Creative distortion tricks
01 Driving delay and reverb
If your overly clean reverb or delay signals need a splash of colour, load them on an auxiliary return track containing a saturation or distortion plugin. By placing the distortion effect after the delay or reverb, you can dial in varying shades of colour: gentle saturation will bring up low-level detail and flatten your reverb or delay’s dynamics; while more assertive drive will result in face-melting, over-the-top distorted tails or repeats.
Placing the distortion stage before the ’verb or echo will coat the driven dry signal in clean ambience. Use subtle settings to spice up tame vocals and synth stabs, or heavily distort a parallel synth signal into gigantic reverb to design gnarly ‘foghorn’ bass sounds.
