glitch (music)

Glitch is a genre of experimental electronic music that emerged in the 1990s, which is distinguished by the deliberate use of glitches in audio media and other sonic artifacts.

The sounds featured in glitch tracks usually come from audio recording device or digital electronics malfunctions, such as CD skipping, electric hum, digital or analog distortion, circuit bending, bit-rate reduction, hardware noise, software bugs, computer crashes, vinyl record hiss or scratches, and system errors, as well as abstract sound design produced from the intended use of these technologies. Devices that were already broken are often used, while other times devices are broken expressly for this purpose. In '' Computer Music Journal'', composer and writer Kim Cascone classified glitch as a subgenre of electronica and used the term ''post-digital'' to describe the glitch aesthetic."The glitch genre arrived on the back of the electronica movement, an umbrella term for alternative, largely dance-based electronic music (including house, techno, electro, drum'n'bass, and ambient) that has come into vogue in the past five years. Most of the work in this area is released on labels peripherally associated with the dance music market and is, therefore, removed from the contexts of academic consideration and acceptability that it might otherwise earn. Still, in spite of this odd pairing of fashion and art music, the composers of glitch often draw their inspiration from the masters of 20th century music who they feel best describe its lineage." ''THE AESTHETICS OF FAILURE: 'Post-Digital' Tendencies in Contemporary Computer Music'', Kim Cascone
Computer Music Journal 24:4 Winter 2000 (MIT Press)

History

The origins of the glitch aesthetic can be traced to the early 20th century with Luigi Russolo's Futurist manifesto ''L'arte dei rumori'' (The Art of Noises, the basis of noise music, published in 1913). He constructed mechanical noise generators, which he named ''intonarumori'', and wrote multiple compositions to be played by them, including ''Risveglio di una città'' (''Awakening of a City'') and ''Convegno di automobili e aeroplani'' (''Meeting of Automobiles and Airplanes''). In 1914, a riot broke out at one of his performances in Milan, Italy.

Later musicians and composers who made use of malfunctioning technology include the 1968 song " The Best Way to Travel", by Michael Pinder of The Moody Blues, and works by Christian Marclay, who began in 1979 to use mutilated vinyl records to create sound collages. Yasunao Tone used damaged CDs in his ''Techno Eden'' performance of 1985, while 1992 album ''It Was a Dark and Stormy Night'' by Nicolas Collins included a composition featuring a string quartet playing alongside the stuttering sound of skipping CDs. Yuzo Koshiro and Motohiro Kawashima's electronic soundtrack for the 1994 video game '' Streets of Rage 3'' used automatically randomized sequences to generate "unexpected and odd" experimental sounds.

Glitch music properly originated as a distinct movement in Germany and Japan during the 1990s,Christoph Cox & Daniel Warner (2004)
''Audio Culture: Readings in Modern Music'', page 396
, A&C Black with musical works and labels (especially Mille Plateaux) of Achim Szepanski in Germany, and works of Ryoji Ikeda in Japan.

Nuno Canavarro's album '' Plux Quba'', released in 1988, incorporated pristine electroacoustic sounds that resembled early glitch. Oval's album ''Wohnton'', published in 1993, helped define the genre by adding ambient aesthetics.

The earliest uses of the term ''glitch'' as related to music include electronic duo Autechre's song "Glitch", released in 1994, and experimental electronic group ELpH's album '' Worship the Glitch'', published in 1995.

Production techniques

In the latter half of the 20th century, the experimental music that served as the precursor to glitch contained distortions that were often produced by manual manipulation of audio media. This came in the form of Yasunao Tone's "wounded" CDs; small bits of semi-transparent tape were placed on the CD to interrupt the reading of the audio information. Other examples of this manual tampering include Nicholas Collins' modification of an electric guitar to act as a resonator for electrical signals, and his adaption of a CD player to allow recordings played on it to be altered during live performance.Kyle Gann. "Collins, Nicolas." Grove Music Online. Oxford Music Online. Oxford University Press. Web. Skipping CDs, scratched vinyl records, circuit bending, and other distortions resembling electronic noise figure prominently into the creation of rhythm and feeling in glitch; it is from the use of these digital artifacts that the genre derives its name. However, glitch today is often produced on computers using digital production software to splice together small "cuts" ( samples) of music from previously recorded works. These cuts are then integrated with the signature of glitch music: beats made up of glitches, clicks, scratches, and otherwise erroneous-sounding noise. The glitches are often very short, and are typically used in place of traditional percussion or instrumentation. Popular software for creating glitch music includes trackers like Jeskola Buzz and Renoise, as well as modular software like Reaktor, Ableton Live, Reason, AudioMulch, Bidule, SuperCollider, FLStudio, Max/MSP, Pure Data, and ChucK. Some artists also use digital synthesizers like the Clavia Nord Modular G2 and Elektron's Machinedrum and Monomachine.

See also

* Circuit bending
* Clicks & Cuts Series
* Drill 'n' bass
* Experimental pop
* Generative music
* Hyperpop
* Microsound
* Noise music
* Raster-Noton

References

Further reading

* Andrews, Ian,
Post-digital Aesthetics and the return to Modernism
'', MAP-uts lecture, 2000, available at author'
website
.
* Bijsterveld, Karin and Trevor J. Pinch. 'Should One Applaud?': Breaches and Boundaries in the Reception of New Technology in Music." ''Technology and Culture''. Ed. 44.3, pp. 536–559. 2003.
* Byrne, David. "What is Blip Hop?" ''David Byrne'', 2002. Availabl
here.

* Collins, Adam, "Sounds of the system: the emancipation of noise in the music of Carsten Nicolai", ''Organised Sound'', 13(1): 31–39. 2008. Cambridge University Press.
* Collins, Nicolas. Editor. "Composers inside Electronics: Music after David Tudor." ''Leonardo Music Journal''. Vol. 14, pp. 1–3. 2004.
* Krapp, Peter
Noise Channels: Glitch and Error in Digital Culture
. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press 2011.
* Prior, Nick, "Putting a Glitch in the Field: Bourdieu, Actor Network Theory and Contemporary Music", ''Cultural Sociology'', 2: 3, 2008: pp. 301–319.
* Thomson, Phil, "Atoms and errors: towards a history and aesthetics of microsound", ''Organised Sound'', 9(2): 207–218. 2004. Cambridge University Press.
* Sangild, Torben: "Glitch—The Beauty of Malfunction" in ''Bad Music''. Routledge (2004,


* Young, Rob: "Worship the Glitch", ''The Wire'' 190/191 (2000)
* Noah Zimmerman
"Dusted Reviews, 2002"

{{DEFAULTSORT:Glitch (Music)
Electronic music genres
Noise music