If you like sound-mangling plug-ins, they don’t get much more creative than Kieran Foster’s Glitch. Originally developed to ease the creation of glitchy electronic beats, Glitch is a freeware, PC-only download that has evolved over several years into a comprehensive and versatile tool that can transform synths, audio tracks and loops in a host of ways, from subtle to extreme.
At its heart is a tempo-sync’ed step sequencer offering up to 64 steps, which lets you drag and drop any of the nine available effects at any point in the sequence, so you can program in different treatments for each phrase of your song, or even change them beat by beat. Available effects are TapeStop, Modulator, Retrigger, Shuffler, Reverser, Crusher, Gater, Delay and Stretcher, and you can place these anywhere into the sequence manually, let Glitch choose random effects for you, or use a combination of the two approaches. The random effect selections are determined from song position plus a seed value, so once you get an effect ‘randomness’ that suits your song, the same effects will play at the same point during each playback, making the results far more predictable and musical.
You hear the results in real time as you alter parameters, and can quickly transform a simple synthesized riff or vanilla drum-loop into an evolving tour de force. Glitch is also easy enough to use to be a great live performance tool, especially as it can replace a clutch of separate effect plug-ins that would otherwise require individual mute automation to drop in and out. The effect parameters can also be automated in your sequencer or mapped to MIDI hardware controllers via a MIDI learn function, for yet more sophistication.
Despite its long gestation period, Kieran still regards the current version of Glitch as a ‘rough prototype’, and is hoping that it will eventually evolve into a commercial product. However, even at this stage it’s capable of some truly impressive results. This is a great tool for kick-starting new ideas, and good fun into the bargain!
http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/jul08/articles/pcnotes_0708.htm#4
