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Granular Synthesys

from a post by @aplourde re:SpaceCraft Granular)

SpaceCraft is a bit of a departure from “classic” granular synthesis, but considering classic granular tends to the experimental or academic more traditional tonalities aren’t a bad thing, just different.

Classic granular deals with clouds of micro-sounds, typically 1 - 50 ms, the idea being that the individual grains are not distinguishable, but from the cloud the aggregate character emerges. Typically, those grains are sampled stochastically from a source, again adding to the indistinct tendencies.

SpaceCraft differs in that a good portion of the grain control window has grain lengths that are clearly discernible snippets of the source audio. Also, the grains are individually played instead of “smeared” in a cloud of grains. Finally, the sampling is deterministic, with regular LFOs oscillating from the selected point instead of random selection.

This is not to say SpaceCraft is wrong, it’s a different approach that yields more controlled and traditionally musical results. Contrast this with Borderlands Granular which has a more “classic” granular approach (micro-sounds, layering of grains, random selection of grains from within a bounding box). Amazing and beautiful instrument, but it does tend towards more abstract sounds.

Even the sequencers of both emphasize their different approaches: SpaceCraft has an arpeggiator that plays traditional pitches in series. Borderlands has a motion recorder that captures your movements of the grain clouds traversing the samples.

How would you differentiate the granular and its uses from other types of synthesis?

Because you’re sampling another sound source, it’s very much dependent on what the sample is. That said, because of the discontinuities and/or layering, it will tend towards a more harmonically dense sound. Also, by virtue of the grains / clouds, it’s a bit harder to get sharp, clearly defined sounds (when you do get this with SpaceCraft it’s typically because you’ve stretched the grain out to a larger, defined snippet of the source). As such, granular synthesis is typically used for more pad-type sounds whether sustained or pointillistic.

Instruments like Quanta, Tardigrain, iPulsaret use granular synthesis as the oscillators of more traditional synthesizer engines. Here, you can get whatever you want, as the granular cloud is pitched and further shaped with filters, envelopes and other modulation. Still, it will tend to more harmonically rich sounds than traditional subtractive synthesis that starts with a sawtooth wave.

How have you used it in your tracks?

For SpaceCraft, as a background pad sound. One tip: use a sample of the song you’re working on as the source for the granulations, especially the main melodic line. This retains a harmonic echo of your track, but re-contextualized. It also helps keep the sound from overwhelming the rest of your track.

I’ll often do this live with Borderlands as it can continuously sample a defined-length buffer. So the granulations are a real-time processing of another source, providing a fractured “echo”.

How would you characterize the sound? It seems capable of a kind of primeval grandeur not found elsewhere. I often search for pads that give an epic feeling. Seems more possible in granular for some reason… At least to me. Kind of like looking thru a magnifying glass makes an ant terrifying… By George… That's what the darn thing is!

Granular is the sound of swarms, of aggregate actions, like a wave crashing on a shore. Yes, it can be epic! But, depending on how you use it, it can also be indistinct, a fog in the background that makes all the colors bleed together.