While redoing a bunch of my patches for Cygnus I started thinking about how, over time, our minds sort of create idealized ideas of tones that, in fact, probably wouldn't even work for most people.
And I started thinking about how to effectively get those tones out of my head and into my AFX. It obviously goes beyond tracking down amp settings or finding clear soloed moments in tracks.
And it got me thinking that picking the minds of the fractal forum brain trust could be interesting.
I feel like the first tone like this that would likely spring to people's minds is Dimebag's (perfect for him, but would likely sound like crap in any other context),
However, the first one I'm trying to wrap my head around is Korn's (I'll get around to Dimebag's at some point and probably port another rambling thread about that when I do). Their tone is undeniably rectifier, but it's application is just so strange and technically junky, and not at all like what most people would want when dialing in a rectifier, but it sounds just huge (both live and in their mixes). When trying to build a base tone like this, it's definitely been a struggle to balance definition vs excessive distortion and to figure out how overboard to go with the low end. Lots of sculpting and refining where elements of distortion and overdrive come into the mix and attempts at multiband compression and so on.
So, for anyone interested: if you were trying to not recreate what this tone actually is, but a version that encompasses the idea of it... What would you come up with?
(and, yes, I probably should have included the patch that I've been toying around with this on, but this is what we get when I'm sleepy and think to post about this after I've left my music room to go to bed. I'll post that tomorrow, unless the response is "this is weird and esoteric, and we have no clue what you're trying to say)
And I started thinking about how to effectively get those tones out of my head and into my AFX. It obviously goes beyond tracking down amp settings or finding clear soloed moments in tracks.
And it got me thinking that picking the minds of the fractal forum brain trust could be interesting.
I feel like the first tone like this that would likely spring to people's minds is Dimebag's (perfect for him, but would likely sound like crap in any other context),
However, the first one I'm trying to wrap my head around is Korn's (I'll get around to Dimebag's at some point and probably port another rambling thread about that when I do). Their tone is undeniably rectifier, but it's application is just so strange and technically junky, and not at all like what most people would want when dialing in a rectifier, but it sounds just huge (both live and in their mixes). When trying to build a base tone like this, it's definitely been a struggle to balance definition vs excessive distortion and to figure out how overboard to go with the low end. Lots of sculpting and refining where elements of distortion and overdrive come into the mix and attempts at multiband compression and so on.
So, for anyone interested: if you were trying to not recreate what this tone actually is, but a version that encompasses the idea of it... What would you come up with?
(and, yes, I probably should have included the patch that I've been toying around with this on, but this is what we get when I'm sleepy and think to post about this after I've left my music room to go to bed. I'll post that tomorrow, unless the response is "this is weird and esoteric, and we have no clue what you're trying to say)
Last edited: