Nasty Noises: ‘Error’ as a Compositional Element

Abstract

The use of error by composers as a means of adding colour to a musical text has a long history, but the device is ultimately ineffective. Material whose significance is its incongruity is incorporated by recontextualization, and in time, becomes familiar and unremarkable. ‘Glitch’ is a stylistic mannerism within electroacoustic composition that emerged in the late 1990s. Glitch, or ‘microsound’, as it is known in an academic context, observes the conventions of music concrète, drawing on material sampled from the real world, and fashioning this into sonic narratives. Its signature is the ‘sound of failure’, sonorities characteristic of electronic devices malfunctioning or mis-used: clicks, crackles, distortions, fractured digital files. Glitch/microsound has already diminished from a movement to a mannerism, but its legacy is a refreshment of our palette of sonorities, and an interrogation of the very act of listening. This essay is short examination of the use (and nature) of noise a musical ingredient and the significance of glitch/microsound for electroacoustic composers. It concludes that this ‘style’ is little more than a nuance, and that its advent and advocacy were less to do with a new musical movement, than with a new generation of electronic composers attempting to distinguish itself.