Rubber Fjords

By ineff on February 1, 2026 11:54 pm

Messing with (and often exacerbating) an out-of-tune guitar sample and some FM patches I made last year.

› M8 Nerd Notes

‹ M8 Nerd Notes

I love how Weeklybeats keeps the opportunity costs of experimenting cheap, and this week was a lot of experiments. Some worked!

Diminishing Degrading Returns
First off: the recurring screechy glitch on the guitar is made by adding DEG10+ (degrade) at various times. Admittedly, this is a bit of an earsore until the mix gets full enough to swallow most of the rough edges.

Using DEG—even at relatively low values like 10—is tricky. The manual describes its effect as "sample-rate reduction" (as opposed to the ever-popular bit-rate reduction), but that reduction is achieved by performing a sample-and-hold on every XX samples, with special cases for DEG00 (normal audio) and DEG01 (no degrade yet, just turn off interpolation). That means DEG02 skips every other sample, DEG03 every 3, and so on.

The trickiness comes from the fact that:

Beyond the first few values of XX, there isn't a lot of useful difference between higher values—everything quickly degrades into nigh-indistinguishable variations on ear-sawing noise. It turns out that skipping every 25 samples results in garbage that is about as unrecognizable from its source material as skipping every 250, EXCEPT:
With certain harmonic-rich tonal material (like this guitar sample), riding DEG around the point wherever the sound breaks down completely can result in noisy glitch-laden tonal shifts—where the difference between DEGXX and DEGXX+1 can change the perceived pitch by more than a semitone.
Attempting to get an arbitrary pitch this way can range from "pretty squirrely" to "basically impossible." The result can be somewhat tempered by PIT and FIN, but the same sample-and-hold surprises apply.
However: if you're lucky enough to find come buzzy DEGXX value that fits close enough to a desirable starting tone, repeatedly shifting values from that starting point can feel like a passage of kind-of-controlled articulations (like a choppy robotic pitch bend).

That's what the ascending buzzy glitch pitches at ~00:08 are doing—DEGXX's S&Hing differences are still close enough to sound like the pitch is continually rising, and as long as it's changing consistently(-ish), it feels plausible as a performance. Sort of.

The downside of the "weekly experiments are cheap" coin is that—once you've really gotten into an experiment, there's a good chance you're committed for that week. So it was unfortunate when I played a nearly-finished draft on Sunday afternoon and was treated to Fiancé's face twitching like an electric chair was toggling on and off during each DEG-driven guitar glitch. Apparently for some people, the result of this experiment is like an evil form of ASMR (and that's pretty intense, since the OG ASMR can be pretty sus in its own right). So if "some people" includes you: I'm Very Sorry!

PS: It's only fair to mention that under all other circumstances, Fiancé is glowingly supportive of my musical and other creative endeavors. It's just unfortunate that this track prominently features a sound that Drives Their Ears Mad, and that we only discovered that phenomenon a few hours before deadline.

I was able to mitigate some of the irritation by knocking back that instrument's DRY and blurring the scratchiness with extra reverb. That at least worked enough to prevent involuntary face contortions whenever it plays.

› freesound.org samples used

‹ freesound.org samples used

acoustic session 8.wav by sandib License: CC0
Tambourine 2-bars loop 90BPM 48kHz by funkologic License: CC0
Tambourine - Various Strikes by el_boss License: CC0
Real drums loop 100 BPM.wav by johntrap License: CC0
Meinl MB20 14in Heavy Soundwave Hi-Hat (pack) by ankealtd All samples licensed: CC0
Gui_DRUM_SPLASH_soft.wav by menegass License: CC0
Rick_DRUM_SPLASH2_hard.wav by menegass License: CC0
VHS Drumkit (pack) by AKUSTIKA All samples licensed: CC0
DW - 18 Crash - 001 (Edit).wav by DanVGC++ License: CC0
Drums Funk Groove 6.wav by RutgerMuller License: CC0

100% made and mixed on a Dirtywave M8 Tracker

Audio works licensed by author under:
CC Attribution Noncommercial Share Alike (BY-NC-SA)

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Tags: m8tracker, sampling, week 5 2026, View by:ineff

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February 2, 2026 12:29 am

dewdrops _tunes

Oh I love the bending and glitchy work you did on the guitar samples.