[HN Gopher] The cultural evolution of distortion in music
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       The cultural evolution of distortion in music
        
       Author : anigbrowl
       Score  : 16 points
       Date   : 2025-04-03 21:03 UTC (1 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (royalsocietypublishing.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (royalsocietypublishing.org)
        
       | Tade0 wrote:
       | > for an electric guitar, a triangle wave
       | 
       | That is only true when the string is plucked exactly at the
       | middle - not a regular occurrence. Usually it's more of a
       | sawtooth wave, just without the upper harmonics.
       | 
       | My experience with distortion in guitars is that a huge component
       | here is how different it can sound depending on articulation.
       | Some pieces for example require the player to not alternate their
       | picking, but pluck only in one direction, as the difference is
       | audible.
       | 
       | This is not always the case of course as some amplifiers like
       | those made by Mesa Boogie get their signature tone by exploiting
       | the limited gain-bandwidth product(GBP) of amplifiers, creating
       | an even sound that at the high end of the gain setting is largely
       | without dynamics.
       | 
       | In some cases(like the BOSS DS-1) the manufacturer killed the
       | sound by introducing a technically better amplifier chip - the
       | original had somewhat poor GBP and poor settling time, which in
       | combination produced a nice lowpass filter with a resonance peak
       | at the cutoff frequency, which in turn emphasized articulation.
       | 
       | It's all a surprisingly huge topic.
        
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       (page generated 2025-04-03 23:00 UTC)