Extreme Sounds

Some of the most interesting and unusual sounds in recording are produced when equipment is pushed to extremes. Mark Cousins takes it to the limit.

Whether it’s an aggressive synth lead slicing through your tweeters or a seemingly ordinary drum loop squashed to within an inch of its very existence, it seems we have a perpetual fascination with extreme sounds. One of the many explanations for this appeal is that extreme sounds simply demand a listener’s attention, helping your music to stand out from the crowd and diverting attention away from perhaps less imaginative work. If you’re looking for a key feature or hook in your latest song, therefore, the answer increasingly lies in the extremes of audio engineering, whether that’s applying a searing distortion or pushing a compressor far harder than any textbook would suggest.

This feature first appeared in Music Tech Magazine issue 75
Filed under Home, General Features, Features

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