Glitch

    The idea of glitch music was, at first sight, rather fancy to me. All these years, I have perceived music as something that has been well planned, selected, and controlled. The possibility and existence of errors and coincidences were just errors and coincidences to me. The idea that we can deliberately create music directly through music was really novel to me, and when I first read the article, I thought this can only create music in a state of chaos. Well, I was wrong again. There are two places in the article where Cascone described the essence of glitch music. Rather than being a medium for music, the tools themselves have already become the instruments and the music. This means that the glitch artists are not just looking for possible errors in the computers, hoping for the possibility to create fantastic sounds. Instead, the errors themselves are the part of the instrument, the sound source, and the music. In the music production process of glitch music, a glitch is no longer a tool, but also the result. 

    I have seen this idea well displayed in the music piece created by Snares. Honestly speaking, I thought that this was total BS when I first listened to it. I thought that. It was too chaotic, with a deliberate mix of different music layers. I went back to read through the reading, and then went back again to the music piece. I began to HEAR it. As mentioned before, I firstly perceive music should be something that is well controlled and carefully selected, and I thought glitch music contrasts with this, but there was no contradiction. The real contradiction glitch music poses towards other music forms is the change of the production medium, but not the expressing means. Take Snares’ music piece as an example. The sense of chaos was created as glitches to convey the idea of glitches. On the other hand, the general composition was not completely determined by glitch, and was to some extent, well-controlled. The glitch is the instrument, the music, but not necessarily the performance.