Distortion

We’re nearing the end of this course. This chapter wasn’t included, at first. But as I went through all my old projects to find clips for my examples, I realized this principle was too important to leave out.

It’s a principle you can find everywhere in the creative industry.

A perfect product requires some imperfection.

Look at animated movies, like those by Disney or Dreamworks. It’s relatively easy to create a 3D house: press a button and the computer gives you a perfect cube. But that looks bad. Instead, they spent a lot of time creating perfect cubes … and then destroying them. Adding imperfections. Adding bricks that stick out from the wall, a chimney that’s not perfectly straight, or a doorframe that’s loose and wonky.

These imperfections feel natural to us, humans. Because in the real world, no home is a perfect cube. It comes close, but it will always be weathered and imperfect, especially over time.

As such, a great mix … requires you to destroy it a little bit.

The easiest way to do so, is by using a basic distortion plugin. This simply takes an input signal ( = some audio) and applies a formula to mess with it. To distort what the waves look like at each time interval.

Try it! The example below has a distortion plugin on the track. Use the “wet” slider to control how heavily it distorts. It’s a vocal for a rock song, but my voice just doesn’t sound powerful (“rocky”) enough. Distortion can help here.

It’s probably even more fun if you record your own voice on a few tracks and distort it :) (Set “record enable” to true, click play, click stop when done.)

How to use it?

Well, this was basically the whole tip! If something sounds too clean, too perfect or artificial, add distortion.

You can add it on the same track. But usually people will copy the sound to a new track. This way, they can use the volume slider on that track to easily control (or automate) how much distortion is applied.

A tiny bit of distortion will add atmosphere and life to anything, even a calming or soothing track. (The same way that we love the calming sound of a crackling fire, which is somewhat like distortion.)

A lot of distortion will add power, crunch, excitement and energy. It’s mostly used on vocals, drums and (electric) guitar.

Most people don’t realize this and think distortion is only for people making heavy metal (or something like that). No, it’s the “secret sauce” that you can use to add life and power to your recordings.

Because, as you’ve heard in the examples, a “dry” recording is just that: dry. This makes it flexible (for mixing), but also lifeless and artificial. In a final song, you probably want some distortion-like effects to remove the dullness.

Other ways to add imperfections

Throughout this course I encouraged you, numerous times, to just “play with it” or “try it”.

Now you might see why. Finding “imperfections” (that sound natural and lively) can only be done through experimentation. Because that’s the whole idea: it’s imperfect and illogical. You won’t find a beautiful distortion effect by following a strict rule or formula.

So try stuff. Chop recordings into pieces. Crank the settings of an effect way beyond what you usually need. Play weird instruments on your MIDI keyboard and see which one sounds good with the others.

Sometimes, I watch videos in which artists (or producers) break down how they mixed one of their more famous songs. Without fail, there are pieces in the song that are imperfect. There’s a “wrong take” that was left in. The piano played completely the wrong chord at some point, but it actually sounded great, so they left it in. A common thing that gets left in as “background noise” are laughs, claps, recordings that were too loud (and thus distorted naturally by clipping).

Don’t start with this, of course. Start by trying to get a good recording of all the parts. Start by following the simple ideas I explained, to get balanced volumes, panning and space.

But after that? Distort, destroy, experiment, push stuff around, and just listen to the result.

A smidge of distortion makes the difference between a “perfect” but boring song, and one that people will love for years to come.

With that, you’re ready for our final chapter.