One of the first main examples of distortion was in 1951 and has been said that it was the start of the distortion. This track is ‘Jackie Brenston & his Delta Cats’ with the song ‘Rocket 88’.
Although the guitar hasn’t got much distortion, you can still hear the guitar buzzing more than other songs made that year. But people tried to get distortion by increasing the volume over the limit and increasing the gain which made the low quality amps buzz. But also some people even damaged the amps such as cutting the cone or just knocking about enough until they liked the sound. An example of a song that uses a damaged amp to specifically get that dirty tone is by ‘The Ventures’ called ‘The 2000 Pound Bee’ which was recorded in 1962.
The distorted sound became popular mainly during the 60s (e.g. Jimi Hendrix) and carried on through-out the century and played an important role in songs and in many genres. without distortion we wouldnt have many genres around today. But as distortion became more popular, it became easier to create the dirty sounds people wanted. so people gained their distortion from more powerful amps with built in distortion and pedals with all different types of distortion. Now people can have a wide variety of distortion sounds to choose from and adjust the levels to get the right sound. I Think its one of the most important things that was introduced to more modern music and effected the way music was written, performed, played and recorded.
Just quickly found an example of Metal song which are heavily influenced on using distortion, but played without distortion. It makes a big difference to how they make the song sound.
But distortion will carry on being used in many songs and will develop more with more sounds. this is all why i think i changed music…roughly.