Sound Destruction

dono · Post by **dono** » Fri Sep 25, 2009 1:11 pm

for those of you who like to destroy sound, what are your favorite methods?

As far as purely digital goes, I always like to de-tune a couple of cents, and put a couple of ring-shifters in, and add some clip distortion. It makes it very nice. Sometimes bit crush the snare and cymbal, or high-hat.

last night, I was thinking about how BoC does a lot of recording onto tape decks and plays them over and over and over again to wear them out. I have done this too, and I quite enjoy the sound of it, so I thought I'd try to formulate a way of destroying a perfectly good tape in a matter of minutes. Needless to say it didn't work too well. I had no magnets strong enough to alter anything, and although I was able to pull the tape out, stretch it, and rewind it and play it back, it quickly tangled and broke. I thought about taking my tape deck apart and fiddling with the reels and heads in it, but as it is my only working one at the moment, I didn't want to risk it.

Treefingers · Post by **Treefingers** » Fri Sep 25, 2009 1:16 pm

The closest I've done to that was I got a videotape and scratched the tape and wrote on it with biro pens and then put it in the VCR and put my Creative ZEN (set to record) next to the VCR and came out with some quite good ambient noise that I later edited on the laptop.

I would like to mess around with analog equipment some day though.

If this counts, I use GoldWave to edit samples as a focal part of my process - I may record myself playing guitar/keyboard, something going on outside, or nick bits out of other songs and then tinker with the timing and pitch, EQs and echoes.

saurus · Post by **saurus** » Fri Sep 25, 2009 1:36 pm

The tapes I'm destroying with backing tracks ripped on them are still behind the radiator

dono · Post by **dono** » Fri Sep 25, 2009 2:07 pm

Good stuff.

I am still thinking of a "shortcut", to get that 60 year old warble, and noise.

Maybe I'll try and find a chemical in my home tonight that "eats" metal particles and see if I can't give parts of the tape a quick dunk.

Something else of interest to me, and I might have to try it here soon is making a synth line slowly shift, simulating the doppler effect, but on a more massive scale actually to another note, and then another, making a chord or two pitch shifting by the end of the song. It would mos def have to be done right to sound good in a song though. The idea being that the listener can't really tell when everything came together. they're listening to a warbling drone, and by the end of the song, there is a beautiful melody of chords.

Skytree · Post by **Skytree** » Fri Sep 25, 2009 3:11 pm

This would probably be a better fit in the "this random sound" section. Maybe a mod could move it?

One of my favorite tricks for breaking down audio is just using a shoddy cable with bad contacts, the type that you can wiggle back and forth to cut the signal here and there.

More in the ambient/EQing vein of things, you can get some interesting effects by playing the audio out of speakers in one part of your house/apartment, and micing the audio from a completely different location (IE: the attic). Aphex did this in "Cow Cud is a Twin" from ICBYD. Sometimes the ambient, external sounds you capture accidentally are the best bits (think the doors slamming in the track I just mentioned).

This is something Bibio shared with me, so I hope he doesn't mind me posting it here...I imagine quite a few other people have found the same trick. If you have a hardware sampler (IE: MPC), pitching the sample up and then re-pitching it back down again can create some interesting bitcrush-esque effects. Depends on the sampler, but it's generally more rich sounding than a software bit crusher.

Personally, I love to use plenty of tape saturation, coupled with loads of sidechained gates and compressors, especially inserted after any reverb/delay in your effects chain. I love moments where the tail end of some 'verb gets unexpectedly cut off by a gate, and stutters in and out for a bit.

It'd be great to dabble a bit more with my reel-to-reel, but alas! it's out of commission for the time being.

Shadowshocker · Post by **Shadowshocker** » Fri Sep 25, 2009 4:09 pm

I used to love creating feedback loops back when I actually had hardware equipment. My whole setup was based around feedback. Basically, just looping effects pedals, and use one that can create it's own feedback (example, a moog filter oscillating and run that through tons of effects, and back to the beginning....so the last effect is stereo and splits with one signal to the speaker and the other to the beginning of the loop).

It can be so much fun just playing with effects, highly recommended. You can also create easy feedback loops with just speakers, plugging an external output into some effects and back into the input.

Now I'm starting to miss my old hardware setup...

Skytree · Post by **Skytree** » Fri Sep 25, 2009 5:44 pm

Shadowshocker wrote:I used to love creating feedback loops back when I actually had hardware equipment. My whole setup was based around feedback. Basically, just looping effects pedals, and use one that can create it's own feedback (example, a moog filter oscillating and run that through tons of effects, and back to the beginning....so the last effect is stereo and splits with one signal to the speaker and the other to the beginning of the loop).

It can be so much fun just playing with effects, highly recommended. You can also create easy feedback loops with just speakers, plugging an external output into some effects and back into the input.

Now I'm starting to miss my old hardware setup...

Aww yeah, that's where it's at! Been playing quite a bit with an Electro-Harmonix Memory Man recently, and absolutely love it...it's perfect for this sort of thing, and second only to an Echoplex, IMO (though only because tape sounds better; the Memory Man is much more versatile):

(parenthesis) · Post by **(parenthesis)** » Fri Sep 25, 2009 6:50 pm

Recording over and over and over and over..

dono · Post by **dono** » Thu Oct 15, 2009 2:24 pm

I'm thinking about taking an old tape deck... standing on a ladder, and dropping it off into a pit of spikes. Then duct-taping it back together.

The Other · Post by **The Other** » Thu Oct 15, 2009 2:30 pm

I love to destroy sound. I do alot it with tapes. I change the climate..stick it in the freezer then throw it some where hot. Dunk the in water. I also go to estate sales and buy old old old tapes that have naturally decayed. Microphone placement and different varying levels of feedback works too. I have some other tricks up my sleeve too some with VHS tapes and reel to reel. I just experiment.

of course there is always digital destroying which can be any number of effects and equalization tricks...i love this side of things because its all in play until you get a method that works.

turquoise70 · Post by **turquoise70** » Thu Oct 15, 2009 3:58 pm

dono wrote:
As far as purely digital goes, I always like to de-tune a couple of cents, and put a couple of ring-shifters in, and add some clip distortion. It makes it very nice. Sometimes bit crush the snare and cymbal, or high-hat.

this is good. a subtle ring mod is great for this, and bitcrushing is awesome if you lay some filters on it so it doesn't sound totally raw.

Skytree wrote:This is something Bibio shared with me, so I hope he doesn't mind me posting it here...I imagine quite a few other people have found the same trick. If you have a hardware sampler (IE: MPC), pitching the sample up and then re-pitching it back down again can create some interesting bitcrush-esque effects. Depends on the sampler, but it's generally more rich sounding than a software bit crusher.

I've been doing this with software for years

Pantheon · Post by **Pantheon** » Thu Oct 15, 2009 6:02 pm

I have a Aki4000D Reel-to-reel and its amazing for destroying sounds.

The Preamps are so old that you get some beautifull distortion by recording things too loud into it. Its the kind of distortion that makes the bass drum realy fat and cuts out the hi-end sound while the bass is heavy.

Another cool trick I use its to record a pure sin wave too loud onto tape and record it back onto my computer. Then play it in your sampler for a realy organic sounding pad/string.

Also you can take tin foil and place it over the erase head on the tape machine so anything you record will dub over the previous material on the tape. Thus when no sound is being recorded everything is left on the tape and when loud things are being recorded it pushes what was on the tape down in the mix. This leads to some cool ducking/side chaining effects.

The most trusty effect for warble is to gently rub the reels as there turning applying some uneven drag.

The akai also has a monitor out from the tape while its recording so by introducing some feedback you can get some nice tape delay going. This is even better when combined with the TinFoil trick above.

dono wrote:I always like to de-tune a couple of cents, ...

Yeah thats always good. I detune by about 2% with a long attack on the detune so it gradualy creeps in.

dono · Post by **dono** » Thu Oct 15, 2009 6:17 pm

Damn... yeah, I am really looking for a nice reel to reel but I can't find one ANYWHERE.

I just looked on eBay, and I can get a Akai 4000 D as you mentioned for like $80. I don't like buying stuff online though.

The Other · Post by **The Other** » Thu Oct 15, 2009 6:57 pm

dono wrote:Damn... yeah, I am really looking for a nice reel to reel but I can't find one ANYWHERE.

I just looked on eBay, and I can get a Akai 4000 D as you mentioned for like $80. I don't like buying stuff online though.

there is a record shop around the corner from house that has a ton of them. I can look and see what they run and i'd ship it to you.

got mine on ebay for 30 bucks in great shape. it was a steal.

Shadowshocker · Post by **Shadowshocker** » Thu Oct 15, 2009 7:30 pm

Pantheon · Post by **Pantheon** » Thu Oct 15, 2009 7:36 pm

dono wrote:Damn... yeah, I am really looking for a nice reel to reel but I can't find one ANYWHERE.

I just looked on eBay, and I can get a Akai 4000 D as you mentioned for like $80. I don't like buying stuff online though.

Yeah I can understand, I suspect my Akai will Die on me quite soon. It makes far to many weird noises and sometimes gets a ringing sound in the left channel. Maby I just need to re-cap it or something? Also Hiss is a huge problem, I still havent demagnetised it.

The one I got cost £60 from ebay and shiped with about 3 old old tapes. They all had some realy strange covers of national anthems played on synthisizers (I suspect some kind of Moog).

If I use it in monitor mode then I dont have to record onto tape at all, it just playes threw the preamps and back out. Still sounds great and the hiss is manageable.

I also have one of these:

I got it for free but it doesnt work. It powers up and turns but wont produce any sound

Maby i'll try and fix it when I have some free time.

Skytree · Post by **Skytree** » Thu Oct 15, 2009 8:13 pm

Pantheon wrote: I got it for free but it doesnt work. It powers up and turns but wont produce any sound
Maby i'll try and fix it when I have some free time.

One of the first things to go on these old decks are the potentiometers (the pots for the volume and other knobs). If your volume potentiometer is out, that'd cause your no-sound issue. Very easy to fix.

Can you hear the motor rev up? If not, that could be your problem as well. Old electric motors tend to get off-axis over time, which causes sticking.

Pantheon · Post by **Pantheon** » Fri Oct 16, 2009 12:25 am

Skytree wrote:Can you hear the motor rev up?

Thanks for the info, yeah the motor turns and the tape winds under the motor so im guessing its not a power issue. Next time im back at my parents (where the machine is) i'll check out the pots with my MultiMeater. Its so heavy I wonder if it has valves in it, perhaps they would need replacing. I havent lifted the top yet so I dont know whats inside.

I also have one of these :

It has a variable speed pot that can do some nice pitch shifting. It also has 2 speakers inside that can be used for playback or monitoring the input signal. When its turned up loud the case gets this wonderfull resonance like in Boc's ATP Live set track 1. Its ashame its only mono

sc6000 · Post by **sc6000** » Fri Oct 16, 2009 4:49 am

I still use my very first sampler, an Akai S20...which after all these years, has developed a bit of a temper and tends to short out and create fuzzy little bits of noise here & there. All the better for some great sounds when it's all said & done. Hot damn I love that little machine....

dave_from_2001 · Post by **dave_from_2001** » Fri Oct 16, 2009 5:00 am

try hard to preserve sounds that are destroyed

____twoism

Sound Destruction

Sound Destruction

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