glitch

Music has come a long way. Acts these days seem to always be doing something different, and a big reason for this is the technology available nowadays is way more advanced than what musicians of yesteryears had access to. The advancements in sonic engineering have led to some rather esoteric and mindboggling results. Musicians now have managed to bring out what once was only possible on your computer into the physical world. So, here are 5 of the very best glitch pedals that have managed to carry the realm of 1s and 0s in front of your very eyes.

Feral Glitch

 

Let’s start with an interesting one. This pedal actually started as a Kickstarter by Radiohead fan David Karp as he wanted to recreate Jonny Greenwood’s random glitch stutters as heard in Radiohead’s Go To Sleep. His solution? He created his own pedal. The Feral Glitch is a stutter effect pedal designed primarily to create eclectic and aggressive glitch sounds. Users can choose a random Glitch effect and its maximum length or choose a fixed pattern.

Dwarfcraft Devices Grazer

 

For a pedal on the more sci-fi side, there’s always the Grazer. While we know granular processing isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, but for guitarists who want to dabble in it, the Dwarfcraft Devices’ Grazer Granular Repeater and Glitch is a capable micro sampler that’ll let you bend and mangle sound to your liking. Fun fact about this pedal: Bon Iver was one of the first people to own one as he’s close friends with Dwarfcraft’s owner and founder, Aen Hinz.

Syntax Error

 

The Syntax Error if one of the first NEO Series pedals from Alexader. This pedal is a good all-around glitch pedal as its 4 modes give you access to the main varieties of glitch. The four modes include stretch, cube, ring, and freq. Stretch adjusts the sample playback, reverse and adds feedback. Cube gives you cubed cascaded distortion with resonant low filter. Ring adds ring modulation. Freq is the frequency shift with delay.

Drolo Molecular Disruptor

 

The Molecular Disruptor is probably the pedal with the highest learning curve in this list. It is a Multi-Effects pedal with 2 swappable modules. These make up 2 banks with 8 algorithms (modes) each. All in all, this pedal has 16 different algorithms that can be stored within the 2 modules. In actuality, there are a total of 33 algorithms available – 16 of which you can choose when you order your pedal. While You can opt to change your presets this will require you to send you pedal back for reprogramming.

Montreal Assembly Count to Five

 

The last pedal in the list is Count to Five by Montreal Assembly. A welcome divergence from the previous pedal, the Count to Five is your reliable delay/sampler. It has three modes that can speed up, slow down, reverse, fast forward, the stored samples. Consider this the Occam’s razor of glitch pedals. Sometimes the best way to do something is the simplest way. Hear it in action as part of post-rock band Caspian’s guitarist, Jonny Ashburn’s rig.

Geoff Walton