Let’s Get Glitchy: How To Create Glitch Effects In Your Music Production

In everyday speak, a ‘glitch’ refers to a technical mishap, for example when someone completely freezes on a Zoom call. But in certain areas of electronic music, this word is conversely very high praise indeed. That’s thanks to the likes of Skrillex, Flying Lotus, and dating back further to electronic pioneer Aphex Twin. Some people even refer to ‘glitch music’ as a subgenre. And while the likes of Skrillex use glitch effects brazenly, you can find plenty of pop, hip-hop, and even modern classical tracks that use these production tricks in a more low-key manner. 

The word became commonplace as glitch effects in music make the music sound as if there was some tech mishap, parts may go out of tune or even out of time. If you’ve ever heard them and thought ‘I’d never be able to do that…’, Headliner is here to show you how easy and pain-free it can be thanks to some of the excellent (and free) plugins and VSTs out there to set you on your way.

The hard way: hardware

Whether or not this method will sound more difficult to you depends on which angle you approach making music and how in or out of the box (e.g., your computer/laptop) you are. In a time when music software and digital audio workstations such as Cubase weren’t the dominant force in music, this is how any glitch-style effects would have been created, so it’s very much worth mentioning and perhaps you’ll be inspired to give it a go. Many modern producers with a love of analogue technology still use some of the techniques below.

It’s also worth mentioning that a large amount of the digital glitch effects are attempting to emulate this hardware also. Some examples that date back to the 1980s include bending circuits in an old synth or other hardware instrument, or recording synths or other instruments that are slightly broken and are glitching out for that reason! Other classic glitch effects include recording a damaged CD or scratched vinyl and sampling the results.

While these ideas are more time-consuming than using effects in your DAW, it can be a greatly rewarding and fun process — sometimes you can’t beat the real thing!

The soft approach: software plugins and VSTs

This next section will apply to 90% of producers who want the glitch effect within minutes of loading up their DAW. Some DAWs have stock plugins that are fully worth their salt in the glitch-making game — producers who are this way inclined often love Ableton Live and Reason for great included glitchy plugins and Logic Pro’s Bitcrusher distortion certainly deserves a mention. Ableton’s Session View in particular simplifies the process as it allows you to trigger samples, loops, and effects with ease.

One common glitch method is to manually chop up audio tracks and edit them, for example repeating one tiny clip of a vocal multiple times like a drum fill. Another mad yet creative idea is to use the free DAW Audacity’s tool Import » Raw Data function — as crazy as it sounds, you can import images, spreadsheets, text documents, and see how it sounds converted into audio! As you can probably imagine, results will vary quite a bit, so mess around with it until you create a sound you like.

A selection of plugins to get you glitching (including freebies!)

• Eurydice CM is a completely free plugin that can shortcut the aforementioned manual chopping and splicing of audio samples — it offers a bitcrusher, pitch shifting, a filter, and will mangle up any audio to put through it.

• How many plugins can say they’re a Grammy winner? Melodyne can, picking up a Technical Grammy award in 2012. It’s also a brilliant tool for creating those Skrillex-style choppy vocals with insane jumps in pitch while sounding like an alien cyborg race.

• Then, very much doing what it says on the tin is Glitch 2 from Illformed. This one isn’t free, but at approximately £/$50, the amount of insane things you can do with a music or audio sample is quite astonishing, as is the amount of fun you will have in the process. Effects include Tape Stop, Modulation, Stretcher, Retrigger, and more, and you can even set the plugin to randomly use all of the effects for brilliantly bonkers results.

• Revisiting the land of the free, Kilohearts have some fantastic free plugins for effects such as tape stopping, audio reversing and more. Definitely worth checking out.

• Digitalis, at just over £/$30, is one of the most stunningly creative plugins you can get your hands on — just watch the charmingly quirky video the creators made to showcase its formidable powers. A plugin that will cover almost all the bases of glitch effects.

• And one more freebie Fracture by the aptly named Glitchmachines provides far too many great glitch effects for a plugin that doesn’t cost a single cent.