Missed the start of the series? Catch up here.

Ahh, it’s time for all things filth! Overdrive, distortion, fuzz, soft clipping, hard clipping, and limitless other descriptions to describe one of the most dramatic sound effects ever!

If dynamics effects are to claim the prize of being the most controversial and misunderstood effects; then the coveted prize for most popular, certainly (and with no competition) goes to anything that has the words ‘overdrive’, ‘distortion’, ‘fuzz’, or any variant in its descriptive moniker! While originally intended for guitar players (you’ll understand once you learn the history of this effect), no other effect has been so widespread throughout all of music production. Everything from vocals to drums, keyboards, and everything in between has been distorted, overdriven or fuzzed up at one time or another.

I’ll move it one step further. Distortion (unless otherwise specified, for simplicity I’ll refer to this topic generally as “distortion” from now on) actually makes up about 85-90% of the effects market. Now, I’ll be the first to admit that occasionally I use a made up expressive term like “cajillion” to make a point about enormous quantity; BUT, concerning distortion, no such exaggeration is needed – as there are thousands (and I mean that literally) of distortion devices being produced right at this moment.

I’ll bet that you, reading this right now, have at least a few distortion effects lying around!

I know that I certainly own… well… let’s just skip that number for now! Put it this way: I will never again make fun of, or criticize my girlfriend’s penchant for owning innumerable pairs of shoes!

However you slice it, distortion is the big card game in town and everyone wants a seat at the table; either as a consumer, or an opportunist manufacturer who boasts about delivering a new spin to all things crunch!

Why distort your signal?

Now on to more pertinent queries. Why on earth would you want to purposely distort a signal? After all, aren’t we taught by Hi-Fi manufacturers that the lower the signal distortion the better? Why the exception here?

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Welcome back to the ongoing series that began with Frequency Fundamentals. I trust and hope it has been as helpful for you as it was fun for me to write.

Moving along, this is the start of a new series that will dovetail with the frequency series. Consider it the second suite of a broader work. These new articles will continue our discussion and build on top of the foundation we laid down previously. This time we will focus on audio effects.

“Relevance?”, you ask.

Find me a musician, audio professional, or recording/mixing/mastering engineer that doesn’t use audio effects – and I will be the one to question if they have red blood coursing through their veins!

A more pertinent question would be this: “Effects… OK. But why now?”

If you are familiar with the previous frequency series, you should know the answer by now:
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