Most UNDERRATED SOUND DESIGN tool transcript

What is the connection between Sonic Youth, Toshimaru Nakamura, King Tubby and Steve Reich? The answer is simple, feedback. A live sound engineer's nightmare and a source of inspiration for many experimental musicians. It occurs when an audio input and output form a loop, usually resulting in a high-pitched sound. [music] Initially, this audio phenomenon was seen as a nuisance, but over time it has sparked the interest of many experimental musicians such as John Cage and his Variations 2 composition and Steve Reich in Pendulum Music.

Countless rock musicians used feedback either in solos or intros and outros to their songs, with The Beatles being credited as the first ones to use it on a commercially released record in 1964 on the track I Feel Fine. In the early 70s, Jamaican dub pioneers used feedback delays extensively by feeding the delays output back into its input, resulting in the signature dub delay sound. In 1975, Lou Reed released Metal Machine Music, an album containing four tracks featuring unstructured guitar noise and feedback, which became an inspiration to the 1980s wave of Japanese noise musicians who took the appreciation for feedback to the next level.

In mid-90s, a rock musician, Toshimaru Nakamura, decided to quit playing the electric guitar to focus on the mixer instead. He came up with the idea of a no-input mixing board. He would connect the mixer's input to the output and manipulate the feedback loop using effects and treating it as an instrument. [music] The spontaneous nature of a no-input mixing board forces its player to go with the flow of feedback. There is no exact formula and the results are unpredictable, which makes it a perfect ground for experimentation.

There have been countless using feedback in a creative way, and today I'll present you with a few techniques where we will use it as a sound design tool. Apple Shure you developers decided that creating feedback loops in the mixer might make our sound design too good and disabled it. That's why we need to use a delay. Use any sound source for this. Put a limiter at the end of the chain it will be extremely loud. Now, load up Fruity Delay 3 and turn the feedback all the way up and turn the tempo sync option off.

Play any sound and turn the time parameter all the way down. There we have it, the beautiful sound of feedback. Now, we can control its pitch with the time parameter by turning it down. You can also get these really interesting robotic metallic sounds by turning the key pitch on and manipulating the time parameter. >> [music] >> Now that we know how to achieve feedback, we can start making Let's load up a drum loop. Add a delay, feedback all the way up.

Tempo sync off, key pitch on and start manipulating the time parameter while recording everything. You're going to get these really interesting glitchy sounds out of it. Now, if you want one shots, you can add a transmitter paired with a transient processor on the same effect chain. Turn the sustain off and adjust the release and hold parameters. This will only play the detectable transients and the transient processor will sharpen them up when you set it to sharp shapes, high attack and low release. >> [music] >> Now, go back to the delay and record the one shots. >> Export your favorite ones and add them to the drum loop. >> [music] >> Let's load up Fruity XO's later [music] with two slightly detuned signs and octave apart. >> [music] >> Let's add a Fruity Convolver and choose your favorite reverb.

I'll decrease the dry a bit and add some [music] more wet signal. Now we're going to add a delay. Keep pitch option on and [music] tempo sync off. Set the time relatively low and set the delay model to ping pong. What we want to do now is to get the feedback to around 100%. If it gets too harsh, you can control it with the feedback cut off parameter. >> [music] >> Let's also add a spreader [music] to the chain. Experiment with the feedback level and the time parameter [music] until it starts singing along. >> [music] [music] >> Let's get a nice feedback going with the key pitch option on and tempo sync off.

Open up Fruity Peak controller, select a random LFO, increase the volume a bit, and speed it up. Let's assign feedback time to the random LFO. >> [bell] >> Now let's add a transient processor. Sharp shapes, attack to the right, release hold way down. Let's also add a transmitter and get rid of the sustain. Now let's load it up a multiband delay. Choose the line drawing option and set up each bank so that only one band is at the top.

This way when we move the morph knob, we will have plenty of different tones coming out. >> [music] >> Add a Convolver reverb to close the chain. Now manipulate the LFO controlling the delay time. Change the multiband delay settings live and record the output. >> [music] [bell] [music] >> It's a goldmine for random sounds and rhythm ideas. And there we have it. Hope you guys enjoyed the video and I'll see you in a bit.