Distortion/Overdrive Effect in Audacity

The distortion effect was first created by guitar players overdriving their amps so that the waveform would become clipped. A similar effect can be done in a free and open-source program called Audacity.

Step 1 What You Will Need

You will need:

A computer capable of running Audacity (Linux, Windows, or Mac)

Audacity


A guitar recording (can be done in Audacity)

Comments

[Whhisper]

Thank you!!! I've recently started to discover that I have a million posibilities with my keyboard, a cable and this simple but great free program! And the biggest problem is... emulate an electric guitar. Your example sounds very very aproximate to a real guitar! I'm still experimenting with the preset sounds of acoustic guitars in the keyboard and adding the distorsion as you explained, and I cannot get something acceptable by now, but now I have a way. Thanks!

[instructables_user_4783]

You're welcome. You might also be interested in this Python script for guitar distortion. http://4783audio.blogspot.com/2012/01/guitar-distortion-in-python.html

[jpeltier]

i'm looking for where you actually download this program... i can't find it

[instructables_user_4783]

Audacity can be downloaded from: http://audacity.sourceforge.net/ and the plug-ins can be downloaded from

http://wiki.audacityteam.org/wiki/Download_Nyquist_Plug-ins

[macman808]

what kind of guitar is that

[instructables_user_4783]

just a picture of a Fender Squire from the internet