Total disclosure: I'm working on a piece for a conference about the aesthetics of destruction in fuzz/distortion/OD guitar effects and I thought I'd present a question to this board. Of course, if I end up quoting anyone on here, I'll PM you.
So, I know quite a few of us (including myself) are big fans of crazy fuzz sounds (I'm thinking Soundwave Breakdown, Fuck/Mini, Geiger Counter, Clari(not), etc) -- tones that make your guitar/amp sound broken or on the verge of destroying itself. I see adjectives like "apocalyptic" and "destroyed" thrown around a lot. Some of us like random, sputtering fuzzes, full of feedback and white noise, quite far from the "transparent" ideal of many other players. What I'm curious about is why. Why do these types of tones draw you in? Why do you seek them? What do you seek in them? Or do you hate them and why?
For me, and these are a lot of cliches, the broken amp tones of Neil Young or the noisy freakout fuzz tones of Acid Mother's Temple or even someone like Warren Ellis just sound primal. I don't crave pristine musics. I crave music that sounds like it took blood to make, that it broke a few things in the process. At the same time, I love improvisation and I love the (excuse the cliche) orgasmic feeling of a noise freakout in a live setting.
When it comes right down to it, a messed up sounding fuzz separates me from 95% of other guitarists that I see on a weekly basis. I love playing clean, even using conventional overdrive/fuzz. But I have to have at least one pedal on my board that makes people come up to me and go "how did you make that sound?"
Be it digital, analog, old gear, new gear, maybe even new techniques... whatever. I love seeing musicians trying a new thing out. Whether its something no one has done before, if they're just trying something for themselves.
mr. sound boy king wrote:
Organic apples are not normal, they are special, like analog, whereas normal apples, like digital, taste sterile and lack warmth.
unpredictability and makes my braincells explodes, it keeps my attention and forces me to explore, also it gives new tones, the harmonics of the notes correlate with other notes in different ways, and makes everything more expressive, hitting hard makes everything huge, hitting soft produces some weird decays in the notes and also sputtering tones is the equivalent of squirting
autopilot wrote:unpredictability and makes my braincells explodes, it keeps my attention and forces me to explore, also it gives new tones, the harmonics of the notes correlate with other notes in different ways, and makes everything more expressive, hitting hard makes everything huge, hitting soft produces some weird decays in the notes and also sputtering tones is the equivalent of squirting
This. (Sorry, to Not Write sth myself but this is it.)
For my part I'd never owned a fuzz before I joined ILF. I mostly play metal, and tight, articulate palm mutes are a must, which rules out a lot of fuzz. I didn't have a lot of room to experiment outside of that because I spent so much time and money trying to find a distortion that was all I wanted. I somehow heard about the Elements and that was the end of that question. All of a sudden I had time to start thinking about other textures and sounds. This got even more prominent when my band got a second guitarist who is awesome, and has stuck with the band for a while. I didn't have to carry the riffs anymore.
What gets me so excited about crazy fuzz is the volatility of the decay. With a good distortion it sounds the same all the time, it has a great chunka chunka sound, it's predictable. But a crazy fuzz is the opposite. On some notes it might ring out, on others it will fizzle. Some intervals will sound good, some will intermodulate and sound dissonant. Some intervals will work on some parts of the neck, while at other parts they will intermodulate. There might be an envelopish quality to the attack, or to the decay. And so on. I think a bat shit fuzz that is 100% crazy 100% of the time is a one trick pony and not something I'm particularly interested in. But something where the chaos is dynamic and on the verge of control and out of control, like in an Arc Flash, or an Unpleasant Surprise, that makes playing exciting. I think humans love riding the borderline between chaos and control.
I think the Fuck overdrive is another beast altogether. It's my favourite OD and it is worth every second of the hype. In that case, me choosing that over a TS (which I enjoy), or an And Aardvarks! or some other OD is the crackle function. Again, it adds a dynamic to the sound, as above, but I think we (humans) also respond well to things that have been lived in, things that age and decay. Vinyl is cooler than a CD because you can hear the degradation of the signal, you can hear the dust, you know where it usually pops. AM radio - the lack of bandwidth, the way it fades in and out, it's the sound of technology trying and failing. It's why everything in the original Star Wars films looked cool - because there was rust and stuff on the droids, the ships, whatever. It's why autumn is special, and why sunsets are more romantic than sunrises. I think the broken amp sounds you get out of the Fuck are a reminder of this sort of living decay. Imperfection is what we have in this world, and I think we respond well to aural imperfection as well.
I'm currently redoing my board and was thinking about delays as well. I like the sound of a PT-2399 being pushed way beyond its operating limits. The ILFDD is a great example of that sound, where forcing the chip to go beyond its intended performance boundaries introduces distortion and artifacts. And I LOVE IT! Same thing with the shitty AD/DA in the Boss DD-3. The distortion it introduces is fantastically pleasing to the ear. At least, to my ear. haha. And I guess this sort of ties in with the sound aesthetic I'm talking about above.
Gone Fission wrote: ↑Thu Oct 24, 2024 2:21 pm
That’s quarter-assed at best.
Like other people are saying, the unpredictability and the interaction with your instrument lead to a lot of creativity. It's like having a cranked amp that starts feeding back, it's crazy but you can work with it and it reacts to what you do, which adds an extra element of tension to every time you play the same song/riff/note.
Also I just like making loud end of the world sounds for the hell of it. Hard to explain what I get out of that, it just feels... really heavy/intense?
To echo other people I feel like it's controllable chaos that's the most appealing. It makes everything respond very differently, almost like a reverse color photo. Small, almost minute picking can have the weirdest and most unpredictable effects, and multiple notes can do anything depending on the fuzz. I remember one time someone commented on our band's performance saying, "normally your guys's distortion is so out of control and chaotic, but this time it was much more controlled." The guy mean it as a compliment, but that was one of the most unintentionally offensive things anyone's said to me.
Sometimes, though, I just want to make something that sounds ugly, or I just want the sound to be physically painful. That's difficult to do with just a tubescreamer/klon/sd-1.
It challenges yourself and people to invite and digest new sounds. I went from an OCD v2, which was a kind of a more-sound, added sparkle and grit but retained the sound of your guitar, to the Fuck and adjusting was wild. I'm use to super sparkly and pure tones. However, I learned there was way more to do with something unique and textured like that thing. It had me rethink riffs and playing.
Someone once described my guitar sound as degenerative and I think that it's in this having less, or slight limitation I find inspiration.
In ancient Greece sculptors strived towards perfection; making statues that were perfect copies of the human bodies. Then one day someone actually did it. These statues were later dumped in the ocean, and the sculptors started getting more abstract instead. It's not bad being a perfectionist, but I think, as stated above, that imperfection (at least in art) resonates more with us because it's closer to life.
goroth wrote:PumpkinPieces has, as usual, a great point.
For my part I'd never owned a fuzz before I joined ILF. I mostly play metal, and tight, articulate palm mutes are a must, which rules out a lot of fuzz. I didn't have a lot of room to experiment outside of that because I spent so much time and money trying to find a distortion that was all I wanted. I somehow heard about the Elements and that was the end of that question. All of a sudden I had time to start thinking about other textures and sounds. This got even more prominent when my band got a second guitarist who is awesome, and has stuck with the band for a while. I didn't have to carry the riffs anymore.
What gets me so excited about crazy fuzz is the volatility of the decay. With a good distortion it sounds the same all the time, it has a great chunka chunka sound, it's predictable. But a crazy fuzz is the opposite. On some notes it might ring out, on others it will fizzle. Some intervals will sound good, some will intermodulate and sound dissonant. Some intervals will work on some parts of the neck, while at other parts they will intermodulate. There might be an envelopish quality to the attack, or to the decay. And so on. I think a bat shit fuzz that is 100% crazy 100% of the time is a one trick pony and not something I'm particularly interested in. But something where the chaos is dynamic and on the verge of control and out of control, like in an Arc Flash, or an Unpleasant Surprise, that makes playing exciting. I think humans love riding the borderline between chaos and control.
I think the Fuck overdrive is another beast altogether. It's my favourite OD and it is worth every second of the hype. In that case, me choosing that over a TS (which I enjoy), or an And Aardvarks! or some other OD is the crackle function. Again, it adds a dynamic to the sound, as above, but I think we (humans) also respond well to things that have been lived in, things that age and decay. Vinyl is cooler than a CD because you can hear the degradation of the signal, you can hear the dust, you know where it usually pops. AM radio - the lack of bandwidth, the way it fades in and out, it's the sound of technology trying and failing. It's why everything in the original Star Wars films looked cool - because there was rust and stuff on the droids, the ships, whatever. It's why autumn is special, and why sunsets are more romantic than sunrises. I think the broken amp sounds you get out of the Fuck are a reminder of this sort of living decay. Imperfection is what we have in this world, and I think we respond well to aural imperfection as well.
I'm currently redoing my board and was thinking about delays as well. I like the sound of a PT-2399 being pushed way beyond its operating limits. The ILFDD is a great example of that sound, where forcing the chip to go beyond its intended performance boundaries introduces distortion and artifacts. And I LOVE IT! Same thing with the shitty AD/DA in the Boss DD-3. The distortion it introduces is fantastically pleasing to the ear. At least, to my ear. haha. And I guess this sort of ties in with the sound aesthetic I'm talking about above.
this was beautiful man
for me, in most music or art, fucked up shit is a lot cooler than beautiful sounding shit
sure theres a time and place for pitch perfect singers, guitarists; but i love the grit, the cracks, the wrong notes - its a lot more real and human and i think crazy fuzz can work well for this too, theres hopefully a greater range of expression
Derelict78 wrote:That probably sounds awful in the best possible way.
Will you be mentioning MBV's 'holocaust' thing they do live?
I'm not into noise rock per se, but I'm certainly into 'wall of sound' and minimalist stuff. I like how nasty etc fuzz can provide different textures, harmonics, and fill out the sound. I like the buzzy, hazy, warm feeling it evokes.
I consider effects pedals as instruments in their own right. I play the effects. Ultimately, the approach is not of being a ''guitarist'' or a ''musician'', but being an artist of sound - a sound artist. Of all the different art forms, music/sound is arguably the most direct/immediate/quick/easy way to express oneself.
Even if T.S. Eliot was talking about poetry, it for me sums up why I feel so drawn to "ugly" and "unpredictable" sounds:
"Our civilization" he wrote, "comprehends great variety and complexity, and this variety and complexity, playing upon a refined sensibility, must produce various and complex results. The poet must become more and more comprehensive, more allusive, more indirect, in order to force, to dislocate if necessary, language into his meaning". This speaks for all of art, but especially poetry and music. For me the profound emotional conditions are to be found in the juxtaposed sounds of "ugly" pedals and music. In the entangled connectives that sometimes lack any logics. It resonates more with my own being than most other musical genres or "traditional" music, like what Eivind August wrote in a way. I can't explain to anyone why. Maybe it's my psychology, or my spirit if you believe in that sort of thing. Maybe my ears are just fucked. There's just so much beauty in dirt.
Also I just like making loud end of the world sounds for the hell of it. Hard to explain what I get out of that, it just feels... really heavy/intense?
