The Problem With Feedback — It’s Hard to Listen To
The day is August 18th, 1969. A dwindling crowd remains after an endless night of music at a farm outside Bethel, New York. After a long and full lineup of music all weekend long, only one artist is left to play at Woodstock.
Jimi Hendrix and his band began playing somewhere around 8:30 that morning. They played some of his hits with added space room for improvisation and general jamming.
But what most people remember about this set wasn’t one of his hits. It was a rendition of the Star Spangled Banner.
In his version of the US national anthem, Hendrix utilized something known as feedback. Feedback is when some fraction of a signal from some output is fed back into part of the input of that signal. When it happens in a musical or audio setting, it often creates deafening shrieks and unpleasant sounds, sending hearers to cover their ears and yell at an unknown person, “turn it off!”.
When Hendrix used feedback, though, it was intentional, and it was part of the melody and part of the timbre. He used feedback as a tool rather than something he had to work around or avoid.
But it’s a delicate balance between using feedback to create music and creating a cacophony of screeches. Even when a guitarist uses feedback creatively, as a listener, you still have to…
