IDM, Glitch

Oh noes! IDM is not an acronym for a super secret government agency, disease or drugs!  Or, maybe it is one or another kind of brian drug; just like playing cards, games, reading and listening music are brain drugs too! IDM is the acronym for Intelligent Dance Music; in short, the new rage curring up samples, repeats, distortions and glitches in the music. A style emerged in the early nineties which was described as electro, electronica and ambient techno. It gets you not only moving by your feet but also with your brain!

Kraftwerk, Depeche Mode, Leftfield, Aphex Twin and many more are known for their creations with glitches and sample-juggling to add colour to their productions. It makes music sound much more and detailed than it actually is.

Software VST plugins are currently the rage, a few examples:

• Free Sequencer: Glitch Sequencer
• Free plug-ins: dBlue Glitch for PC, Glitched for Apple, Livecut and Supatrigga for PC and Apple.
• Audio Damage Replicant & DestroyFX plugins like Scrubby, Skidder, Transverb and others.
• For Reaktor users: Toxonic
• For Ableton Live: Major Malfunction
• Abandoned: Papergoose, Glitch Jockey

CD-skipping glitches could be done by using a magic marker on a CD, recording that defected ceedee. IDM glitches can best be done manually, by searching the best possible sweet-spots for the wanted IDM effect.

I’ve not found any good “true” hardware IDM device yet, with exception of the out-of-production Frostwave Sonic Alienator, Geiger Counter, the SP-555 with loop sampling functions and the MachineDrum which is quite expensive but also a super-sequencer.

Interesting links:

• Wikipedia
• IDM Musicians at Wikipedia
• Music taking over the body (Youtube clip)
• IntelligentDanceMusic
• Ishkur’s guide to Electronic Music
• Kid606 – Tussen puberaal noise en Intelligent Dance (Dutch article)
• Slider’s Encyclopedia about IDM
• Everything2 IDM
• Aural Contraception from Simbolin, free IDM album from Synthopia
• IDM on Last.FM

More information and groups about IDM are at Wikipedia, Soundcloud, Indabamusic

So, how about gearing up your studio with a professional Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) for free? Sounds almost unbelievable when you know Protools, Nuendo and others cost hunderds of euros to buy. I’ll present you Ardour, the open-source audio workstation, available for os X (Tiger & Leopard) and any major Linux distribution (Slackware, Debian, Suse, Fedora, Ubuntu, Gentoo) on the street!

It has unlimited undo/redo, multichannel recording, track punching, full automation, pro mixer, hardware control from surfaces like the Bitstream, Mackie or Novation Remote, timecode synch, unlimited tracks & busses, LADSPA and LV2 and limited VST plugin support and an advanced routing system you could only dream of. It has audio-for-video features, persistent undo functions and supports multiple languages. It’s capabilities are similar to it’s professional variants, but ready to rock and roll; and if you really like this software, you could help the Ardour development by giving a tip to the author without breaking the bank!

It was supported thanks to the SAE Institute (Munich) which came a corporate sponsor of the Ardour Project in April 2007. This collaboration led to the development of an os X version of the first Linux-based software. The developer, Paul Davis has created a masterpiece which has an easy overview and which is easy and relaxed to use; just like any DAW should work!

This genious piece of software is available at www.ardour.org

Some other interesting free DAWs and sound editing software:

• Acid Xpress (a free, 10-tracks edition of ACID software for music recording, editing and mixing. Easy to use, even if you never did loop-based music ceation before! When you’re ready, publish your song to ACIDplanet.com)
• Kristal Audio Engine (16 audio tracks, 32bit, 44.1 to 192kHz sample rate, VST support, ASIO low latency, 4 KRISTAL Plug-In slots)
• Audacity (free audio editor, it just does the work! Comparable with a light version of Cooledit/Audition)