Im not new to playing guitars, ive been playing my acoustic for a year but im gettin a new electric for christmas, but iv never known what the difference between overdrive and distortion is, and ive asked my teacher and she doesnt kno, so if ya could tell me it would help out thanks

Overdrive is a type of distortion.....
I found this website that goes into detail....

http://users.chariot.net.au/~gmarts/ampovdrv.htm

I always considered Overdrive to be a natural distortion that comes from "overdriving" the tubes and Distortion as a "digital" form of overdrive.

Overdrive uses soft clipping.

Distortion uses hard clipping

Soft Clipping: This is usually marketed as "overdrive", where the gain is inversely proportional to the input signal level. This is typically produced either with back to back silicon signal diodes in the negative feedback path of an op-amp, or with germanium diodes or LEDs back to back in a shunt to ground.

Hard Clipping: Usually marketed as "distortion", where the signal level is restricted within a range. This is typically produced with silicon diodes back to back in a shunt to ground. This is the same as the circuit above, using silicon instead of germanium/LED diodes.

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K thanks man much appreciated,

i was told that greenday used overdrive alot with there songs so would that be the overxdrive they use for songs like american idiot and minority or would that be distortion

Your welcome!!

That I don't know, I'm not a fan of Greenday.

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k thanks for the help anywayz

I always thought of em as being the same thing.
Sorta like a 'fuzz pedal' from years ago.

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the greenday sound is overdrive. at their thickest sound, it's a really high overdrive.