Mine are mostly going to be from the design-end. I don’t really write songs, so YMMV.
Chaos sources can lead to really interesting results if you’re working with CV. Even just having a crackle source trigger your sample can allow you to really pinch and fuck with it in various ways. Similarly, using more than one chaos source and boolean logic can create a shitload of randomized triggers and gates for you to do whatever you’d like with.
Randomizing Glitchmachines plugins is fun; grab a source, record yourself flicking through them and then take out the shitty dicerolls. Similarly, familiarizing yourself with follow actions can give you a really unique shuffle through sound sources at whatever intervals you specify, leading to glitchy goodness without any plugins.
Ratcheting is kind of a ‘glitch’ technique too, if you use them fast enough. It’s basically a trigger that launches a timed burst of other triggers, leading to a trill in the sequence. Works good for melodies, drums, etc. Samples are obviously an instant glitch.
One of my favorite methods lately is to take a sampler with an input jack and recording mechanism, create a loop around it and ‘pinch’ the recording interval (usually just with a square LFO or something to set off the recording mechanism’s threshold). Similarly you can also just feed one sampler into the other, which at certain speeds really reminds me of Ableton Live transient stretch modes (even though it’s interval-based, you can also set your threshold to actually catch transients and peaks instead with an envelope follower).
Granular synthesis is another one; I use the IRCAM tech inside of Falcon, Granulator II, and The Mangle predominantly. You’d think any two granular synthesizers / samplers would sound / act alike, but they’re actually so unbelievably different most of the time that you can create really cool glitches with whichever you fancy, and pull out another one for even more inspiration.
BYOME and TRIAD are pretty easy to get glitchy stuff going with, too. This probably needs no explanation for those who have used them. For everyone else, check out the demos and you’ll see what I mean. You don’t need to be a modular savant to utilize all of their modulation, just pull out a shitload of wires and start randomizing.
Transient-splitting and spectral-splitting opens up a shitload of possibilities in the glitch territory, too. Usually I pair these with the aforementioned Unfiltered Audio plugins to create new, interesting modulation sources and an array of effects to act upon them.
I’ll probably edit this post with video demonstrations for anyone who cares, if I get bored / inspired enough. I’m pretty bad at explaining things without a visual counterpart but it’s all much simpler than it sounds.
