Today for our distortion workshop we had a number of interesting concepts to explore by using the outboard gear as well as inserts using DAW plugins. I found a few interesting things while using both outboard and DAW inserts. I picked a vocal line from The Jang EP that I am recording currently. To use to manipulate the effects on before inserting a sine wave generator to see the effects.
I first went to the MIDI studio and used DAW inserts to created the distortion over the vocal. I wanted to make a tracking sound so that it sounded like telephone. I created an AUX track to send this to out 1-2. I then added all the effects that I wanted to use over the vocal. After i was happy with the sound I then added a new track and sent the output to the same AUX track as the audio vocal track so I could see the response that the sine wave (perfect tone) had been affected by tonally.
This was the response that the sine wave had to these plug ins I used over the AUX track. This is the fuzz effect that I added to the track to create the telephone sound.
This is the affected vocal signal after I used this and compression to create this sound.
In the next studio there was only outboard compression to use as hardware. So I patched it in to the door inserts… to get the compressor working. I then added an audio track to send the compressor too as you can see in this session screenshot.
What fascinated me the most was that I could hear more of a compression than what the sine wave tone was showing. In fact the sine wave suggested that there was added tonal frequencies by using the compression. It stretched out the sine wave and added high frequencies that aren’t audible but you can see them. It was very interesting to see this and i wouldn’t have thought to use an analyser if we hadn’t done this workshop to see how the distortion was affecting the signal.
Here is the sine wave that wasn’t affected by the signal VS the one that was.
After I had successfully added outboard compression to this track i then went into the NEVE with some class mates and we used a simple synth patch to distort.
We wanted this to sound really crazy to we used three different outboard units, a compressor ,destresser and a reverb.
This is the session of the before and after signal. including so you can see the signal flow also.
This is the patch bay after we had successfully got the signal flow right!
I feel more confident after todays work shop using outboard compression and reverb especially in the Neve. The patch bay in the Neve is much easier to work with than in the Audient studios as its easier to see and it labeled better. I am planning on using the Neve for my project now to distort the vocal for the three tracks as it sounds so cool and different.
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