Resampling/rerecording audio from a project through external gear

I find this a very intriguing technique to add character to otherwise dry samples and to play with feedback. I'm new to producing in general and don't actually have any dedicated gear yet.

I have some guitar amps - a wah and distortion pedal and a mic but what I've been experimenting with is rerecording the output from my monitors with a mic and getting some nice trippy feedback effects. I guess you guys have done this before.

I didn't actually have great results using my distortion pedal/wah if I'm honest as the Ableton effects seem superior. Anyone had any good experiences sending audio through guitar amps?

I was just reading the other thread about why you make music and thught I'd post this as I was actually intending to record my voice for a melodic section and ended up realising that rerecording simply the mic feeding back with loads of ableton effects flowing in parrale sounds fucking amazing. I could make an entire drum rack just from feedback slices.

I'm rambling. Just thought I'd share. Would be good to hear your early experiences of fucking around with audio basically.

You could do some feedback without mic/speakers. Like effect out -> splitter -> mixer -> effect input. And then you can put your synth/whatever in the mixer, and record from the other half of the splitter. I've had some cool results with chorus and pitch shifter pedals, but I think wah/fuzz would be pretty nice as well.

For pedals, you might need a reamp box and possibly a DI to get the results you want. If you patch straight from your interface to the pedal there will be an impedence mismatch and the line level signal will also be hotter than the pedal is designed for. On the other side, patching straight back in to your interface migth work fine depending on whether or not the interface itself is designed to accept instrument level signals or not. That doesn't mean it won't work, but it will sound different than using the same pedal wih an instrument, and since you aren't happy with the sound you're getting from your distortion then it could be something to consider.

Between the two, the reamp box will probably make the bigger difference, and you can build a perfectly good passive one for next to nothing. Seriously, even if you've never built anything in your life it's one of the simplest things to start with and will run maybe $15USD for parts (not counting a case to mount everything in). A passive DI is possibly even easier since it's really just a transformer and two jacks, but a good DI transformer is expensive.

I'd really recommend building one (or better yet two for stereo) reamp box even if you don't think you need it just because it will change the way all of your pedals sound when you run a line level sinal to them, and you can get two distinct tones from the design I linked, so you end up with three different overall tonalities you can explore from every pedal. It will make more difference for some than for others, but distortion is one where it should be pretty noticable.

EDIT: here's a video about building a similar passive reamp box: http://www.diyrecordingequipment.com/blogs/news/15851716-how-to-build-a-diy-reamping-box

Depending on the quality of gear you can get your hands on, the majority of processes like this are going to result in degrading the sound which is why people do it. Giving the clean sounds a more gritty character. You'd have to have some serious money if you want to tonally improve the sound with processes like this.

I think getting "gear" to make in the box sounds sound better is a huge misconception.

Interesting...yeah, perhaps it's more about degrading the source sound then.