Hi there,

I've built an abstraction that glitches mp3 files.

It uses some of the concepts I discovered when I was working on the jpeglitcher. After reading some documentation about the mp3 file structure, I tried to find the "sweet spots" of these files: the places where a single byte change causes the greatest possible sonic mutations.
An mp3 file is made of a succession of frames. One frame is 26,122449 ms of audio, whatever the bitrate, frequency... After a period of trials and experimentations, I realized that the best places to glitch within these files where the so called "side information" area and the audio data itself. Messing around with frame headers, as I did in the beginning, was quite hazardous: files would easily break and, if readable, they just sounded too "destroyed" and sufferd heavy time domain damage.
I think about this abstraction as a synthesis tool: a unique way for producers to process drum loops (for instance) or any other part of a song. If you use the random number glitch, each instance of glitch of the same, unalterd original file will give you a different result. Moreover: a glitched mp3 will sound differently in every software player: vlc will have its own interpretation, probably very different from Itunes or any other DAW sequencer you import this file into...

For instance, drumloop5.mp3 can turn into glitch3.mp3 or glitch6.mp3 or even glitch8.mp3 opening new possibilities for experimental musicians.

The mp3glitcher is a CPU hungry abstraction when it comes to the actual glitching process. A typical 4'00" song can take up to 90 seconds to process on an old computer (but far less on more recent systems...) so don't panic if you don't get a result immediately. Also do not use this on a variable bitrate file as (for some reason beyond my comprehension) it will most likely not work.

Please feel free to use this tool and give me comments about it, so I can make it better.

mp3glitcher.pd
mp3glitcher.app

Tested on mac (OS 10.5 and 10.9) and PC (win. xp/7). recquires pd-extended. The zip files is the stand alone version for mac