I’m a glitch hop producer – here’s what I do…

I’m going to be talking about being a music producer and glitches. I don’t want to get into too many technical terms here, but it might help if you have a basic understanding of music production.

If you want to learn more about music production, check out my free electronic music course.

The other important thing to know is that there are two main ways of making hip hop: sampling and chopping. You can make hip hop by sampling other people’s tracks and then chopping them up and putting them together, or you can make your own beats and then chop and sample the parts you like. Both methods will work well for making your own glitch hop beats.

The first thing we need to do is get some audio samples that we can use as our base material. For this tutorial I’m going to be using a few samples from my own library, but you should use whatever you have lying around, or go out on the web and find some free samples.

The next thing we need to do is create a beat that has all the right elements in it so that when we add our glitchy effects it sounds good. It doesn

I’m a glitch hop producer – here’s what I do…

I’m a glitch hop producer. I have to admit that this is not something that I thought I would be saying when I was a kid, but somehow it has happened. It all began when I needed some free electronic music for a video that I was making and so, after hunting around on the internet looking at soundcloud and various other websites, I ended up discovering glitch hop. Once I heard it, the rest as they say is history and now here we are!

Anyway, while it is not something that you would expect to find in your local church (unless they were really cool), it is still a lot of fun to listen to and write. In fact, as my dad always used to tell me: “If you don’t love what you do then don’t do it!” And so this is why I love being a glitch hop producer; the whole thing is just so much fun!

But let me tell you about what it actually involves. Basically, for most of the day, I sit in my little studio with my big set of speakers and my laptop and start messing around with different sounds until something interesting comes out

I’m a glitch hop producer. What does that mean? Well, I make electronic music. And I make it for free.

I’m not “unsigned”, I don’t have a manager and I never plan to sell any of my music.

My name is Dan, but you might know me as Phaera. For the last 6 months or so I’ve been making FREE electronic dance music. Why do I do it? Because I enjoy it! By profession, I am a software developer and work full-time in a high-tech firm. In my spare time, whenever I can find some, I create electronic music using Ableton Live software and various VST plugins.

I originally started out making drum & bass and dubstep (just like everyone else did), but after a while my tastes changed and now I produce glitch hop and trap style beats that have an emphasis on funkiness.

So why give my music away for free? Well, for one thing it gives me the freedom to be creative without having to worry about selling records or pleasing the record labels or complying with commercial demands etc. Basically, I can do whatever the hell I want!!

But there’s another reason too

I’ve been asked a few times recently what I do, and how I make my music, so I thought I’d write a little blog about it. My name is Matt Clarke (aka Corequake), I’m an electronic music producer from London and make glitch-hop.

Glitch Hop takes its roots from Hip Hop, breaks and drum and bass, but has a more futuristic sound. It tends to be pretty chill, but with a strong beat that you can dance to. The ‘glitchy’ sounds come from the use of synths or samples that are cut up into short parts and repeated in different ways – the effect can sound like an electronic stutter or glitch.

The first thing I do when starting on a new track is to decide on the tempo. At the moment most of my songs are at around 93bpm, as this seems to work well with my style of music (I aim for something that makes you want to nod your head without being too fast). Once that’s set up, I find some instruments or samples with which I want to work – these could be anything from a vocal sample that has been chopped up in order to provide rhythms and melodies, to one-shot samples

If you’ve ever asked me what I do, or what I’m working on, chances are I’ve told you about my glitch hop project.

I get a lot of questions about it. Some of the most common are:

“What does glitch hop mean?”

“How do you make that kind of music?”

Well, if you’re asking this kind of stuff, then this post is for you. Grab a snack and settle in – I’m going to try my best to explain what all this “glitch hop” stuff is all about!

I’ve been writing a lot of articles on /r/glitchhop recently because I want to be the change I want to see in the glitch hop community. I want to be able to give back to the community that has given me so much. I want to get people interested in making music, and help them understand some of the more complicated parts of producing.

I’m not an experienced producer. It took me three years just to get started, and right now I’m only making tracks for fun (and you should too!). This isn’t about becoming a professional musician or creating something “good” – this is about learning, collaboration and having fun!

If you haven’t already, please check out my other posts:

Complete guide to making electronic music

How to use Ableton Live like a pro

How to make your own kicks with samples from Splice

Making your own drum kits in Ableton Live

Making your own custom FX racks in Ableton Live

Today we’re going over how I make glitch hop.

So, you’re a new producer and you want to know how the music industry works? Well, it’s actually pretty simple, if you’re looking to succeed as a Glitch Hop producer.

Let me explain.

When I first started making electronic music, I had NO idea what I was doing, or what I was listening to. In fact, I thought that all electronic music sounded like a seizure – which is actually pretty accurate…

But then, one day, I discovered Glitch Hop.

I had no idea what it was called at the time, but I knew I liked the sound of it. It seemed to be a fusion of hip hop and electronic music, with a funky glitchy twist. So I started searching for this kind of music on YouTube and came across some videos from MrSuicideSheep. He had uploaded artists such as Gramatik and Pretty Lights, who were both making this “glitch hop” type of music.

So after spending hours watching these videos every night – along with other popular songs in the genre – I decided to start producing glitch hop myself.