Glitch Music: Intentionally Low Quality?

Today, electronic is an extremely popular genre of music. In the younger generations, electronic music seems to be right up there in the charts with pop and rap. Generally electronic is defined as any music that is predominantly computer-generated. As the definition is very vague, electronic music is such an incredibly broad genre that it would be impossible to narrow the genre down to a single song to describe. So instead, we'll talk about glitch.

Glitch is one of many sub-genres of electronic music that has arisen. The defining characteristics of glitch music (as the name might suggest) are the uses of subtle "glitches" as ornamentation and using glitchy-sounding synths throughout the music. Obviously, having glitch noises or glitchy-sounding synths be the primary focus of any song would get very annoying, very quickly. The goal of glitch music is to have glitchy elements serve as a light "seasoning" to enhance the overall feel the music creates.

So at this point you probably have absolutely no idea what a "glitch" would be like in music, or how a "glitchy" synth is different from any other synth in electronic music. To help illustrate this, I'll use a piece from one of my favorite electronic groups, The Glitch Mob. It is entitled "Fortune Days". This, by the way, is most enjoyable to listen to on a fancy audio system.

In the first 18 seconds of the piece the main harmony is introduced. It is a very simple little harmony, but is made interesting by the sudden, out of time, very brief breaks in between some notes. Listening to it the first time, I had thought that my music player freaked out, but as it repeats consistently in the same place you realize that it was indeed the artist's intention. The little "glitches" add emphasis to a normally dull line. At 0:18 a new synth is introduced on top of the old one. It is very high-pitched and choppy, and is not clear. Rather, it sounds very murky due to very rapid vibrations in the pitch, almost as if it were being played from a very old audio system or bad speakers. This gives it almost a vintage feel to it. The main melody plays at about 0:37 and provides us with a break from the glitchy sounding elements previously playing in the piece. From this point on, the piece simply makes minor developments to the already existent themes. 2:18 has a notable synth that is very fuzzy in quality, also suggesting playing from a low (or vintage) quality audio system.

"Fortune Days" by The Glitch Mob is characteristic of a lot of glitch music in that it utilizes intentionally low-quality sounding synths and random glitches to add a vintage kind of feeling to the music. You wouldn't think people would strive to put glitches or lower fidelity synths into their music, but this genre shows that these qualities can sometimes enhance music rather than limit it.