During a workshop on texture in sound design, our tutor played a collection of high-definition, ultra-polished samples — sparkling synths, clean drums, flawless reverb tails. Technically perfect. But emotionally? They felt hollow. I kept thinking, “Why does this leave me cold?” That night, while working on my own track, my USB interface glitched midway. The result was a recording with audio dropouts, stuttering noise, and a weird, unintended echo loop.
I almost deleted it immediately. But something told me to listen again. This time, it hit differently. The imperfection felt emotional. It wasn’t pretty, but it felt real — like it had a story behind it. It reminded me of Arca’s track “Whip,” which feels like an auditory breakdown: chaotic, sharp, even violent, but weirdly intimate. I started researching glitch aesthetics and came across Andra McCartney’s writing on lo-fi and emotional vulnerability. She described sonic imperfections as traces of failure, and failure as a kind of truth.
So I kept the “mistake.” I shaped the glitch into a transition. It wasn’t about sounding edgy — it was about refusing to erase the evidence of tension. Since then, I’ve started seeing glitch not as error, but as resistance. A refusal to be clean, corrected, or compressed.
Now I’m wondering: in music — and in life — how much do we hide behind clarity? What would happen if we let the noise speak?
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