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Old 07-08-2016, 11:27 PM   #1
A Little Man and a House
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Default Distortion on things that aren't electric guitars (question)

What things should be considered when attempting to create a recorded sound that will respond well to light overdrive or heavy distortion, when the instrument in play isn't actually an electric guitar? I have heard some nice results with distorted violins, cellos, etc. I am thinking of experimenting with this a bit with my classical guitar, probably just with some free ampsim (I have an amp but it sucks), and I'm wondering what things I should do/avoid. Or is this just a terrible idea?
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Old 07-09-2016, 04:42 AM   #2
Judders
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If you can monitor in real time, rather than add distortion afterwards, I think it will yield much more usable results.

Distortion changes how chords and sustain sound, so hearing the effect in real time will change how you play.
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Old 07-09-2016, 01:21 PM   #3
dmoss74
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i don't know about full on distortion, but mild overdrive can certainly enhance the sound of acoustic instruments. the "warmth" everyone used to talk glowingly about in older recordings was actually that. tape saturation, to the point of overdrive.

i know that classical guitars can sound very nice, when mildly over driven. listen to some of the recordings of jose gonzalez. he always seems to be right at--or just above--the point of saturation in a lot of his recordings. it's a very nicely compressed sound.

case in point: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=abp_tnLsYm4
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Old 07-09-2016, 02:11 PM   #4
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Quote:
Originally Posted by A Little Man and a House View Post
What things should be considered when attempting to create a recorded sound that will respond well to light overdrive or heavy distortion, when the instrument in play isn't actually an electric guitar? I have heard some nice results with distorted violins, cellos, etc. I am thinking of experimenting with this a bit with my classical guitar, probably just with some free ampsim (I have an amp but it sucks), and I'm wondering what things I should do/avoid. Or is this just a terrible idea?
No it's a great idea!
You have no idea how much distortion is used in mixing.

Even if you're after a more natural and/or audiophile thing with acoustic instruments. Think of it as part of the room component if that helps. When you find the perfect room to record an instrument that "lights up" just the right way, the sound you are capturing that has bounced off the walls a couple times has been distorted. You can also dial this stuff in with distortion in the box. It's a way to generate harmonics. Use an eq pre and/or post to limit the bandwidth. Maybe you only need a narrow band that saturates. You can try distorting a reverb instead too.
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Old 07-09-2016, 02:34 PM   #5
ashcat_lt
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One of the things that makes an electric guitar sound decent through even large amounts of overdrive/distortion is the fact that they don't put out much in the way of higher frequencies to begin with. Between string physics and the filter action of the pickups, the frequency response slants downward and has a pretty steep drop off somewhere between like 5-8KHz. This is important because first the distortion is going to add even more higher harmonics, and that can sound harsh, brittle, or fizzy, and second the higher harmonics are more like noise (not simple multiples of the fundamental frequency) and the multiples of those are just more noise. Again, what a lot of people call fizz. A good guitar speaker or sim thereof is going to roll off those high frequencies pretty quickly again, but it's still pretty easy to tell the difference. A piezo pickup or even a microphone on an acoustic instrument will probably benefit from some serious LPF before much of any crunch.

Course, sometimes we don't really want it to sound "good" when it comes out of the distortion, and then all bets are off.
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Old 07-09-2016, 02:42 PM   #6
Judders
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ashcat_lt View Post
...the higher harmonics are more like noise (not simple multiples of the fundamental frequency) and the multiples of those are just more noise.
Guitars are not known for their perfect intonation!

Quote:
Originally Posted by ashcat_lt View Post
Course, sometimes we don't really want it to sound "good" when it comes out of the distortion, and then all bets are off.
One of my favourite sounds is bitcrushed harp
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Old 07-10-2016, 04:58 AM   #7
A Little Man and a House
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Some good advice here. So I'll...

-Have the distortion audible while playing, probably keep it to headphones while tracking...

-Put a lowpass BEFORE the amp sim in the signal chain.

-Use mild overdrive to add WARMTH to chordy stuff.

-Experiment with stronger distortion, watch out for crazy amounts of high end harmonics with juidicious EQ, probably stick to melodies, rest strokes, and the odd power chord.

Maybe I should post my Reaper project file here when I get something together? criticism would probably be helpful...
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Old 07-11-2016, 05:39 PM   #8
dub tree
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Playing a bit off the mathematical stuff above:

Something to keep in mind with distortion is that complex harmonies (for instance, chords with more than 2 or 3 notes) tend to become garbled because of all the harmonic clashing after the distortion is applied. There's a reason "power chords" on guitar are so ubiquitous; it's just the root and the 5th, and it is indeed powerful.

So distortion could (in some cases) sound cool on something like a minor 9th chord, but I find it often works better on monophonic/duophonic lines, or chords with only 2 notes (e.g. the root and the 5th)

Of course, I'm talking about outright distortion, not just subtle saturation. Something like tube/tape saturation should be applied all across the board, in my opinion, albeit in very subtle amounts.
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