Audio feedback
[2][3] Boner was responsible for establishing basic theories of acoustic feedback, room-ring modes, and room-sound system equalizing techniques.
Professional setups circumvent feedback by placing the main speakers away from the band or artist, and then having several smaller speakers known as monitors pointing back at each band member, but in the opposite direction to that in which the microphones are pointing taking advantage of microphones with a cardioid pickup pattern which are common in sound reinforcement applications.
A deliberate use of acoustic feedback was pioneered by blues and rock and roll guitarists such as Willie Johnson, Johnny Watson and Link Wray.
[1]: 120–121 The Who's 1965 hits "Anyway, Anyhow, Anywhere" and "My Generation" featured feedback manipulation by Pete Townshend, with an extended solo in the former and the shaking of his guitar in front of the amplifier to create a throbbing noise in the latter.
[11] Lou Reed created his album Metal Machine Music (1975) entirely from loops of feedback played at various speeds.
In addition to "I Feel Fine", feedback was used on the introduction to songs including Jimi Hendrix's "Foxy Lady", the Beatles' "It's All Too Much", Hendrix's "Crosstown Traffic", David Bowie's "Little Wonder", the Strokes's "New York City Cops", Ben Folds Five's "Fair", Midnight Juggernauts's "Road to Recovery", Nirvana's "Radio Friendly Unit Shifter", the Jesus and Mary Chain's "Tumbledown" and "Catchfire", the Stone Roses's "Waterfall", Porno for Pyros's "Tahitian Moon", Tool's "Stinkfist", and the Cure's "Prayer For Rain".
[1]: 121–122 Examples of feedback combined with a quick volume swell used as a transition include Weezer's "My Name Is Jonas" and "Say It Ain't So"; The Strokes' "Reptilia", "New York City Cops", and "Juicebox"; Dream Theater's "As I Am"; as well as numerous tracks by Meshuggah and Tool.
[1]: 122–123 Cacophonous feedback fade-outs ending a song are most often used to generate rather than relieve tension, often cross-faded too after a thematic and musical release.
Examples include Modwheelmood's remix of Nine Inch Nail's "The Great Destroyer"; and the Jesus and Mary Chain's "Teenage Lust", "Tumbledown", "Catchfire", "Sundown", and "Frequency".
Steve Reich makes extensive use of audio feedback in his work Pendulum Music (1968) by swinging a series of microphones back and forth in front of their corresponding amplifiers.
Roland Kayn based much of his compositional oeuvre, which he termed "cybernetic music," on audio systems incorporating feedback.
Examples include Tool's "Jambi", Robert Fripp's guitar on David Bowie's "Heroes" (album version), and Jimi Hendrix's "Third Stone from the Sun" and his live performance of "Wild Thing" at the Monterey Pop Festival.
He really worked this out to a fine science, and we were playing this at a terrific level in the studio, too.Audio feedback became a signature feature of many underground rock bands during the 1980s.
American noise-rockers Sonic Youth melded the rock-feedback tradition with a compositional and classical approach (notably covering Reich's "Pendulum Music"), and guitarist/producer Steve Albini's group Big Black also worked controlled feedback into the makeup of their songs.
With the alternative rock movement of the 1990s, feedback again saw a surge in popular usage by suddenly mainstream acts like Nirvana, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Rage Against the Machine and the Smashing Pumpkins.
The use of the "no-input-mixer" method for sound generation by feeding a mixing console back into itself has been adopted in experimental electronic and noise music by practitioners such as Toshimaru Nakamura.
