This week I became more familiar with the idea of ‘good’ distortion. I use quotation marks to point out that distortion is purely aesthetic and objective to each individual. I must be honest though I did have preconceptions towards distortion due to the main times I knew what was happening it was because of inexperienced technicians or people yelling into microphones peaking the meter.
Distortion is a manipulation of sound to create a desired effect. There are many ways to distort the sound through various means, outboard gear or plugins. One of the key understanding of distortion is the harmonics, even harmonics tend to sound more melodic to the ear whilst odd harmonics have a dissonance to the sound. This is the first step in knowing what distortion you want in a track. One more ‘natural’ way to distort sound is to re-amp to give the warmth of the guitar amp used. This can be a great way to avoid potentially too much distortion in the initial tracking session but still get distortion in the mixing stage of a track. Distortion can also be used to add clarity to a sound through manipulation of certain harmonics. If you want a part to sound brighter, you could use an EQ and boost the highs for example. Small things that that need to be kept in mind is that different outboard gear will react to being overdriven with different results. This requires you to experiment and play with how different sounds work through distortion. Another factor is the order in the chain you place it. Depending on how you send the signal will depend on the final sound. An example of order is EQ-ing a sound after distortion to control what is emphasised in the final sound. Digital plugins also get used for distortion, however, as always be mindful of peaking as digital clipping tends to be unpleasant to the ear.
One main thing I learned is be okay with experimentation. Distortion is a careful balance where it sounds bad until it’s good. In the end be okay with messing up because even if you didn’t get the desired result you at least learnt how to get that sound whenever you need it next.
References
"are you connected?" by bengsoon is licensed under CC BY 2.0
White, P. (2010). Distortion In The Studio. Sound On Sound. Retrieved from https://www.soundonsound.com/techniques/distortion-studio
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