PAT words

Some favorite words of mine that find themselves in the language of my discipline:

1) Sample - This word is used a lot in my world, either referring to units of signal processing (such as the Sampling Rate), or an audio recording being used (sampled) in a new/different context. But what I really like about this word is simply that, at its core, all it means is there are multiple ideas that create the larger picture, and they are all equally important.

2) Process - I hear this word a lot when it comes to my discipline in a Live setting. "Live processing..." Which isn't really that specific, right? So what I try to think of when I'm "processing" something/someone, is that I'm trying to be an instrumentalist of a pre-existing sound, without losing what originally drew me to want to "process" the sound in the first place.

3) Produce - Everyone knows what a producer does, right? ...A lot of times, it's usually a grey area. Some people like to look to the individual who conceived the idea,  while others look to whoever first made the beat before there was a vocalist on top of it. When I think of what a "producer" is, I think of the individual that was essential to the work being created, to getting all the musical elements and artists that were necessary together; the one who pushes each artist until they've recorded the most perfect take, just so they can be the one to put a seal on the end of it, saying "that's it, we're finished."

Honestly, there are so many poor views on what PAT is, I feel, and it simply has to do with this idea of us all studying the same thing... because a lot of the time, we aren't. I think people would have to meet all of us just to begin to grasp just how diverse our department is. Because based on who've you've met, your view of the average PAT student could be quite tainted. Some of us are mainly interested in a lot of coding aspects and using other various computer processing for work with audio, others are into instrument design, and others like to get in the studio. (There are even more different avenues in PAT that I could list; I just think my point is already evident.) SO... with that being said, I don't think there's one description of what a PAT major is that I hear the most or is the most wrong, I just think that the very idea that there could be one description is a wrong thought to have in the first place.