A couple of other things that spring to mind ~ sometimes when double tracking a lead vocal, I'll record one at a semitone slower and the other at a semitone faster than the regular speed. When mixing the voices together, if you make one about half the volume of the other, you get a rather interesting texture. Imperceptible if you don't know !
Another weird one is using a headphone as a microphone. Sometimes when I've got a quick tambourine or shaker track to do but I just can't be bothered to set up all the mics, a headphone works well. It's not brilliant and groundbreaking but it's usable and surprizingly bright. I would imagine that if you want a "lo~fi" trashy guitar sound or thin spunky bass sound, the headphone is your man !
Sometimes as I'm driving about, I'll get an idea for a song and usually once I've fleshed it out, I'll get hold of one of my drumming pals and we'll record the foundation. But there have been times when I've taken the drum track from one song on my DAW, recorded it into my portastudio, taken a second drum track from a different song, done likewise then fed the result back into my DAW and used the two bits to make a completely new drum track to a piece I have in mind. The two or more drum tracks might be different in feel, tempo and other things but when put together, then with other instruments overlayed, makes the drummer {it may, in fact, be two separate drummers that did these bits years apart from each other !} sound ever so inventive ! Once while trying this, I had two drum bits in different time signatures, one 4/4 and one 3/4 or 6/8 {they sound the same to me !}. But the way my mate in the 4/4 bit played the hi~hat on just a tiny portion sounded like 3/4 and I figured it would join nicely with the waltz time because that had a nice hi~hat bit that fitted
almost exactly. Not quite, but enough for a join point. With everything else going on, it sounded really cool to me and the mood of the piece shifts subtly yet dramatically.
damn grim ...... that's some cool experimental ideas there mang!
In this day and age with plugs that can do just about anything people want them to do, the era of the experimental technique may well be over. I find it amusing that something like trying to make a piece sound like it's being played on the radio or on a 7 inch scratched single is seen as being todays equivalent of 'experimental'. I guess I came up in the analog era where experimenting was still a viable pursuit even if it took ages just to net a few seconds of sound. I have always loved reading about how the bands of the 60s tried all kinds of things in the name of sounding different. And even before that, with people like Lester Paul and his 'sound on sound' that became multitracking as we know it.
It should be noted that a number of todays common everyday recording techniques began as weird experiments that went against the accepted grain.
The other thing that's important to note is that while there is a certain novelty value in doing certain unusual things, for me
personally, they're in the same realm as reverb and compression. That is to say, the actual net effect is subtle and almost imperceptible unless it warrants being 'in yer face' and whatever the technique or experiment, it doesn't make the song. I'll discuss the experiment forever and a day because it's an intersting subject to me and some of us on the recording side of things but it's of no consequence to a listener and unless they have a particular interest in these things, neither should it be. I would hope it never distracts attention from the song in question.
