How to tell the difference between the three oft-confused concepts.<\/p>\r\n
By Jeff Owens<\/p>\r\n
Here\u2019s a frequently asked question: \u201cWhat\u2019s the difference between distortion and overdrive?\u201d<\/p>\r\n
And how does fuzz fit into all this?<\/p>\r\n
Good questions, since the terms seem so often to be used interchangeably, but this is a matter of semantics, because it\u2019s not so much that distortion and overdrive are two separate things (as the phrasing of the question seems to suggest), but rather that one is a form of the other. That is, overdrive is a specific kind of distortion.<\/p>\r\n
It\u2019s one of those situations, in fact, where you can sensibly note that while all overdrive is distortion, not all distortion is overdrive. Of the two terms, distortion is the more general.<\/p>\r\n
For our everyday purposes \u2014 practicing, rehearsals, sessions, gigs, etc. \u2014 it might help to consider distortion as an umbrella term for any \u201cdirty\u201d guitar sound, regardless of what causes it, be it a torn speaker, a stomp box, a rack effect or an amp cranked up past its capacity for producing a clean sound. Without delving into loads of complicated audio science\u2014and there\u2019s a lot of it \u2014 we can generally think of distortion as any signal that\u2019s not clean.<\/p>\r\n
Usually, overdrive is considered a particular form of distortion caused by \u201cpushing\u201d an amp past its capability for producing a clean tone. Overdrive is often easily achieved in tube amps because the very nature of tube amp design is that they sound \u201cclean\u201d at lower volumes and distort to some extent at louder volumes.<\/p>\r\n
Now, it is true that there are plenty of overdrive stomp boxes out there, but the effect that these devices aim to achieve is that of an amp cranked past its clean tone capability.<\/p>\r\n
In fact, the key difference between distortion effects and overdrive effects (amp or pedal) is that distortion effects usually aim to produce the same amount of distortion regardless of volume. Overdrive units, on the other hand, function much like tube amps in that they produce cleaner sounds at lower volumes, with distortion increasing as volume increases.<\/p>\r\n
Songs that provide great examples of overdriven amp tone include \u201cWon\u2019t Get Fooled Again<\/a>\u201d (the Who), \u201cAll Right Now<\/a>\u201d (Free), \u201cJohnny B. Goode<\/a>\u201d (Chuck Berry), \u201cPride and Joy\u201d (Stevie Ray Vaughan), a great deal of Keith Richards\u2019 output after \u201c(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction<\/a>\u201d and pretty much anything by AC\/DC.<\/p>\r\n Suffice to say then that there are different kinds of distortion, with overdrive being one among them. Another form of guitar distortion quite separate from overdrive, for example, is fuzz. When you hear \u201cSatisfaction\u201d by the Stones, you are hearing distortion, but the kind of distortion you\u2019re hearing is fuzz, not overdrive. Or when you hear \u201cYou Really Got Me\u201d by the Kinks, you\u2019re hearing distortion caused by deliberately damaged speakers (slashed with a razor by Dave Davies himself, in that particular case) rather than overdrive.<\/p>\r\n We should also note that there is also a tendency to refer to a small amount of distortion, regardless of what creates it, as overdrive, with more heavily broken-up sounds labeled as distortion, although such distinctions are purely subjective.<\/p>\r\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Play Dirty: An Overview of Overdrive, Distortion and Fuzz How to tell the difference between the three oft-confused concepts. By Jeff Owens Here\u2019s a frequently asked question: \u201cWhat\u2019s the difference between distortion and overdrive?\u201d And how does fuzz fit into all this? Good questions, since the terms seem so often to be used interchangeably, but […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"post-templates\/single-layout-5.php","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[541],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/tmstudio.devoffice.com\/php73\/musicmachine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18868"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/tmstudio.devoffice.com\/php73\/musicmachine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/tmstudio.devoffice.com\/php73\/musicmachine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tmstudio.devoffice.com\/php73\/musicmachine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tmstudio.devoffice.com\/php73\/musicmachine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18868"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/tmstudio.devoffice.com\/php73\/musicmachine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18868\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/tmstudio.devoffice.com\/php73\/musicmachine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18868"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tmstudio.devoffice.com\/php73\/musicmachine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18868"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tmstudio.devoffice.com\/php73\/musicmachine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18868"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}What Is Fuzz?<\/h3>\r\n