How to create Psytrance vocal glitch sounds with Polyverse iWish [Tutorial]

How to create Psytrance vocal glitch sounds with Polyverse iWish

Vocal glitch sounds are very widely used in Psytrance, let’s look at creating our own vocal glitches using Polyverse iWish.

Due to the nature of a retrigger effect, it helps to warp samples so that the syllables are quantized to the grid – so keep that in mind.

You can achieve the same effect using various tools or plugins, however Polyverse iWish has a particularly user-friendly workflow about it that makes it easy to process large portions of audio content quickly. The plugin works by grabbing a sample of incoming audio data every time a note is triggered, it then loops a small chunk of that sample until the next note is triggered. The speed at which the audio sample is retriggered is determined by the incoming MIDI data. This means you can play retriggers chromatically on a keyboard or set up a MIDI device to automate the speed and rhythm of the glitch effect.

I like to set up an arpeggiator to control Polyverse iWish, as it gives you the ability to quickly punch in time and note parameters without having to go into a MIDI clip and edit the notes one by one.

There’s a huge variety of effects you can get here, so experiment…

Depending on the type of sound you’re going for you can choose to trigger the arpeggiator in “random” mode, or for a more regimented pattern use one of the traditional arpeggiator modes. Cubase has a nifty MIDI plugin built-in called “Step Designer” which is also a very handy tool if you’re looking for less of a “synthy” type of sound. You can also adjust the octave range of the MIDI channel, thus affecting the speed of the retrigger effect, however Polyverse iWish has the ability to tune the effect up or down several octaves – and it even has a really nice sounding “formant” effect.

The variety of different sounds you can create using this setup is pretty insane, you can take it further and apply your favourite effects plugins on-top for further variations or change the incoming audio material for a totally different base sound.

For a walkthrough of some of these techniques, check out the video tutorial here: