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Audiovisual arts collective glitch[dot]cool’s Glitch With Friends packs contain some of the best free sounds we’ve found this year
As you know, we’re partial to a free sample or two over here at MusicRadar.
Typically, you’ll find us delivering them to you via our long-running free music samples giveaway series, SampleRadar. Sometimes, though, we stumble upon similar examples of audio-based generosity elsewhere on the internet, and can’t help but feel compelled to share them with our audience of sample-hungry producers. Today is one of those days.
Glitch With Friends is a series of sample packs from the audiovisual arts collective glitch[dot]cool. Released in three instalments, their sample packs add up to a total of almost 10GB of free, high-quality samples that share an aesthetic based around glitch and IDM. Though they’re highly suited to tracks made in these genres, there’s such a diversity of sounds in here that it’s a worthy download for producers making pretty much any kind of electronic music. 
There’s a truly colossal amount of excellent samples in here – everything from synthesized drums to powerful impacts, risers and FX, ethereal pads to gnarly bass riffs, abrasive textures to melodic loops. On top of these custom-made sounds, there’s a ton of field recordings, and even a selection of experimental sounds made by recording “music and audio equipment being pushed to the point of failure.”
The creators write that “a large variety of synthesis, recording, mangling, DSP, and manipulation techniques” were deployed in the making of these packs, including “iterative granular synthesis, salvaging data from broken hard drives, time-stretch manipulation, databending, data sonification and generative composition.”
glitch[dot]cool describe themselves as “a collective of producers, sound designers, programmers, and visual artists orbiting the glitch aesthetic” that are working to “promote and encourage the development of burgeoning fields at the intersection of technology and the arts.” We’d describe them as incredibly generous.
In addition to these sample packs, the collective publish music from their members on their online platform, run events and manage a Discord server aimed at promoting “education, collaboration and camaraderie.” They do all of this for free, too, so if you rate what they’re doing and find a use for these samples, we’d strongly suggest that you support their work via Gumroad (opens in new tab) or make a donation (opens in new tab).
Find out more about glitch[dot]cool at their website.
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I’m the Tech Features Editor for MusicRadar, working on everything from artist interviews to tech tutorials. I’ve been writing about (and making) electronic music for over a decade, and when I’m not behind my laptop keyboard, you’ll find me behind a MIDI keyboard or a synthesizer.
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