Why Rong is Gud

Sometimes the "right" way to do things is nowhere near as much fun as the "wrong" way

By Craig Anderton

Whether giving seminars or receiving emails, I’m constantly asked about the “right” way to record, as if there was some committee on standards and practices dedicated to the recording industry (“for acoustic guitar, you must use a small diaphragm condenser mic, or your guitar will melt”). Although I certainly don’t want to demean the art of doing things right, some of the greatest moments in recording history have come about because of ignorance, unbridled curiosity, luck, trying to impress the opposite sex, or just plain making a mistake that became a happy accident.

When Led Zeppelin decided to buck the trend at that time of close miking drums, the result was the Olympian drum sound in “When the Levee Breaks.” Prince decided that sometimes a bass simply wasn’t necessary in a rock tune, and the success of “When Doves Cry” proved he was right. Distortion used to be considered “wrong,” but try imaging rock guitar without it.

A lot of today’s gear locks out the chance to make mistakes. Feedback can’t go above 99, while “normalized” patching reduces the odds of getting out of control. And virtual plug-ins typically lack access points, like insert and loop jacks, that provide a “back door” for creative weirdness. But let’s not let that stop us—it’s time to reclaim some our heritage as sonic explorers, and screw up some of the recording process. Here are a few suggestions to get you started.

UNINTENDED FUNCTIONS

One of my favorite applications is using a vocoder “wrong.” Sure, we’re supposed to feed an instrument into the synthesis input, and a mic into the analysis input. But using drums, percussion, or even program material for analysis can “chop” the instrument signal in rhythmically interesting ways.

Got a synth, virtual or real, with an external input (Fig. 1)? Turn the filter up so that it self-oscillates (if it lets you), and mix the external signal in with it.

Fig. 1: Arturia’s miniV has an external input. Insert it into a track as an effect, and you can process a signal with the synth’s various modules.

The sound will be dirty, rude, and somewhat like FM meets ring modulation. To take this further, set up the VCA so you can do gated/stuttering techniques by pressing a keyboard key to turn it on and off.

And we all know headphones are for outputting sound, right? Well, DJs know you can hook it up reverse, like a mic. Sure, the sound is kinda bassy because the diaphragm is designed to push air, not react to tiny vibrational changes. But no problem! Kick the living daylights out of the preamp gain, add a ton o’ distortion, and you’ll generate enough harmonics to add plenty of high frequencies.

I was reluctant to include the following tip, as it relies on the ancient Lexicon Pantheon reverb (a DirectX format plug-in included in Sonar, Lexicon Omega, and other products back in the day). I really tried to find a more contemporary reverb that can do the same thing, but I couldn’t. However, this does give a fine example of unintended functionality: having a reverb iprovide some really cool resonator effects. If you have a Pantheon, try these settings (Fig. 2):

• Reverb type: custom

• Pre-delay, Room Size, RT60, Damping: minimum settings

• Mix: 100\% (wet only)

• Level: as desired

• Density Regen: +90\%

• Density Delay: between 0 and 20ms

• Echo Level (Left and Right): off

• Spread, Diffusion: 0

• Bass boost: 1.0X

Fig. 2: The plug-in says it’s a reverb, but here Pantheon is set up as a resonator.

Vary the Regen and Delay controls, but feel free to experiment with the others. You can even put two Pantheons in series set for highly resonant, totally spooky sounds.

PARAMETER PUSHING

The outer edges of parameter values are meant for exploration. For example, digital audio pitch transposition can provide all kinds of interesting effects. Tune a low tom down to turn it into a thuddy kick drum, or transpose slap bass up two octaves to transform it into a funky clav.

Or consider the “acidization” process in Acid and Sonar. Normally, you set slice points at every significant transient. But if you set slice points at 32nd or 64th notes, and transpose pitch up an octave or two, you’ll hear an entirely different type of sound.

I also like to use Propellerheads’ ReCycle as a “tremolo of the gods” (Fig. 3).

Fig. 3: ReCycle can do more than simply convert WAV or AIFF files into stretchable audio—it can also create novel tremolo effects.

Load in a sustained sound like a guitar power chord, set slice points and decay time to chop it into a cool rhythm, then send it back to the project from which it came.

GUITAR WEIRDNESS

For a different type of distortion, plug your guitar directly into your mixer (no preamp or DI box), crank the mic pre, then use EQ to cut the highs and boost the mids to taste. Is this the best distortion sound in the world? No. Will it sound different enough to grab someone’s attention? Yes.

When you play compressed or highly distorted guitar through an amp (or even studio monitors, if you like to live dangerously), press the headstock up against the speaker cabinet and you’ll get feedback if the levels are high enough. Now work that whammy bar...

Miking guitar amps is also a fertile field for weirdness. Try a “mechanical bandpass filter” with small amps—set up the mic next to the speaker, then surround both with a cardboard box. One of the weirdest guitar sounds I ever found was when I re-amped the guitar through a small amp pointed at a hard wall, set up two mics between the amp and the wall, then let them swing back and forth between the amp and wall. It created a weird stereo phasey effect that sounded marvelous (or at least strange) on headphones.

DISTORT-O-DRUM

Distortion on drums is one of those weird techniques that can actually sound not weird. You can put a lot of distortion on a kick and not have it sound “wrong”—it just gains massive amounts of punch and presence. One of my favorite techniques is copying a drum track, putting it in parallel with the original drum track, then running the copy through a guitar amp plug-in set for a boxy-sounding cabinet. It gives the feeling of being in a really funky room.

Replacing drum sounds can also yield audio dividends. My musical compatriot Dr. Walker, a true connoisseur of radical production techniques, once replaced the high-hat in his drum machine with sampled vinyl noise. That was a high-hat with character, to say the least.

If you want a sampled drum sound to have an attack that cuts through a track like a machete, load the sample into a digital audio editor that has a pencil tool. Then, within the first 2 or 3ms of the signal, add a spike (shown in red in the diagram for clarity; see Fig. 4).

Fig. 4: Messing up a drum sample’s initial attack adds a whole new kind of flavor.

When you play back the sound, the attack will now be larger than life, loaded with harmonics, and ready to jump out the speaker. However, it all happens so fast you don’t really perceive it as distortion. (You can even add more spikes if you dare.)

Another drum trick that produces a ton of harmonics at the attack is to normalize a drum sample, then increase gain by a few dB — just enough to clip the first few milliseconds of the signal. Again, the drum sound will slam out of the speakers.

FUN WITH FEEDBACK

A small hardware mixer is a valuable tool in the quest for feedback-based craziness. Referring to Fig. 5, if you have a hardware graphic equalizer, patch it after the mixer output, split the EQ’s output so that one split returns back into the mixer input, monitor the EQ’s other split from the output, and feed in a signal (or not — you can get this to self-oscillate).

Fig. 5: Here’s a generalized setup for adding feedback to a main effect. The additiona effect in the feedback loop isn’t essential, but changing the feedback loop signal can create more radical results.

With the EQ’s sliders at 0, set the mixer to just below unity. As you increase the sliders, you’ll start creating tones. This requires some fairly precise fader motion, so turn down your monitors if the distortion runs away—or add a limiter to clamp the output.

If you have a hardware pitch shifter, then feed some of the output back to the input (again, the mixer will come in handy) through a delay line at close to unity gain. Each echo will shift further downward or upward, depending on your pitch transposer’s setting. With some sounds, this can produce beautiful, almost bell tree-like effects.

Feedback can also add unusual effects with reverb, as the resonant peaks tend to shift. At some settings, the reverb crosses over into a sort of tonality. You may need to tweak controls in real time and ride everything very carefully, but experiment. Hey, that’s the whole message of this article anyway!

PREFAB NASTINESS?

Lately there’s been a trend to “formalize” weird sounds, like bit reducers, vinyl emulators, and magnetic tape modelers. While these are well-intentioned attempts to screw things up, there’s a big difference between a plug-in that reduces your audio to 8 bits, and playing back a sample on a Mirage sampler, which is also 8 bits. The Mirage added all kinds of other oddities — noises, aliasing, artifacts — that the plug-in can’t match. Playing a tune through a filter, or broadcasting it to a transistor radio in front of a mic (try it sometime!) produce very different results.

Bottom line: Try to go to the source for weirdness, or create your own. Once weirdness is turned into a plug-in with 24/96 resolution, I’m not sure it’s really weirdness anymore.

Craig Anderton is Editor Emeritus of Harmony Central. He has played on, mixed, or produced over 20 major label releases (as well as mastered over a hundred tracks for various musicians), and written over a thousand articles for magazines like Guitar Player, Keyboard, Sound on Sound (UK), and Sound + Recording (Germany). He has also lectured on technology and the arts in 38 states, 10 countries, and three languages.