Granular synthesis is a basic
sound synthesisIn music technology, sound synthesis is the process of generating sound from analogue and digital electronic equipment, often for musical, artistic or entertainment purposes. In particular, it refers to the process of generating, combining or mixing sounds from a set of fundamental building blocks...
method that operates on the
microsoundMicrosound includes all sounds on the time scale shorter than musical notes, the sound object time scale, and longer than the sample time scale. Specifically this is shorter than one tenth of a second and longer than 10 milliseconds, including the audio frequency range and the infrasonic...
time scaleIn music, a time scale is specification of divisions of time or rhythm.Curtis Roads distinguishes nine time scales of music:#Infinite: literally infinite, such as the length of sine waves in classical Fourier analysis,...
. It is often based on the same principles as
samplingIn music, sampling is the act of taking a portion, or sample, of one sound recording and reusing it as an instrument or a different sound recording of a song. This is typically done with a sampler, which can be a piece of hardware or a computer program on a digital computer. Sampling is also...
but often includes
analogAn Analog or analogue signal is any continuous signal for which the time varying feature of the signal is a representation of some other time varying quantity, i.e analogous to another time varying signal. It differs from a digital signal in terms of small fluctuations in the signal which are...
technology. The samples are not used directly however, they are split in small pieces of around 1 to 50 ms in length, or the synthesized sounds are very short. These small pieces are called grains. Multiple grains may be layered on top of each other all playing at different speed,
phaseThe phase of an oscillation or wave is the fraction of a complete cycle corresponding to an offset in the displacement from a specified reference point at time t = 0. Phase is a frequency domain or Fourier transform domain concept, and as such, can be readily understood in terms of simple harmonic...
, volume, and pitch.
The result is no single tone, but a
soundscapeA soundscape is a sound or combination of sounds that forms or arises from an immersive environment. The study of soundscape is the subject of acoustic ecology...
, often a
cloudIn music a cloud is a sound mass consisting of statistical clouds of microsounds and characterized first by the set of elements used in the texture, secondly density, including rhythmic and pitch density...
, that is subject to manipulation in a way unlike any natural sound and also unlike the sounds produced by most other synthesis techniques.
Granular synthesis is a basic
sound synthesisIn music technology, sound synthesis is the process of generating sound from analogue and digital electronic equipment, often for musical, artistic or entertainment purposes. In particular, it refers to the process of generating, combining or mixing sounds from a set of fundamental building blocks...
method that operates on the
microsoundMicrosound includes all sounds on the time scale shorter than musical notes, the sound object time scale, and longer than the sample time scale. Specifically this is shorter than one tenth of a second and longer than 10 milliseconds, including the audio frequency range and the infrasonic...
time scaleIn music, a time scale is specification of divisions of time or rhythm.Curtis Roads distinguishes nine time scales of music:#Infinite: literally infinite, such as the length of sine waves in classical Fourier analysis,...
. It is often based on the same principles as
samplingIn music, sampling is the act of taking a portion, or sample, of one sound recording and reusing it as an instrument or a different sound recording of a song. This is typically done with a sampler, which can be a piece of hardware or a computer program on a digital computer. Sampling is also...
but often includes
analogAn Analog or analogue signal is any continuous signal for which the time varying feature of the signal is a representation of some other time varying quantity, i.e analogous to another time varying signal. It differs from a digital signal in terms of small fluctuations in the signal which are...
technology. The samples are not used directly however, they are split in small pieces of around 1 to 50 ms in length, or the synthesized sounds are very short. These small pieces are called grains. Multiple grains may be layered on top of each other all playing at different speed,
phaseThe phase of an oscillation or wave is the fraction of a complete cycle corresponding to an offset in the displacement from a specified reference point at time t = 0. Phase is a frequency domain or Fourier transform domain concept, and as such, can be readily understood in terms of simple harmonic...
, volume, and pitch.
The result is no single tone, but a
soundscapeA soundscape is a sound or combination of sounds that forms or arises from an immersive environment. The study of soundscape is the subject of acoustic ecology...
, often a
cloudIn music a cloud is a sound mass consisting of statistical clouds of microsounds and characterized first by the set of elements used in the texture, secondly density, including rhythmic and pitch density...
, that is subject to manipulation in a way unlike any natural sound and also unlike the sounds produced by most other synthesis techniques. By varying the
waveformWaveform means the shape and form of a signal such as a wave moving in a solid, liquid or gaseous medium.In many cases the medium in which the wave is being propagated does not permit a direct visual image of the form. In these cases, the term 'waveform' refers to the shape of a graph of the...
, envelope, duration, spatial position, and density of the grains many different sounds can be produced.
The result is usable as music, sound effects or as raw material for further processing by other synthesis or
DSPDigital signal processing is concerned with the representation of the signals by a sequence of numbers or symbols and the processing of these signals. Digital signal processing and analog signal processing are subfields of signal processing...
effects. The range of effects that can be produced include amplitude modulation, time stretching, stereo or multichannel scattering, random reordering, disintegration and morphing.
Dennis GaborDennis Gabor CBE, FRS, was a Hungarian electrical engineer and inventor, most notable for inventing holography, for which he later received the Nobel Prize in Physics.-Biography:He was born as Gábor Dénes, in Budapest, Hungary...
researched how human beings communicate and hear. The result of his investigations was the theory of granular synthesis, although Greek composer
Iannis XenakisIannis Xenakis was a Greek composer, music theorist and architect. He is commonly recognized as one of the most important post-war avant-garde composers...
claimed that he was actually the first inventor of this synthesis technique.
Curtis RoadsCurtis Roads is a composer of electronic and electroacoustic music specializing in granular and pulsar synthesis, author, and computer programmer....
is often credited as the first person to implement a digital granular synthesis engine. Canadian composer
Barry TruaxBarry Truax is a Canadian composer who specializes in real-time implementations of granular synthesis, often of sampled sounds, and soundscapes...
was one of first to implement real-time versions of this synthesis technique.
Books
Articles
Further reading
- Digital signal processing
Digital signal processing is concerned with the representation of the signals by a sequence of numbers or symbols and the processing of these signals. Digital signal processing and analog signal processing are subfields of signal processing...
- Micromontage audio montage on the time scale of microsounds
- Granular Synthesis Resource Web Site
Software
- MacPOD 2.x Real-time granular synthesizer (Mac OS X)
- WinPOD 2.x Real-time granular synthesizer (Windows XP/Vista)
- RTGS-X Real-Time Granular Synthesizer X (Mac OS X)
- REplay PLAYer generative granular synthesis software by Karlheinz Essl
Karlheinz Essl is an Austrian composer, performer, sound artist, improviser and composition teacher.- Biography :...
(Mac OS X)
- Kenaxis real-time sample manipulation environment with a powerful granular synthesis engine developed with input from Barry Truax (Mac OS X, Windows)
- Granulab real-time granular synthesizer (Windows)
- Chaosynth cellular automata granular synthesizer by Eduardo Reck Miranda
Eduardo Reck Miranda, Ph.D, , is a Brazilian composer of chamber and electroacoustic pieces but is most notable in the United Kingdom for his scientific research into computer music, particularly in the field of human-machine interfaces where brain waves will replace keyboards and voice commands to...
(Mac OS X, Windows)
- crusherX-Live! granular synthesis system (Windows)
- WSOLA time scale modification of audio using granular synthesis
- Vocal Modeler special vocal effect for Reaktor
Reaktor is a graphical modular software music studio of proprietary license developed by Native Instruments. It lets musicians and engineers design and build their own instruments, samplers, effects and sound design tools. It is supplied with many ready-to-use instruments and effects, from...
that uses granular synthesis (Mac OS X, Windows)
- White FX a granular effect for Reaktor
Reaktor is a graphical modular software music studio of proprietary license developed by Native Instruments. It lets musicians and engineers design and build their own instruments, samplers, effects and sound design tools. It is supplied with many ready-to-use instruments and effects, from...
(Mac OS X, Windows)
- AudioMulch
AudioMulch is modular audio software for making music and processing sound. The software can synthesize sound and process live and pre-recorded sound in real-time....
a real-time audio processing tool which also offers granular synthesis (Windows)
- Atomic Cloud real-time grain cloud generator (Windows)
- Cecilia / [ftp://ftp.musique.umontreal.ca/FTP_Musique/] granular synthesis based on CSound (Mac OS, MacOS X, Windows, Linux)
- Reason
Reason is a music software program developed by Swedish software developers Propellerhead Software. It emulates a rack of hardware synthesizers, samplers, signal processors, sequencers and mixers, all of which can be freely interconnected in an arbitrary manner...
includes a virtual device called Malström which combines granular and wavetable synthesis techniques (Mac OS X, Windows)
- CDP granular synthesizer from the Composer's Desktop Project of Trevor Wishart
Trevor Wishart is an English composer, based in York. He is widely acknowledged for his contributions to composing with digital audio media, both fixed and interactive...
et al.
- thOnk_0+2 non-realtime granular synthesis (Mac OS 9)
Programming Languages
- Csound
Csound is a computer programming language for dealing with sound, also known as a sound compiler or an audio programming language. It is called Csound because it is written in C, as opposed to some of its predecessors...
comprehensive music software including granular synthesis (overview over granular synthesis opcodes)
- SuperCollider
A Supercollider is a high energy particle accelerator. The term may refer to:* Superconducting Super Collider, planned 80 km project in Texas, canceled in 1993...
programming language for real time audio synthesis
- Reaktor
Reaktor is a graphical modular software music studio of proprietary license developed by Native Instruments. It lets musicians and engineers design and build their own instruments, samplers, effects and sound design tools. It is supplied with many ready-to-use instruments and effects, from...
visual programming environment for sampling, granular sampling, sequencing and modular synthesis
- Max/Msp graphical authoring software for real-time audio and video
- Puredata (Pd) graphical programming language for real-time audio and video
- ChucK
ChucK is a concurrent, strongly timed audio programming language for real-time synthesis, composition, and performance, which runs on Mac OS X, Linux, and Microsoft Windows. It is designed to favor readability and flexibility for the programmer over other considerations such as raw performance...
audio programming language for real-time audio synthesis
- Real-time Cmix
Real-Time Cmix is one of the MUSIC-N family of computer music programming languages. RTcmix is descended from the MIX program developed by Paul Lansky at Princeton University in 1978 to perform algorithmic composition using digital audio soundfiles on a VMS mainframe computer. After synthesis...
programming language for real-time audio synthesis, including several algorithms for granular synthesis.