Much of the time we try to avoid audible distortion, but there are plenty of situations where adding it in a controlled manner can be very fruitful.
But first, a quick word about definitions. From a technical perspective audio distortion is any process that brings about a change in an audio waveform. It’s a broad definition that can include compression and soft clipping as well as more obvious effects such as overdrive, fuzz and so on.
Nevertheless, when we talk about creative uses for distortion more often than not we mean a process that generates audible harmonics. This could simply be adding subtle saturation or enhancing vocals (both of which we’ll cover in individual masterclasses), but could equally be a very audible
