How to glitch your drums with MOVEMENT

Illustration: Mushbuh

MOVEMENT is a powerful rhythm effects processor capable of adding life to any sound. In this walkthrough, we look at how to use MOVEMENT on a drum loop to create glitchy-sounding grooves.

Load in a drum loop and add MOVEMENT to your drum track. We’ll start with the preset Evermore, which can be loaded from MOVEMENT’s preset browser.

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Increase the dry / wet ratio of the reverb on engine A to about 70%. This will make the drums a little boomier and fill out some of the higher frequencies.

One of MOVEMENT’s greatest features is the XY Pad. You can map any parameter to the XY Pad by right-clicking on the parameter and selecting “Assign to XY Control.” All engine A parameters are mappable to the y-axis, and all engine B parameters are mappable to the x-axis.

You can adjust the range of the XY Pad using the XY Slider (see below):

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Navigate to engine B and click on the filter module. Invert the XY slider’s range by right-clicking on the cutoff and selecting “Edit XY Control.” Click and drag the range upwards to increase it – this will make the filter more obvious when manipulating it via the XY Pad.

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Lastly, try automating the XY Pad to create different motions and energies in your drum pattern. This will sound best when the automation aligns with the flow of your track.

There are a lot of other great techniques in MOVEMENT as well – if you know of any, let us know your favorites in the comments below!

If you don’t have MOVEMENT yet, try it out with a free trial, then pay $7.49/mo until you own it outright.

May 11, 2018

Nick Chen Content Marketing @ Splice. Nick Chen is a producer, performer, and educator under the aliases "nickthechen" and "Enix."