The Sound Destroyer

The Sound Destroyer is an instrument that takes sound input and applies a destructive process to it. The player has a wide range of controls for how the destruction will occur.

In traditional musical effect/instrument terms the device sits somewhere between a distortion and a looper. The “destruction” is accomplished through the use of a wavetable playback system that is glitched with adjustable semi-randomized settings. The output can then (when desired) be fed back into the original buffer to permanently overwrite any changes.

This is one of a series of devices that stem from the work I started in Volume 3 of my Book of Knowledge of Impractical Musical Devices.

I wrote a bit about this instrument in my paper Three Ways to Destroy a Sound. I have also made a video explaining how the system works (though the video does not talk about the physical instrument version).