Distorted things..

[steevio]

there is definitely good and bad distortion.

there's probably just as much an art to getting distortion right as there is to any other aspect of music.

tubes work because they add even harmonic distortion in an impossibly smooth way, so its musical.

but not everybody wants that. i dont personally dont like digital distortion, but it has potential to be used in an interesting way.

[oblioblioblio]

there is definitely good and bad distortion.

there's probably just as much an art to getting distortion right as there is to any other aspect of music.

tubes work because they add even harmonic distortion in an impossibly smooth way, so its musical.

but not everybody wants that. i dont personally dont like digital distortion, but it has potential to be used in an interesting way.

yeah it's absolutelt totally 100% dependent on context and the user.

I don't want to bang on all my life about analogue, it brings hostility and some people treat it as elitism. But after using many many many high quality software distortions, paid and free ones, simple and complicated ones... the very second I switched on a crappy horrible noisy fuzz pedal I instantly felt disgusted by soul-less, pedestrian predictable software I had used before.

Transistor fuzz just sings when you feed it the right stuff and it has so much personality and non -linearity and unpredictablity. I loved it so much ( although I sold the pedal I used, becuase I found it was so geared towards the electric guitar, and I wanted distortions that were complimentary to synths).


I've held off from talking about the often misunderstood and strange tubes, becuase in the situation of just wanting to dirty something up, I don't feel that tubes are the right card to play. But seen as this conversation is somewhat at a tangent anyways, I'll say my bit from my limited experience.

All my experience of tubes is from the oddball genius Eric Barbour AKA Metasonix. That man knows about fucking tubes. My God.

tube distortion is completely beautiful. You have to use one to know. Tubes also make incredible oscillators and filters.

The most incredible distortion I have ever heard is Metaosnix R53, but that thing is complicated, it doesn't actually affect the input waveform, so it preserves bass frequencies, but it tries to sync itself to the pitch of the input signal, more or less successfully, and adds a squarewave ish oscillation to the signal. It is somewhere between absolutely disgusting and horrible sounding, and absolutely beautiful choirs of blissed out complex harmony.

[gowans]

ive noticed most people who dont like digital distortion stem from playing a guitar with an amplifier, i used to own a small marshall valvestate, but i always wanted a full valve like a jcm45 after i read that the distortion can be subtle or heavy depending on how hard u attack the string on your guitar, like when u hear old blues records and they start breaking up/distorting as the song got more intense. i make electronic music now and the thing i stayed clear of straight away was saturation plugins coz i always thought they sounded like sh!t after hearing so much distortion from playing the guitar, some people can get good use out of them tho, id go with the suggestions of some guitar pedals or even cassette/tape machines, i downsample quite a bit and its a nice effect too.

[gowans]

*double post

[steevio]

ive noticed most people who dont like digital distortion stem from playing a guitar with an amplifier

yes thats where i came from, i had various marshall, Hiwatt and Vox tube amps, and they sounded amazing. transistor amps were a big turn off, the distortion from them was harsh and un-musical.. 99% of pro-guitarists still use tube amps.

i have various transistor based distortion pedals, and they generally dont work too well with synthesizers imo, the one exception being the Turbo Rat, used on many an acid techno track from the 1990s

http://ratdistortion.com/products/turborat/

bang that on a 303 and it will take your face off.

[AK]

Man, I know so little about distortion. Not had too much experience with it to be honest as the type of music I have been into before didn't really feature a lot of this type of thing. Some overdriving of drums ( esp. Snares ) on an analog desk but not a great deal more than that.

I've tried software distortion and Tube Amp sim efx, not really been overly impressed though and have used them with a great deal of subtlety - almost like a mix glue rather than an outright distortion effect.

When I had an EMX1, I thought those 'tubes' sucked, but then they aren't really vaccum tubes apparently, I don't know what they are to be honest. That said, I absolutely loved the distortion effect on the Novation Super Bass station, I believe some bits are analog on that although I am not sure which off-hand.

I know what I do want and that's a Sherman Filterbank, but keeping an eye on this thread for some interesting ideas as it's an area I know jack sht about really.

[steevio]

I know what I do want and that's a Sherman Filterbank, but keeping an eye on this thread for some interesting ideas as it's an area I know jack sht about really.

the sherman is a beast, but its a kind of either on or off distortion, and the sweet spot is really hard to hit, once it starts going into heavy distortion youre into hardcore territory really quickly.

still its an amazing machine. (go for an FB2 if you can get it)

[RichardLodge]

Using out board gear to create distortion is nearly always going to sound best.

However staying in the box the sound toys decapitator is great.. very musical for a software distortion.

The vinyl distortion you mentioned is possibly the vinyl distortion plugin that comes with Ableton, which is great also.. adds tones of stereo width as well as crunch.

If your new to distortion try these out before you spend the big bucks on hardware, like most thing once you experiment and learn a bit you'd be surprised how good the results can be.