What does Ra mean by 'distortion'

[Asolsutsesvyl]

As in music from India..

If you mean traditional instruments, then, well, I forgot about the analog world while writing the previous post. I've read some description to the effect that historically, in the West, instruments developed towards simpler and "cleaner" sounds making them easy to combine in orchestras, while in the East, instruments were instead made so that a lone musician would produce the richest, fullest sound with a single instrument. "Rich and full" being the opposite of the purity of a tuning fork.

Then there's modern music named after a place in India, but most of the time not actually Indian, even if inspired (though often loosely) in rhythm and themes. Goa trance, which I listened a lot to in the 00's, has a rich and complex synthesized sound that is notably drum-heavy, like other trance genres (including the quite similar, though more Western and sci-fi themed, psy-trance genre).

I like to think in digital terms, because then you have the means of adding distortions of different types layer by layer, in precise ways. As in, turn a virtual knob and listen and/or look at an oscilloscope. (Or write your own code to change an audio signal in a simple-enough way and test what happens.)

Compared to modern synthesized music in general, I find FM synthesis (old but nowadays one of several big techniques) interesting because all sound is made by connecting sine wave oscillators in particular ways. A few sine wave oscillators connected in carrier-modulator sequences can produce very varied results. Simple frequency ratios between carrier and modulator create simple spectra, more complex ratios create more complex spectra. On the simpler/purer side are the iconic bell-like metallic sounds.