Ways to make your stuff sound different...

[Todd Madson <crash@waste.org>]

Process your stuff through:

Lexicon Vortex (heady trippy possibilities)

Octave Divider (play in a range below your usual home ground)

Distortion with the high-end rolled off or full on

Ibanez Swell Flanger works nicely for unusual attacks of sounds

Vocoderize your tracks (a recent track I did has vocoderized drums,
vocoderized synth bass, and vocoderized drone guitars).  The dynamic
control here provides wonderful tonal variations.  (This is the 
vocoder in my Roland VS-840 workstation).

Put your instrument through an MXR blue box (interesting FX).

Go to the local consignment store and buy a used, weird stompbox
and try that out.

Record your instrument backwards and flip the tape.

Experiment with compression - that can have a vast effect on the
attacks and flavor of your tones.

Try playing through multiple delays, and/or split your signal path
so that one path has an effected delay happening (octave divided 
signal leading into a delay, distortion into a delay, vocoder into
a delay).

Record a track with your instrument.  Then record a second track at
the same pan position playing the indentical notes and attacks but
in a different octave (or interval).  Then effect the results so 
that it doesn't sound like two instruments, but one with an unusual
tone color.  Insure volume levels for each instrument doesn't cancel
the other out, but just enough of each to be distinctive.

If that bores you, flip that track backwards.

If that bores you, send the effected signal back to tape (or disk)
and then re-effect (with a different effect) that track.

Put a drum machine through a tap tempo delay for an interesting effect.

Put a drum machine through a tap tempo delay and a vocoder for a weird,
vocally percussive effect.

Put a drum machine through a distortion box or tube preamp for that
industrial effect.

Bring a stereo recordable walkman on a walk through a park.  Use the
resulting field recording in your project.  Steve Tibbets did this to
great effect on "Safe Journey".

Use audio morphing software to give a note the attack of a trumpet
with the decay of a flute or other instrument.

These are just some of the ideas I thought of to try for variations
in sound.  Don't forget to loop the results.

Todd Madson
Musician, Mountain Biker, Stunt Kite Flyer, BeOS/MacOS/Linux/WinNt user.
http://www.waste.org/~crash/index.html