"What you are describing are the additional harmonics or vibration modes caused by..."
And what you are describing is known as distortion, or saturation (and exactly what is done artificially by an exciter). Saturation is a perfectly cromulent word for saturation.
It strikes me as possibly coming to music as an engineer or having only made music with synths, ie., didn't get the memo on instrumental techniques that deliberately screw with the at least putative intentions in the primary purpose of the instrument. If you get that growl on a saxophone, or multiphonics on any wind type of instrument, the signal is more complex harmonically, hence saturation or an excited state, aka distortion. Also we have a tail wags dog situation if distortion is strictly from post-production or after-the-fact of recorded or amplified sound.
{Pushing proximity effect or driving a mic hard to get a certain characteristics of say drum transients is deliberate distortion and the way the magnetic particles on tape are altered (saturated, literally) amount to the same quality of phenomena. A great deal of what most of us will call a great drum sound is a manipulation using distortion of some form. A great vocal sound on a record probably deploys particular microphone characteristics (even non-linearities) to color a sound 'artistically' or enhance part of a range of a voice.}
You can use a plectrum on a guitar (or any string instrument's) string in such a way as to create a quite different harmonic profile than a certain norm of just plucking thru the string. "Some form of corruption — wanted or unwanted — of the source signal." can likewise be achieved on a clarinet, a flute, a violin, a piano by preparing it, ad infin.
If you dig in hard enough on a guitar, you can make its strings buzz just in doing. I could corrupt or distort the sound of the thing all kind of ways by hand.
Those super-narrow definitions are not very well examined (and some of it conflicts with other bits). EG: "With respect to audio"/"behavior of electronic components and power supply limitations" is non sequitur. Not all 'audio' is a product of electronics nor is all of it recorded media.
I'm the opposite, there is such a thing as way too clean to have any moment IMO.
Isolated saturation doesn't sound good
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- KVRAF
- 25050 posts since 12 Jul, 2003 from West Caprazumia
I also tend to agree with bmanic. What means "after the fact" anyway? So in case of an electric guitar is the amp "after the fact" then? What about the pickups? Where does "the fact" end in fact?
Also: just as an example, when playing an electric, I use my fingers in an attempt to create certain... "sensations" - and some of these are purposely exalted in a way that the character of the sound is altered. And while the amp helps me to emphasize this momentarily change in character (when the tubes are at the edge of break-up, it will push them over the edge, so to speak), it's already present when I play the guitar dry (without being plugged in at all) - so it's really hard for me to seperate both. The amp is an extension of what's already there in a way.
And playing a B3 you do a similar thing by shortly hitting several additional (often off-scale) keys and again the amp becomes an extention of what is already there...
I think it is absurd to try to artificially split this one unified process up in a semi-arbitrary manner into two allegedly unrelated things.
Also: just as an example, when playing an electric, I use my fingers in an attempt to create certain... "sensations" - and some of these are purposely exalted in a way that the character of the sound is altered. And while the amp helps me to emphasize this momentarily change in character (when the tubes are at the edge of break-up, it will push them over the edge, so to speak), it's already present when I play the guitar dry (without being plugged in at all) - so it's really hard for me to seperate both. The amp is an extension of what's already there in a way.
And playing a B3 you do a similar thing by shortly hitting several additional (often off-scale) keys and again the amp becomes an extention of what is already there...
I think it is absurd to try to artificially split this one unified process up in a semi-arbitrary manner into two allegedly unrelated things.
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- KVRAF
- 25050 posts since 12 Jul, 2003 from West Caprazumia
Chris Squire demonstrates something similar here quite well (from around 2:45 on):
Sounds like distortion to me...
Sounds like distortion to me...
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- KVRist
- 196 posts since 4 Jul, 2019
I think everyone would agree that a sine shaper is distortion - try running a complex signal like drums through one & you'll immediately see this. It's one of the distortions in Thermal if you want to try it - it's pretty gnarly!
In particular, if you run a triangle wave through sine shaping you get a sine wave. If I play you a sine wave that was created via triangle to sine distortion vs a sine wave that was directly synthesized you would not be able to tell the difference, because they would be exactly the same! This shows that the idea of an "original" vs a "distorted" signal is nonsensical without context -- if you believe that a signal run through distortion is always "distorted" then it follows that sine waves are always "distorted", which doesn't make sense. It also shows that distortion doesn't always add harmonics. You can't argue universally that saturation & distortion sound bad on their own unless you are willing to make the argument that music made from sine waves -- ie, all of music! - sounds bad.
In particular, if you run a triangle wave through sine shaping you get a sine wave. If I play you a sine wave that was created via triangle to sine distortion vs a sine wave that was directly synthesized you would not be able to tell the difference, because they would be exactly the same! This shows that the idea of an "original" vs a "distorted" signal is nonsensical without context -- if you believe that a signal run through distortion is always "distorted" then it follows that sine waves are always "distorted", which doesn't make sense. It also shows that distortion doesn't always add harmonics. You can't argue universally that saturation & distortion sound bad on their own unless you are willing to make the argument that music made from sine waves -- ie, all of music! - sounds bad.
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- KVRAF
- 25050 posts since 12 Jul, 2003 from West Caprazumia
Very good post, Smapti - thank you!
This thread had me trying to look a bit more closely as what my fingers actually do when I want to put more emphasis on my plucked (strings) notes and I noticed that (at least with electric guitar) I actually add some asymetrical elements (mostly transients but not only) to otherwise fairly symetrical waveforms - i.e. I indeed use my fingers to actually distort the waveform itself. This is also fairly noticely when listening to the dry recording on its own. It sounds distorted. I noticed that I tend to use a combination of techniques to achieve that.
This thread had me trying to look a bit more closely as what my fingers actually do when I want to put more emphasis on my plucked (strings) notes and I noticed that (at least with electric guitar) I actually add some asymetrical elements (mostly transients but not only) to otherwise fairly symetrical waveforms - i.e. I indeed use my fingers to actually distort the waveform itself. This is also fairly noticely when listening to the dry recording on its own. It sounds distorted. I noticed that I tend to use a combination of techniques to achieve that.