New CLAM plugin: (’very’ for now) simple guitar distortion
Posted by hordia on December 9th, 2007
A week or more ago, Daniel Vidal Chornet (collaborator of Musix) asked me if i can develop guitar distortion effects, because he couldn’t find something decent that suits his needs, i said “sadly i have no idea about distortions effects and anyway i have no time right now to do that”, but then i remembered how useful could be the clam framework and i tried to do a little spike about. Results were better than i had expected at first (is not a super cool distortion, but at least sound like one).
Basically i merged and tweaked a couple of simple/base algorithms found in the web for distortion and compression and in less than 30 minutes i had something working and sounds like a guitar distortion (”clean” ones seems to sound better easily). I was amazed how fast and easy (develop and test in clam/networkeditor, once you get the basis) was. I think right now is far to be a good distortion, but as learning process and first demo seems very good.
Here some sound examples:
Original:
(dvlc-guitar.ogg)
With distortion:
(guitardist-ex1.ogg)
Test network looks like:
The source code is here (as NetworkEditor plugin): GuitarDistortion.tar.gz
Some optional tweaks could include add a three band filter but i’m still not sure if it’s better to put it at first or at the end.
Special thanks for testing and audio samples to Daniel Vidal Chornet. I should take from my closet my fender stratocaster and do my own samples 
. OTOH, we already arrange to do a remote gig with this.
Another useful NetworkEditor processings plugins i had made during this “work”:
- AutomaticGainControl: Adaptative automatic gain control. Given an output reference and step response adjusts the output volume to keep it constant (AutomaticGainControl.tar.gz)
- AudioSwitch: Switchs between a configurable amount of inputs (like a multiplexer) (AudioSwitch.tar.gz)
Related: LADSPA versions of my recent simple distortions
Update: Distortion rack prototype
, audio , c++ , CLAM , effects , english , free software , GPL , library , plugins , programming
December 9th, 2007 at 6:01 pm
Very Nice!
Do you compile them as a separate plugin? I think you could commit and evolve them on CLAM/plugins/xxx. I\’m not sure what shold xxx be yet. But anyway moving processing around plugins and renaming subversion dirs is so easy, that anything will be fine.
Is compiling those networks as a ladspa plugin in your todo list?
Would seem very useful
Pau (clam-dev)
December 9th, 2007 at 6:15 pm
It is really great, Hernan! I just was trying some guitar distorsions on the Ladspa sets and i was very disapointed because the noise the generate. And this one uses CLAM! What about a prototyper interface?
December 12th, 2007 at 9:10 pm
(my answer from this mail thread here: [Clam-devel] New CLAM plugin:simple guitar distortion)
# Pau Arumí Says:
# December 9th, 2007 at 6:01 pm e
# Very Nice!
# Do you compile them as a separate plugin?
yes
# I think you could commit and evolve them on
# CLAM/plugins/xxx. I\’m not sure what shold xxx be yet. But anyway
moving processing around
# plugins and renaming subversion dirs is so easy, that anything will be fine.
good, committed
# Is compiling those networks as a ladspa plugin in your todo list?
# Would seem very useful
# Pau (clam-dev)
yes, indeed next post will be related with that (news soon), but..
btw1, there is (or at least is planned) a direct port to ladspa
feature from NE? i mean faust seems to be able to produce ladspa
plugins (and btw2 is supposed that NE is going to produce faust code?
or what?), is planned something similar in NE?
and btw3 (lol), NetworkEditor is not listed as ladspa host in
http://www.ladspa.org
# voki Says:
# December 9th, 2007 at 6:15 pm e
#
# It is really great, Hernan! I just was trying some guitar
distorsions on the Ladspa sets and i was
# very disapointed because the noise the generate. And this one uses
CLAM! What about a
# prototyper interface?
yes, i’ll make one
cheers, and thanks for the feedback!
June 24th, 2008 at 11:47 pm
uh-oh…my head is turning backwards, forwards, side to side at the same time with all these tecnological terms…i\’m a guitarist and as far as I\’m concerned, to be able to give out a distorted sound, you need to pump up the volume, in a manner of speaking. When I still didn\’t have a Fuzz Wah-Wah, but just a small practice amp many years ago, what i did was to connect the amp to my dad\’s stereo with all their volume levels in full blast while my guitar\’s volume controls is set to between 1 or 2. That way, it gave a very nice distortion sound. Anyway, what I would like to have right now is a guitar with built-in effects from distortion to phlanger to sustain and everything which are located on the body of the guitar itself.