play in five guided lessons in the Learn mode on on Creative Prodikeys DM software.

Melody A melody is the combination of single music notes played in sequence to produce a rhythmical tune. On a piano or keyboard, chords are usually played with the left hand, while the melody is usually played with the right hand.

Middle C "Middle C" is the note that falls directly between the bass clef staff and the treble clef staff. "Middle C" is also the piano key that falls closest to the middle of all the other keys on a full-sized piano with eighty-eight keys.

MIDI MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) is a protocol designed for recording and playing back music on digital synthesizers that is supported by many makes of personal computer sound cards. Rather than representing musical sound directly, it transmits information about how music is produced. The command set includes note-ons, note-offs, key velocity, pitch bend and other methods of controlling a synthesizer. A MIDI file is a digital music format.

MIDI Sequencer A MIDI Sequencer is a computer program or an electronic device that lets you arrange and send MIDI messages to a MIDI synthesizer for playback. A MIDI sequencer can also record MIDI messages sent from a MIDI instrument and save them as a MIDI sequence file (*.MID). Many musician s use MIDI sequencers to compose and rearrange their songs in MIDI format.

MIDI Sequencing To create a music piece with different instrumental parts by recording multiple tracks of music one on top of the other while listening to what was recorded previously.

Octave A term to describe a series of notes on the musical keyboard which constitute eight distinct notes.

Penta Tunes Penta Tunes are music presets consisting of a matching list of rhythms, effects, fill-in and musical instruments of a selected music style on Creative Prodikeys DM software for playing a tune easily.

Quick Start Leaflet A printed leaflet included with the product package that walks you through the installation of your product hardware and software.

Rhythm Rhythm is the arrangement of notes according to their relative duration and relative accentuation to form a pattern. The rhythm of any musical work depends largely on a combination of the time signature (timing of the beats) and the tempo (speed).

Sampling To record and play back a sound in waveforms on synthesizers or computerized instruments.

Scale
A graduated series of musical tones ascending or descending in order of pitch according to a specified scheme of their intervals.

Chromatic (12-Tone) Scale
A Chromatic scale consists of an ascending or descending sequence of 12 semitones.

Diatonic Scale
A Diatonic scale encompasses patterns of seven whole tones and semitones.

Jazz (or Blue) Scale
Jazz scale consists of a slight drop of pitch on the third, fifth, or seventh tones of a standard scale, common in blues and jazz.

Pentatonic (or 5-Tone) Scale
A Pentatonic scale is formed by the black notes of the keyboard, or the white notes C, D, E, G and A - two whole tones, a minor third and a whole tone.

Standard (or 7-Tone) Scale
The white notes of the music keyboard from a lower C to higher C form a standard Major scale.

Score
A written piece of music which shows the notes to be played by a musical instrument.

Stave/Staff
The five horizontal lines upon which musical notes are written.

Jianpu
A numeric notation commonly used in Chinese music scores to represent the musical notes.

Sound Blaster
Sound Blaster is a series of audio cards by Creative Labs which has set the industry standard for PC audio. Sound Blaster Audigy and Audigy 2 series 每 the latest range of audio cards in the Sound Blaster family 每 are empowered with 24-bit ADVANCED HD ™ and EAX ADVANCED HD ™ which gives you the best audio experience with high definition, clarity and realism.

SoundFont
A SoundFont is a data format that defines the information required by your computer to create musical notes or sound effect through wavetable synthesis for your MIDI instrument. It is similar, in concept, to how a character in a word processor can be applied with different character fonts to produce a different look. For more information, visit www.soundfont.com

Tempo
The speed at which a piece of music is played.

Trill
A music effect played by alternating between the main pitch and the pitch a whole or half step above it rapidly.

Tremolo
A vibrating effect produced by rapidly repeating the same note or chord.

Pitch Shift
To shift the original pitch of a song higher or lower by different steps/tones.

Pitch Bend
A continuous controller which can be applied to synthesized note(s). The sound is a raising or lowering of the pitch and changes as you move the pitch bend wheel up and down.

Synthesizer
A music keyboard with computer memory onboard which stores a bank of different sounds, many of which will be traditional instrument sounds.