Review: Glitchwork by S1gns of L1fe

Glitch percussion is a sonic element you can set up with a solid synth and a handful of effects, if you know what you’re doing. Of course, to do glitch percussion well – to keep sounds and patterns fresh and interesting – takes years of experience and experimentation to truly master.

But nobody said those years of experience and experimentation had to be yours.

Ambient producer Chris Bryant, better known online as S1gns of L1fe for his instructive videos, software demos, and recently, audio plugins, has been using glitch percussion in his music for over a decade. He’s sorted out the critical elements, the most impactful modulations, the shortcuts, and the workflow tricks for his own productions. And he’s now developed a single plugin, Glitchwork by S1gns of L1fe, to make his glitch-percussing life – and possibly yours – easier and more creative.

Curious to know whether Glitchwork can do the glitch work for you? Read on.

Itching for a Glitching

Glitchwork is a bit of an odd plugin for me to review, if I’m honest. On the one hand, I love synths and effects that turn simple or familiar sounds into something unexpected and new. I’m fully on board with morphers, manglers, modulators, and all manner of musical messer-uppers – and Glitchwork is loaded with several, as we’ll see.

On the other hand, I haven’t produced glitch percussion myself. Sure, I’ve dabbled in foley hits and found sound pulses for colour. I may have layered ticking clocks or metallic bangs into a piece when no one was looking. But I’ve never gone “full glitch” myself. Not like this.

If you’re a first-timer, too, don’t fret. Glitchwork has a few moving parts but is generally pretty easy to wrap your head around. If you’re a glitch perc vet, then I hope I’m able to highlight the most important bits of interest along the way. Now let’s see what all the glitchy fuss is about.

Every Glitch Way But Loose

Glitchwork’s main screen, the Engine tab, is a fairly dense playground of visuals and controls. A description won’t make much sense until you’ve seen it, so let’s see it:

The ribbon along the top provides access to Glitchwork’s categorised factory presets (along with any saved user presets), a global volume control, and a tempo indicator. Near the top left are toggles for the five plugin tabs: Engine, Sequencer, Mixer, Perform, and Presets. We’ll discuss the first four below; the Presets tab is simply a non-pulldown view of the presets available in the top ribbon (plus a link to a handy built-in tutorial).

At top-centreish is Glitchwork’s XY grid representing different flavours of FM, or frequency modulation, synthesis. As the tutorial explains, in this plugin, “The FM Grid Is The Instrument”. While specific FM parameters and values are displayed in the Recipe Preview just below the grid, these aren’t directly adjustable. Glitchwork instead emphasises the character of sounds, labeling axes and corners with descriptors like “Clean”, “Dark”, “Soft/Round”, and “Broken”.

The grid contains a dot for each of sixteen possible drum hits, corresponding to the individual slots of the step sequencer along the bottom. Click on any step to highlight it, and that step’s dot becomes active and draggable anywhere within the XY grid. As the dot is dragged, the Grid X and Grid Y slider values in the Voices section next to the XY pad change accordingly. These sliders can also be manually dragged or automated in the DAW, if preferred.

That’s true for the other sliders in the Voices section, as well. Each step has independent controls for parameters including Pitch, Attack, Decay, Tone, Drive, Probability, Ratchets, and more. Several of these are also adjustable by dragging various elements in the sequencer at bottom, but we’ll dive further into those in the Sequencer tab discussion. A slot’s Recipe Preview can also be copied and pasted to another slot to replicate a full set of parameters for a second hit.

Glitchwork offers another way to move all points around the XY pad. At middle left, the Grid Scan section provides distance sliders for the X and Y axes and a Depth control to fine-tune the gliding movement of each dot around its start position. The Speed of movement can be set in Hz or (with Sync on) by note length based on the current tempo.

Smack My Glitch Up

Individual hits can be triggered using MIDI input, with steps mapped sequentially across keys. In this mode, a step will sound and the corresponding dot will highlight in the XY pad. But if the sequence is instead played by clicking the arrow in the top left corner in the sequencer (or by selecting “Play” in your DAW), only steps with enabled Triggers will play (or not, depending on each active step’s Probability). A Voice Preview and Spectrum view at top right display the sonic characteristics of the currently selected slot.

Both the sequencer and the Voices section include a toggle to Edit One (step) or Edit All to make global changes. The latter is particularly useful for setting all decay times into “glitch-centric” territory or resetting all Ratchets to “1”, for example.

The remaining Engine tab components are expanded in the Perform tab, so we’ll cover them in more detail below. These include the reverb controls in the Space section at left and the Macro Controls at right above the sequencer. Speaking of, let’s now check out the Sequencer tab.

This is mostly an expanded view of the sequencer from the Engine page, but with more space to see and manage the bits being dragged around. Glitchwork boasts an impressive nine-factor step sequencer with up to sixteen steps, featuring independent randomisation lock, step count and tempo rate for each factor.

Glitchwork Makes the Pitch Work

Glitchwork’s sequencer includes several useful tricks. For instance, pitches can be locked to scale by setting the Key and Scale values at top. This requires the Tonal Lock toggle (the lock icon next to Key) to be active; otherwise, the FM output is free to drift into atonal territory.

Sequencer randomization comes three ways in Glitchwork. The gentlest method is Morph, where the trigger pattern is preserved and relatively modest adjustments are made to the other values.

Randomize has no such guardrails, changing FM characteristics, sequence rhythm, and more according to its mercurial whims. Only those parameters or steps locked with a corresponding lock icon escape unscathed. The same is true for the die icon; toggle that on and Glitchwork randomizes periodically, with an adjustable range between one and eight bars.

Skipping slightly out of order, the Perform tab displays the ten available macro dials, larger here to ease older and/or squintier eyes. The specifics of each macro are pre-defined, though the names – like Stutter, Scatter, Impact, Echo, and Degrade – generally indicate what to expect from each.

The Perform tab also includes expanded controls for Glitchwork’s dual-mode reverb. For both Plate and Hall reverbs, controls for Mix, Pre(delay), Size, Decay, and more are available. Speaking of the reverb, it’s perhaps the most interesting element of Glitchwork’s Mixer tab:

This tab contains the most direct controls for setting each sequence step’s Volume, Pan, Mute, or Solo status. It also includes a Send slider, allowing for per-step application of the reverb shaped on the Perform tab. Buttons at the top specify (globally) whether the reverb is treated as an Insert or Send effect, while the sliders allow funky or rattling reverb accents on just the hits you like. Nice.

An Embarrassment of Glitches

As I admitted earlier, I’m a glitch percussion newbie. So I can’t definitively declare that Glitchwork can handle anything a true glitch-ficionado could ever imagine. But after spending some time with the plugin, I will say it has me interested in trying some glitch perc myself. But only if I can use Glitchwork.

That’s because the more familiar (to me) bits of this toolkit – the sequencer, the macros, and the XY pad – work swimmingly together and collectively make it easy to bring life and variety into whatever rhythm comes to mind. The independent per-step controls for FM character and reverb sends are particularly handy for accenting specific beats. And the many randomisation possibilities are fantastic for generating or refining ideas.

I also appreciate the overall approach to the interface. Nearly every important control is on the main Engine page – but it can be a bit cramped in spots. So having access to many of those elements on other tabs – without being required to flip through tabs to make simple adjustments – is a nice compromise.

With many components and impressive flexibility come a few areas where user experience could be improved. It would be nice to see values when adjusting parameters on the Sequencer tab, for instance. Detailed information about the macros (and indeed, a full user manual) would be appreciated. The Perform page appears to have room for additional effects or macro element tweaking that could provide even more variety and creative fodder.

The single biggest issue I encountered was forgetting when I’d activated “Edit All” mode on the Engine tab to set all decays or probabilities, then accidentally adjusting something else before switching back. It would be enormously embarrassing to reveal how many times during a week of testing I clicked a trigger and turned on or off every single step, when that’s not remotely what I intended. Luckily, my memory is also shot, so I don’t recall the exact number.  But it’s more than five. The shame. A global undo function would mitigate (some of) the chagrin I experienced and would be another fine addition to an otherwise clever, useful, and usable tool.

Overall, Glitchwork’s sequencer, XY pad, and macro functionality rival the capabilities found in many dedicated sequencer and modulation plugins, with extra tricks and twists for the onboard FM synth. Defining (or randomising) patterns and adding accents and variety are all quick and easy steps. The modulation options range from gentle to good-gawd glitchiness. And, as demonstrated in the walkthrough video, savvy adjustments to parameters like Attack, Decay, and Gate Len(gth) can take Glitchwork beyond the realm of strictly glitch percussion.

For seasoned glitch percussionists, Glitchwork provides a new all-in-one toolkit that may streamline workflows or inspire new ideas. For those (like me) who’ve never glitched their percs before, this plugin is a gateway to a set of new techniques and styles, provided by an expert artist in the field. In short, Glitchwork can do the glitch work for just about anyone.

Learn more about Glitchwork at the S1gns of L1fe Gumroad page.