@ Soilodge; please consider making a sticky out of this or something to this affect. I feel like a broken record repeating over and over the various ways to make shit sound heavy as fuck with distortion. It seems enough people and noobs might appreciate this, ya think?
Industrial Music forum » Music tech forum
[sticky]
All known techniques to make killer distortion
(12 posts)-
Posted 6 months ago #
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soillodge
offlineTech ModeratorGood idea! Done.
`michael
Posted 6 months ago # -
Thank you kindly Soilodge!!! You rock! Nice job with the past posting links Metaball - good thinking!
I snipped this from the "How to make power noise" thread linked above in Metaball's post. It is worth the time to go back with the link supplied above and read the entire thread. This was my post there -
"Some techniques of mine if you will.Cheap $12 sound cards from the Windows 98 days. They skimped on the brickwall anti-aliasing filters and you get lots of tasty but subtle aliasing. Good for making things sound corroded in a digital way.
Broken speaker. Find junky guitar cabs or reall y any crap speaker and carefully tear the cone. Yummy. You need to mic this setup though...
Build popular DIY guitar overdrive pedal designs but retune them for a wider bandwidth. Usually there is a "voicing filter" between the input stage and 2nd stage. Not sure what value cap + resistor to use then experiment with larger cap values and lower resistor values. This will provide a wider range than the harsh mid-pumped "voicing" of those designs.
Buy a decent FX box with good sounding distortion algorithms like ones from Kurtzweil employ.
Overdrive the inputs of anything you have hardware-wise. Sometimes you find magic and sometimes you just get crap. Give it a shot though because you can't hurt anything by doing this.
Get cheap tube preamps (ART Pro MPA II) and change out the tubes for really beat up used tubes from several decades ago.
Load the outputs of any hardware you have. Most audio hardware is designed to source a low impedance into a high impedance and do not have good output drivers. Usually the output is run from a common op-amp. Some of these op-amps sound great when you load their outputs with a low impedance to generate output stage distortion. Use this for reference and ideas on where to start - http://www.sg-acoustics.ch/analogue_audio/ic_opamps/index.html
Crappy and not-so-crappy guitar amps. Mic them up and run synths through them. Parallel the resulting track with a clean track or tracks run through other distortion devices.
If you have technical chops grab the preamp section of an old PA amp or home stereo amp circa mid-70s. Then tap the power rails and insert resistance to drop the voltage to the circuit. If the design is transistor based lowering the supply voltage causes much interesting distortion. It gets less pleasant the lower the supply voltage goes. Just before the threshold where the circuit ceases to function it sounds pretty bad.
Have no hardware? Fine get guitar amp simlulator plugins. Some are good some are total shit. Find one you like..."
Posted 6 months ago # -
::Cheap $12 sound cards from the Windows 98 days::
recall a Gridlock interview where they talked about this kind of process do develop some of their distorted percussive sounds.
::Crappy and not-so-crappy guitar amps. Mic them up and run synths through them. ::
capturing the moving air is an effective technique to making things sound bigger.
Depeche Mode used this technique extensively.
http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/feb07/articles/classictracks_0207.htm::Buy a decent FX box with good sounding distortion algorithms like ones from Kurtzweil employ.::
or crappy algorithms. come "distortion" sounds that sound like ass on guitar work great on synths & percussion.
great pro tips!
i say run everything you have thru anything you can get your hands on. thats how the new sounds are discovered.Posted 6 months ago # -
Another interesting source of wild noises is radio. Use a transmitter and a radio with analog tuning. I use an old LG cell phone with the FM transmitter feature for it's mp3 player app. Then tune the radio a bit off the channel or just place the cell phone at various distances from the radio (it's range is small) to get some cool intermodulated and static laden noises. Some of this is downright audio obliteration. Tuning the transmitter close to a public radio station produces interesting bleed effects as the local transmitter gets swamped by the stronger station.
I bought some old 1960s pocket radio for this. Have also gotten some really neat samples off some southern gospel station too.
Posted 6 months ago # -
soillodge
offlineTech ModeratorThis reminds me of the olden days when I made sounds with tape treatments and manipulations. I have done some stuff with an old switch TV-where you push the thing between channels and then record that wierd bleed. That radio idea is along those lines and that might be something to consider. I really love to sample old movies that were given a sloppy DVD transfer. I can really do alot with that kind of mess.
You have some really great ideas Mike! Keep them coming!
`michael
Posted 6 months ago # -
a friend had an old rack mount FM modulator from the 60's or something, that made a weird distortion sound that was a similar to 8bit fuzz & the squeaky noise you get when you drag your finger across an inflated balloon. we ran a guitar thru it on one of my old bands demo's.
Posted 6 months ago # -
@soillodge Thanx! You just reminded me of something regarding old TVs. It may be somwhat off-topic and I apologize especially considering I requested this thread but it is very interesting anyway. In the glorious 1980s they made some Televisions with touch button channel switching. The way it worked is each "touch button" could be tuned to a different channel by means of a dedicated tuning control hidden behind a plastic panel on a hinge. You popped the hinge and there was a switch for UHF, VHF and Normal (I think). Then there was a tiny tuning control which when you rotated it would go through the frequencies of the range set by the switch. These TVs could be tuned into weird things!!!! You could get aircraft bands and specialized business communication channels with weird-ass FSK style digital transmissions that were wild! I used to sample the hell out of that shit back in the day. Go to thrift shops and keep your eye out for one of these old TVs for a source of freaky off-band communication channel noises.
@ metaball That it is some really cool shit too! The manner in which radio receivers distort is different from AM to FM but really crazy in respect to the regular types of distortion we are used to hearing. It isn't controllable in any real respect but if you are patient (or lucky) sometimes it really pays off to experiment with this stuff.
Also, if you don't have electronics knowledge here is a tip you can try anyway. Grab a *battery powered* keyboard (or drum machine) like a Casio or Yamaha job made for kids to practice on. Open it up. then run your fingers over the bottom of the circuit board. The capacitance of your body can affect the circuit's operation in really cool ways sometimes leading to very sick sounding distortions. If you can handle a screwdriver you can do this without fear of electrocution or damage to the equipment. Just be sure it is something battery powered!!!!
Posted 6 months ago # -
soillodge
offlineTech ModeratorI think you are talking about a "varacter tuner". They were from the Zenith TV's of the late 70's early 80's. Damn, that would be a great find today! They always have the late 80's TV's at pawn shops though. Those were all microprocessors and they don't drift.
`michael
Posted 6 months ago # -
metasonix on a budget:
get an old walkman, KRUSH and STOMP! the case, be industrial, not some frilly cybergoth... desolder the magnetic head, solder two mono jacks inside, and you are done! input into newly soldered jacks, output from headphones out...
deluxe custom edition? desolder headphones out and solder two out jacks instead, cut out the battery holding metal and solder wall wart adapter jack, put inside a hammond box, drill holes for jacks, paint yellow, paint blood on yellow, paint shit-brown on blood yellow, put stickers of gasmasks cute animals with huge genitals
ultra deluxe version: get a rocker switch, wire it so that when off, you have dual channel distro, in1->out1, in2->out2, and when the switch is on, you get feedback by in1->out1->in2->out2 (you can do this with deluxe version, using a patch cable)Posted 6 months ago # -
uh, another, cheap reverb, you have to get some decent preamps though (9v battery operated circuit using lm386 is very Class A, sounds like 3k$ preamps (not))
get some tin box, the ones where they used to pack cookies in the olden days (or any thin tin (tin) box), when everything was better, it is possibly rusty, this is good. get two piezos, learn how to open piezo. get gaffer tape, tape piezos to the two sides of the cookie box. put metal junk inside, old screws, nails, springs, car grille... use one piezo as input, other as output, preamp both ends...enjoy!!!
another use of this is as a pseudoringmodulatingreverb microphone, instead of sending input into one piezo, just scream into the box, output piezo will pick up vibrations from your voice, just amp it properly
(this post is from uses i found making this: http://taumachines.blogspot.com/2009/11/industrial-drums_09.html)Posted 6 months ago #
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