wire to the ear

Here’s a way to get a highly unique sound. You probably won’t want to use this technique on every song you record. I guarantee when you do people will ask how you did it. Take a microphone and aim it at one of your speakers. Carefully turn up the volume. When you start to hear feedback hit record on your DAW. Move the microphone around. That’s the basics but now let’s play more. Add a distorion or reverb plug in as an insert on the microphone channel. Now we have more flavors of feedback. Using these recordings in your purely electronic songs adds some real life.

I have a song called from 1996 called Dark Invader. It was the first release on my record label Things to Come Records. I was searching for bat sounds but instead I did the following. I had a Shure SM-58 microphone aimed towards a large nightclub style speaker. The mic was going through a Korg SDD-2000 digital delay. I had the delay times in sync with the tempo of my song. I recorded the feedback. Lastly, in an Akai S950 sampler I reversed and cut up the feedback and stragedically placed it in the song. Here is an audio sample:

Early this year I was recording a song about Gary Ridgeway, The Green River Killer. The song is called The Grip of the Cobra. I wanted a dark feedback effect to roll over the drums. This time I used a modern technique. There is a fantastic plug-in called Timeless by Dutch company Fabfilter. It’s an analog style delay with according to thier website “Feedback and cross-feedback with L/R sync and phase inversion”. What this means is I am now able to get a similar effect but all within my DAW and without recording an external mic aimed at my speakers. They have a fully functional 30 day demo available to download on their website. Here is a sample of the feedback effect I was able to achieve in my song The Grip of the Cobra:

photo credits: 2create, Tolka Rover

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