Help with distortion/overdrive/saturation

The Lounge General Discussion
#1

In my quest to make banging techno I’ve realized I’m a bit clueless when it comes to distortion/overdrive. What I want is drums that sound like Birmingham techno - heavy, crunchy and overdriven. I’ve heard all about driving Mackie desks etc. but I don’t have said mixing board and I want to avoid buying more gear (though full disclosure I am considering a Bastle Bestie…)

I guess my lack of knowledge is quite basic - do I overdrive individual elements or do I stick the whole drums through overdrive/saturation/distortion? How do I stop sounds disappearing in the mix when I crank the drive? How do I keep the mix from sounding muddy? Are guitar pedals the secret? Do I need a 909 even if 909 toms always sound shit to me? Can I do all this with samples and an octatrack or do I need more?

I read Surgeon made the raw trap EP using a 909 and a Portabella - I’m sure in my hands it would still sound like a mushy turd.

Hit me with your wisdom please.

#2

if you search surgeon drums or techno kick, this has come up a lot. you’re looking for saturation which comes from a lot of different places, some people attribute the best sound to old boss bx mixers. there’s a ton of info here already.

try this thread

FX pedal for drum machines - The Lounge / General Discussion - Elektronauts

#3

Use an overdrive / distortion unit as send / return, not insert. Like this you can obviously choose which channels and how much of each to send, and apply eq post fx, and you don’t loose the low end and dynamics of the original signal. This applies to making tracks in DAW, and hardware / live setup with a mixer.

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#4

@Skypainter @Thespa - exactly this i.e. Parallel distortion so you can retain the clean sub frequencies of the lower parts + also consider multiband distortion options like Izotope Trash or Cubase Quadrafuzz, particularly if using on a stereo mix / group.

Then you can dial in different flavours and amounts of distortion to different frequency bands. Eg for controlling harshness in the top end but still getting beefy overdrive in low mids etc.

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#5

For saturation (not distortion per se) i like fabfilter saturn 2 a lot, also multiband, also built in basic but functional dynamics and wet/dry to taste. I use it on lots of channels and subgroups and sometimes more of them in line on one track. Not familiar with the style of techno described here though.

#6

Any hardware solutions that allow a dry wet mix? The expensive Analog Heat I bet…

#7

a lot of people swear by the soundtoys decapitator

i would wait for the next time it goes on sale

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#8

Elysia Karacter 500 Qube (500 format standalone box), AH price range…

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#9

What equipment are you currently using?

In general, a little bit of distortion/ saturation + a little bit of compression works really well.
You may or may not have those at your disposal already. As mentioned parallel processing is a good way to get pleasing results.

I run my drums hard into a compressor then drive them into the mixer, then add a little saturation later. Again just a little bit of each, but thats subjective. You can smash the crap out of it if you want. (I dont make techno)

Filters/eqs are also useful.

#10

There’s a lot of trial and error involved in figuring out what character of distortion works for you.

Distortion is an incredibly subjective and personal thing to have an opinion about. I can tell you all day to spend £80 on an old BX mixer or whatever, but you’re never going to know which ice cream is your favourite until you’ve tried a bunch of different flavours.

As for how to apply it, that’s up to you, but I once made the analogy of reverb being like a sprinkle of salt on a bag of chips. An essential addition, but best used subtly. I do not feel this way about distortion. If distortion was the salt I’d have a bag of salt for dinner every day, fuck the chips, more salt please. I’d be bathing in the fucker before I found a chip in the bottom somewhere, then id throw the chip out for not being salty enough.

but one thing I do recommend, especially with beat driven music, is to use compression with the distortion (I prefer it after, but again, experimentation will reveal your own preference).

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#11

Sampling is also a good thing, so that you get consistent sounds once you found them. Makes it easier to mix.

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#12

The answers to all of your questions can be found by experimenting with the tools you have at your disposal. Take the time to listen, experiment, test out things, see what you like. Forget about Surgeon and what he did. Do what sounds cool and is exciting to you. Pedals, free plugins, mixers, all of these are just tools. You aren’t going to gain any wisdom till you get your hands dirty and start playing. Jump in!!

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#13

It depends. Short answer, yes you can. But it but depends what sound you’re after, and how you intend to get there.

If you use T8 as master, with filter dist and compression as master fx, then there’s your ingredients for a good banging techno sound. However, everything will go through those fx, so if you wanted clean bass, or clean sample sounds, its tricky.

Of course the beauty of using the octatrack fx even on the master channel, is they are P lockable, lfo modulatable, and crossfader modulatable.

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#14

Octatrack, Perkons. I also have a small Yamaha mg10xu mixer and a load of guitar pedals.

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#15

More than enough there for a lot of different distortions.

One of my favourite things to do is to use the makeup gain on the OT’s compressor as a distortion, it sounds really nice and crunchy and can get really fucking extreme.

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#16

Well there you go. Youve got your drum machine for drums, the OT and other FX for dist, compression. And then plenty of other track left on the OT for more layers if you need it.

Totally viable. Simple effective. Legit techno set up.

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#17

The Boss BX mixers and the Octatrack distortion are my favourites.

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#19

Lots of bass drive pedals have this, as well as some other useful features like more versatile EQ. I use the horrible Boss OD3 and the beautiful Quill FX Bacchus+, and a couple of plugs for the Korg NTS-1 as stereo drive/saturation etc is both rare and expensive.

#20

I love the distortion on my Alesis Quadraverb when you drive the input, in fact I like it so much I bought two.

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#21

If your track is golden a bit of distortion makes it sound like a beast:
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