Music can be likened to a personal expression of one’s creativity, emotion, intelligence, and sometimes mistakes. As a result, we have had several genres of music throughout the history of mankind, and Glitch music is just one of them.
Therefore, in this article, we will explore the history of Glitch music and we will explain what it is for those who don’t know. Furthermore, we will look at the glitch effect VST plugins used to create this genre.
Let’s get started…
Table of Contents
Glitch Music Explained and History
Glitch music is regarded as an electronic music genre. Its early popularity can be traced back to the early 1990s. This composition form has an experimental nature which makes it not popular among mainstream music; nevertheless, it has certain devoted followers.
Although it was made popular and formal in the 90s, its original invention is said to predate that period and stretching back some decades. It finds its philosophical roots in Luigi Russolo’s book title The Art of Noises.
Being a futurist, Russolooutlined his various beliefs about what he felt the music scope in the future would look like via a letter written to his friend. His declaration argues that human beings have become acclimatized to the qualities such as frantic energy, speed as well as loud constant noise that are characterized by the urban setting sounds. Visit https://er.educause.edu/articles/2019/3/five-principles-for-thinking-like-a-futurist to learn 5 principles that will help you think like a futurist.
He further argues that due to this adaption, future musicians will out of necessity have to widen their range of musical instruments to accommodate the ever and infinite increase of the soundscape after the effects of industrialization.
This was the philosophical roots of Glitch sound; however, it wasn’t until the beginning of the 1990s that it became a formal form thanks to the German band known as Oval. The original band members; Markus Popp, SebastialOschatz, and Frank Metzger are regarded as creators of this genre.
These men weren’t fond of the popular synthesizers used in those times and decided to create their own unique sound. So, they used pens to write on CDs thereby producing a distorted sound while damaging the CDs. The distorted sound that was produced became the foundation of what we have today.
Glitch music is different from mainstream music in the sense that it uses digital artifacts instead of regular sounds. Click here to know what digital artifacts are. It uses all kinds of distorted sounds which include skipping discs, different bugs that produce startling sounds, crashing hardware in-between notes, etc. This genre utilizes these chaotic sounds and blends them with other songs’ samples.
A glitch music subgenre known as click hop or glitch hop has evolved in recent times. This subgenre utilizes the techniques of the main genre but establishes a more hip hop style and framework instead of the main electronic style and framework.
Glitch Effect VST Plugins
As mainstream music has benefited from technological advancements which have given rise to the use of plugins for music production, so has glitch music also benefitted.
These days, certain software can be used to create precise desired glitched sound. Circuit bending is one of the techniques employed in glitch production whereby intentional short-circuiting of a certain electronic device is carried out to produce a sound.
These plugins can be used to create irregular clicks, distortion, unintentional skipping, beat repeats, etc. A good producer knows how to turn these mistakes and errors into amazing sound effects.
How Glitches can be utilized
Glitches are gaining a wider usage spread as modern electronic styles such as lo-fi hip-hop, down-tempo, and IDM are commonly using it. Even genres like drum & bass, Neurofunk, and dubstep are beginning to utilize it too.
These sounds can be used to replace your regular percussion. They are a perfect replacement due to their peculiar timbre and sound. Another way you can utilize these sound anomalies is to use them as track transitions.
While the above are just some ways you can utilize these sounds, the truth is thattheir usage is only limited by your creativity and ingenuity. Hence, they can be used in a vast number of ways in your production.
To ensure that you explore the endless possibilities available, you can play around with the glitch placements, the glitches type, and the settings of the plugin. Who knows what unique and weird sound you might end up creating?
Conclusion
This genre is gaining popularity as the days go by and it stands to reason that Luigi Russolo’s argument was right as people are accepting this genre.
And with the aid of several plugins, making such sounds have become relatively easier as you don’t have to destroy your CD anytime you want to create such a unique sound.
As a result of this growing popularity and the aid of technology, one can only imagine what other genres will adopt or integrate this unconventional genre into their framework.
