Creating glitchy/stutter effect

JoeyBTL

Inspired
I've been searching and can't seem to find the perfect way to create the certain stutter effect I'm after. I've tried using a phaser and trem block but neither gave me exactly what I want. I'd like a stutter sound thats like you would take a recording and pretty much chop out tiny sections so its very fast and very cut.

I've always wanted to know how to do this ever since I first started listening to the band Sky Eats Airplane who did it quite a bit. Today I was reminded of it because someone asked Misha from Periphery about the same sound that they use on the last song of their new album. He just said you use delay set very fast, 100% mix and lots of feedback. I tried this and didn't get much of a result. I got closer with the phaser and trem. But I'm sure theres a perfect way of doing it with the Axe and I'm guessing someone could lead me there.

The section starts at about 2:35 in this song and the effect is used quite a lot:



Here sky eats airplane uses it at about 1:19:

Sky Eats Airplane - "Numbers" on Vimeo

Thanks!
 
I've just tried and got pretty damn close to this.

What you need for 'glitch', as well as the delay, is extreme gating on the original signal. Ideally you want this at the same tempo as the delay repeats.

I tried putting a volume block before the delay (this is all in front of the amp). Tie the volume control to an ADSR. Set the ADSR to as 'on/off' as you can get it, the following settings work for me...

Mode: once
Retrig: on
Attack: 1ms
Decay: 1ms
Sustain: 49ms (decay+sustain should probably equal your delay time)
Level: 100%
Release: 1ms
Threshold: -45db (this is the hardest to get right)

With this set up you should get a very short gated pulse when you hit a string. After this put a delay with the repeat set at the same (50ms in this case), feedback and mix at 100% and this should pretty much give you the effect you're after.

I actually find these ADSRs a bit 'nice', ie the attack seems more than 1ms to me and not really choppy enough. You can exaggerate the effect by putting a compressor between the volume block and the delay block. Hard knee, no lookahead, adjust attack to taste but I had it fast (the lag from turning off lookahead was enough), this seemed to work better for me.

Add a bit of bit reduction on the delay for adding lo-fi glitchiness!

What I can't figure out a decent solution to at the moment is clearing the delay buffer when you want the effect to stop. I guess if you turn spillover off it will clear the buffer on bypass - is there a way to do this with spillover on other than setting up a modifier to set feedback to zero?

You probably don't want too much gain on the amp for this either. I did it on a completely clean tone and it still sounded glitchy as fark.

*** edit ***

Make sure delay is set to 'digital mono'. Other delay types don't work well for this and the 'analogue' type will feed back uncontrollably at these kinds of setting so watch it, I almost killed my speakers (and ears)!
 
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Cool, i'm going to try this when I get home. I should really look into modifiers more as I don't have a clue what the ADSR is...

I've just tried and got pretty damn close to this.

What you need for 'glitch', as well as the delay, is extreme gating on the original signal. Ideally you want this at the same tempo as the delay repeats.

I tried putting a volume block before the delay (this is all in front of the amp). Tie the volume control to an ADSR. Set the ADSR to as 'on/off' as you can get it, the following settings work for me...

Mode: once
Retrig: on
Attack: 1ms
Decay: 1ms
Sustain: 49ms (decay+sustain should probably equal your delay time)
Level: 100%
Release: 1ms
Threshold: -45db (this is the hardest to get right)

With this set up you should get a very short gated pulse when you hit a string. After this put a delay with the repeat set at the same (50ms in this case), feedback and mix at 100% and this should pretty much give you the effect you're after.

I actually find these ADSRs a bit 'nice', ie the attack seems more than 1ms to me and not really choppy enough. You can exaggerate the effect by putting a compressor between the volume block and the delay block. Hard knee, no lookahead, adjust attack to taste but I had it fast (the lag from turning off lookahead was enough), this seemed to work better for me.

Add a bit of bit reduction on the delay for adding lo-fi glitchiness!

What I can't figure out a decent solution to at the moment is clearing the delay buffer when you want the effect to stop. I guess if you turn spillover off it will clear the buffer on bypass - is there a way to do this with spillover on other than setting up a modifier to set feedback to zero?

You probably don't want too much gain on the amp for this either. I did it on a completely clean tone and it still sounded glitchy as fark.
 
This should be really easy to do using the "repeat hold" setting in the delay block. I'll try to create a patch for you.

Thanks Adam I'd really appreciate that! And thanks muleskinner as well, I'll try that when I get off work. I did find a couple things where people said they used a boss dd6 delay pedal with a looper built in and they could make it so whenever you pressed down on it, it would record that quick sound and repeat it really fast for as long as you hold down the pedal.
 
Muleskinner, I tried that but got stopped right at the beginning because I don't know how to tie the volume to a ADSR. I don't see anywhere that you can adjust mode, retrig, etc.
 
You can tie ADSR1 to the parameter you want by going to that parameter, hitting ENTER, and choosing ADSR1 as the source.

Tweak ADSR1 by going into the CONTROl menu and paging over to ADSR1.
 
You can tie ADSR1 to the parameter you want by going to that parameter, hitting ENTER, and choosing ADSR1 as the source.

Tweak ADSR1 by going into the CONTROl menu and paging over to ADSR1.

Ah thank you sir. I knew how to set it to ADSR1 but not modify it, never messed with that yet.
 
Okay I just tried all of what mule said and it did yield some great results for what I wanted. But as he said, theres not really a good way to get the repeats to stop. Even with bypassing it, it turns it off but is still going so when the delay is turned back on its still there. Another thing is it colors the tone a whole lot. I used a tone pretty close to Periphery and putting the vol and delay before the amp definitely changed it.

Also, heres another good example of it. You can hear Tosin making the sound in the beginning at :31 by what looks like just pressing some button either on his boomerang or mfc.

 
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I've just tried and got pretty damn close to this.

What you need for 'glitch', as well as the delay, is extreme gating on the original signal. Ideally you want this at the same tempo as the delay repeats.

I tried putting a volume block before the delay (this is all in front of the amp). Tie the volume control to an ADSR. Set the ADSR to as 'on/off' as you can get it, the following settings work for me...

Mode: once
Retrig: on
Attack: 1ms
Decay: 1ms
Sustain: 49ms (decay+sustain should probably equal your delay time)
Level: 100%
Release: 1ms
Threshold: -45db (this is the hardest to get right)

With this set up you should get a very short gated pulse when you hit a string. After this put a delay with the repeat set at the same (50ms in this case), feedback and mix at 100% and this should pretty much give you the effect you're after.

I actually find these ADSRs a bit 'nice', ie the attack seems more than 1ms to me and not really choppy enough. You can exaggerate the effect by putting a compressor between the volume block and the delay block. Hard knee, no lookahead, adjust attack to taste but I had it fast (the lag from turning off lookahead was enough), this seemed to work better for me.

Add a bit of bit reduction on the delay for adding lo-fi glitchiness!

What I can't figure out a decent solution to at the moment is clearing the delay buffer when you want the effect to stop. I guess if you turn spillover off it will clear the buffer on bypass - is there a way to do this with spillover on other than setting up a modifier to set feedback to zero?

You probably don't want too much gain on the amp for this either. I did it on a completely clean tone and it still sounded glitchy as fark.

*** edit ***

Make sure delay is set to 'digital mono'. Other delay types don't work well for this and the 'analogue' type will feed back uncontrollably at these kinds of setting so watch it, I almost killed my speakers (and ears)!

Haha, I just failed miserably trying this. Came out more like a synth with cut off tails. Which Im now trying to dial in. Thanks for the off hand inspiration. :)

I also noticed there is still some glitching happening in the Controls menu. FWIW.
 
...heres another good example of it. You can hear Tosin making the sound in the beginning at :31 by what looks like just pressing some button either on his boomerang or mfc.
It looks like he recorded a chord, set it up for continuous gated playback, then used a momentary switch to gate the final sound on and off.

Maybe he's using the looper with a fraction-of-a-second duration, and playing back the loop.
 
There's a video of Tosin at a clinic on youtube where he creates his own metronome by deadening the strings, slapping them and then pressing a button with his foot. The deadened clicking sound then repeats at a continuous tempo and volume. I don't know exactly how he does it but I suspect looper and that it could be used similarly to how you want.
 
Okay I just tried all of what mule said and it did yield some great results for what I wanted. But as he said, theres not really a good way to get the repeats to stop. Even with bypassing it, it turns it off but is still going so when the delay is turned back on its still there. Another thing is it colors the tone a whole lot. I used a tone pretty close to Periphery and putting the vol and delay before the amp definitely changed it.

Something that's 'wrong' in my settings is setting the delay mix to 100%. This is muting the original signal and making it feel like there's some latency there, set the delay mix to 50% and up the level in the delay block by about 6db to compensate. I think it definitely sounds better with a compressor in there as well, it doesn't seem to change the tone for me but the tone does change if you leave the repeats for a long time. I don't know why this is as the delay is supposed to be 'pure' digital but there must be some filtering going on, over time it's losing the high end.

As far as turning it off goes I haven't tried this but it should work...

- Set up two scenes, one with the FX for the glitch effect on and the other with them bypassed
- Set up your foot controller to output two MIDI messages on stomp and release. On stomp send both messages to change the scene to the one with FX on and also to turn the delay feedback to 100%. On release send messages to set delay feedback to 0% and switch back to the scene with the FX off. Have the delay feedback set at 0% by default.

I'd like to know if there's a better way of doing this though!

Haha, I just failed miserably trying this. Came out more like a synth with cut off tails. Which Im now trying to dial in. Thanks for the off hand inspiration.

I started getting almost harpsichord type effects if you set the delay feedback to about 90%. If you set the delay rate really low (ie within audible frequency range) you can get some really weird shit happening! Check it out...
 
Okay I just tried all of what mule said and it did yield some great results for what I wanted. But as he said, theres not really a good way to get the repeats to stop.

To fix that you can assign the feedback parameter of the delay to an external controller. Then assign that controller to one of your foot switches.
 
Hi guys, I use the multidelay on my Ultra for things like the repeat thing after 2:35 in that vid.

Set the tempo for the song/patch, think I choose ten-tap delay and wound it back to 8 taps, selected the tempo to I think 16th (could be wrong) and the mix at around 50%. Kick the effect in and out where you want the stutter!

Cheers
 
That's a great point Spartacus.

The often over-looked Megatap Delay block would also work great for this. That gives you even more tap options (up to 40!). Just set the amplitude shape, time shape, and the pan shape to constant.

It's a bit harder to sync up though because it's only time based and not tempo based. Maybe we can look into adding some tempo based features to the Megatap Delay to make it more user friendly.
 
No worries Adam. Instead of having to add a tempo function to the Megatap block try the Multidelay block, and the 10 tap option within. That allows you to sync to tempo correctly.

Cheers
 
I should have been more clear...my point basically was the Megatap gives you a lot more taps (up to 40) compared to the Ten-Tap. So there might be some cases where 10 taps aren't enough :).
 
That's a great point Spartacus.

The often over-looked Megatap Delay block would also work great for this. That gives you even more tap options (up to 40!). Just set the amplitude shape, time shape, and the pan shape to constant.

It's a bit harder to sync up though because it's only time based and not tempo based. Maybe we can look into adding some tempo based features to the Megatap Delay to make it more user friendly.

I'd love that! :)
 
I'd love that! :)

I second that. A tempo feature to the Megatap Delay block actually sets the Multitap Delay blocks free for other uses instead of being "locked" for these types of special effects. However, it seems to me that we´re trying to invent the wheel again when its already there in the Looper block... (see manual regarding Playback).
 
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