As you may have discerned from previous entries, I’m always looking for ways to create a lot of cool sounds at once.  I’d like to continue in that vein this week as we explore a technique for creating the little zaps and glitches that punctuate so much of today’s electronic music and sound design.  The original inspiration for this post came from a thread on the Ableton Forum, so thanks to the people who participated in that conversation. Let’s get to it!

First, let’s get clear on the goal here: We’re looking to create lots of interesting glitch sounds in a straightforward manner. The advantage here is that we can approach sound design from the perspective of tweaking a process rather than the sound, itself. What does “tweaking a process” mean in practical terms? Basically, every time you change the settings on your effects devices, you are exerting some influence on the process or algorithm which produces the final product.

The core of this technique involves running a long recording through an audio gate. Since I’m using Ableton Live, I’ll use the “Gate” device found in the instrument browser. Start with the gate’s threshold all the way up; now start the audio and bring the threshold down little by little until some of the audio starts to get through. If the recording is dynamic enough so that the audio spikes are coming through the gate intermittently, you should ideally be hearing little pops and zaps happening already. The idea is to set the threshold at just the right setting so that the audio is coming through in unnatural bursts of noise followed by abrupt silences, i.e. the perfect raw material for creating glitch sounds!

The first thing to do is find sufficient source material which will display this behavior through a gate. I recommend recording a busy city street or something similarly dynamic. Lots of little spikes should be present in order to render the desired effect. Once you have the recording and gate threshold settings in place using the process outlined above, the real fun can begin: Adding an effects network to process the raw sounds.

This is where you ideally go all out with your creativity. The first thing I always do is put a “Limiter” device at the end of my effects chain beacuse some of these effects can be hard to tame. Beyond this, my personal preference for glitch effects are distortions, bit crushers, and other similar devices. I nearly always add a “Redux” device in Live, setting the downsampling to “soft” and experimenting with relatively high settings on the associated knob. If you want to accentuate the more extreme bursts of sound, try the parameter above downsampling, entitled “Bit Reduction.” If you do this, be sure the limiter is engaged because the effect can get really loud at extreme settings. Another solid device to use here is the “Overdrive” unit in Live which features a really cool compression section. Lastly, I tend to add a short decay reverb to add a bit of room reflection to the sound. This generally works well on short bursts of audio, and can also improve how your glitches sit in a dense mix.

I hope this post will inspire you to try this technique for yourself. You may even find that it’s useful beyond the creation of glitch sounds, so experimentation is key as always!

In closing, here’s a video I recently created which illustrates a variation of this method (click on the video to see it in HD):

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TF7sM5m5HiY[/youtube]

Thanks for reading, and until next time please stop by nickstutorials.com for video tutorials on sound design and music production in Ableton Live.