Here’s the second installment in the School of shit. While the first was a general lesson on shit, this second post emphasizes crushing effects, close to what Thors hammer Mjölner would achieve in the above picture.
Broken amps are said to be fun. I wouldn’t really know since I’m neither rich (and thus have the chance to buy a lot of amps) nor someone who’ll trash the stuff I have (again, because I’m not rich and can’t afford to buy everything three times over!). Anyway, I picked up this from an interview with the Hives, not a particularly shitty band, but definitely guys with a dose of in-your-face rock & roll attitude. They said that they like to play on amps that are close to breaking because of how they sound. The downside? (besides you have to be rich) For one thing they told about one time when the amp actually broke in that session and they didn’t really “find” the song again. Too bad. And it’s not like you would be out gigging with amps that are about to break either, I don’t think the crowd would be all that happy if you halfway through your set went “sorry guys and gals, my amp broke, lets call it a day”.
Play with shitty and broken instruments. Another something I’ve picked up from some band, which escapes me at the moment, but I’m sure they weren’t the only ones in the world thinking like this anyway. People suggesting this would want to have you play on guitars that cost about as much as those Elixir strings on your Les Paul. I can’t say that I’m a follower of this ideology, I find it much more interesting how you end up playing your instrument than what brand it is. If you play your guitar with a scissor or a screwdriver it will have much more impact on the sound than if you picked up a Cort over a Strat.
If you don’t have any broken instruments, try broken toys. If you don’t want to buy and break your own toys, Jon at Audio Geek Zine sells a big collection of samples for a very low price.
Bit crushing is interesting. I touched on the subject in the previous School of shit, and figured I might expand a little on the topic. Perhaps the most classic bit crushing application is for giving drums some edge. I use this from time to time on the drum bus, but you could just as well use it on the individual tracks, on percussion loops or wherever. Bit crushing on anything percussive is simply fun. Also give it a go on the bass. If you have recorded a real bass guitar too much bit crushing will lead to old computer bass sounds (think Commodore 64 or earlier) which can be really cool for some things, but can sound very out of place for other things. Either way, it turns your bass into an entirely new instrument.
I use Soundhack +Decimate quite often, it’s wonderful for destroying a sound.
You can also hack a walkman or other cassette tape player into a pretty nasty distortion box. It’s easy and cheap, which reminds me…I should build another.
Don’t forget the ‘ol’ ‘run it through a car adapter FM modulator to different radios’ (portable and car).
Re-mic’ing and re-amping is also fun…different ‘bodies’ (ala a snare with it’s rattling to the lo freqs) set atop a speaker and then re-recorded is great fun. Air and sound-bodies are often overlooked for ‘in the box’ sounds.
-DI bass guitar > tansistor radio>set on a snare drum
-DI Synth>cel phone>Djembe
-DI Guitar>baby monitor>inside a lunchbox
Any of above THEN re-amped through a P.A. at loud sound pressure .
You get the idea
Good tips people.
Jon, yours remind me of one of my favorite blues musicians: Hound Dog Taylor. I think some guitar tracks on one of the albums I have is actually the guitar plugged into a cheap tape deck with the distortion coming from it and nothing else.