5 tips on distortion

For some, distortion is the coolest thing. I have friends that search for the correct guitar amplifier for years, always trying to emulate that sound they have in their head. And other people despise it, think it ruins a perfectly good song.

Of course, there is a good and a bad side. Good valve crunch is warm and cool, digital clipping is horrible.

But in mixing you can saturate, gain and overdrive sounds to your advantage, putting it on things you wouldn’t normally think of.  Use these five tips to add some edge to your sounds. 

Here are some brainstormed suggestions that I know to have worked well and have also used in my projects.

1. Saturating the snare

Need a cooler snare sound? Does the one you have not quite cut it? Try putting some gain on it to make it stand out. Sometimes it sounds horribly garage-y, but sometimes that’s exactly what you want.

2. Routing recorded tracks to outboard effects

You can use external effect processors, effect pedals or even just re-record through a broken microphone to get an extra character in your sounds. Try this to lift up DI’d bass for example.

3. Overdriving a doubled vocal track

Make a copy of your vocal track and then overdrive it with a plug-in. Used subtly it can enhance the nature of your vocal. And especially if the singer has a gravelly voice to begin with it will just sound that much cooler. 

I have used Logic’s guitar amp to subtly overdrive a doubled track. Mixing it under the normal one I have gotten great results.

4. Enhancing your effect returns.

Instead of overdriving the source sound, try gaining the effect. An overdriven wobbly chorus, or a huge fuzzed cathedral reverb? Just go wild with it.

5. Using white noise on sampled hi-hats.

White noise isn’t exactly distorted,as it's noise to begin with. Nonetheless, you can achieve cool things if your drum machines or side-chaining lets you add white noise to the hi-hat. It will make it more defined and stand out more.

Overdrive on everything

I heard a rumor one time that the album Are you gonna go my way by Lenny Kravitz had at least some saturation on all of the elements of the album, from the snare to the vocals. I don't know if that's true but if it is that's one creative use of crunch!