glitch patch (2020)

Glitch Patch was inspired by my growing fascination with buffer manipulation, following the development of Multibreak Buffer Traversals and the Arbitrarily Traversable Memory Register. Simultaneously, inspired by guitarist Nick Reinhart and modern devices like Tom Erbe/soundhack and Make Noise’s Mimeophon, I began researching historical effects that made creative use of delay lines / audio buffers.

Ultimately, I became fascinated by several devices/families of device, especially Eventide’s early delay and Harmonizer processors, Don Buchla’s (experimental!) 288 Time Domain Processor, and Boss’s forays into pitch shifting delays and sampling in the 1980s. In particular, I was fascinated by devices like the Buchla 288 and Eventide H3000, where it was possible to use internal envelope following/threshold detection to “grab” and repeat chunks of incoming audio: like a dynamically-triggered audio glitch effect.

Glitch Patch was a crude adaptation of this idea, with a number of other effect processes baked in. Developed in Max/MSP at a point in time when I was getting interested in revisiting electric guitar and bass (after many years without playing), I aimed to create a multi-purpose effect processing patch that I could use for performance without the need for hardware effects.

Glitch Patch included a dual pitch shifting delay, the glitch processor itself, and the chorus/delay/reverb section from B400V. Using a new-to-me method of transient detection, it was possible to use external audio signals to randomize most parameters of the patch with audio triggering alone—again, much like in B400V. Perhaps most interestingly, the playback speed of the “glitched” audio could randomly select between six user-definable values, allowing semi-random harmonization/pitch shifting/etc.

Glitch Patch never reached a terribly polished form; it was wrenched into three or four slightly different forms, some of which were intended to process multiple instrument channels simultaneously. Ultimately, after obsessing even more over Eventide audio processors, Glitch Patch fell into disuse. I instead started scheming about how a multi-tap delay could be imbued with this dynamic glitching behavior.

Eventually, this led to the Memory Collage patch for Sarah Belle Reid’s opera in late 2021/early 2022, which eventually evolved into its current state—the Multi-Delay + Latching Glitch Processor. It is also the basis for designs in the GRADIENT Mapper system, such as the map12 Windowed Temporal Drag Processor.