Introducing the Granular Synth (Youtube)

ColinP
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Joined: Mon Aug 03, 2020 7:46 pm

Re: Introducing the Granular Synth (Youtube)

Post by ColinP »

Pitch

The way the Granular Synth handles pitch is quite complicated, but in a good way.

Yes, you can set up GS as a bog standard single voice module controlled by a keyboard. Perhaps as shown below...
simple.png
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But GS is really designed for more "experimental" use. And a large part of this is how pitch is controlled by the combined efforts of the PITCH knob, attenuvertor, modulation source, V/OCT input, external chord/scale source, a built in arpeggiator and a quantizer.

The O M D U switch gives you the choice of four basic modes of operation...

O = Off. In this mode no pitch quantization is applied. This is suitable for producing abstract sounds that don't have a well defined pitch.

M = Monophonic. In this mode the pitch is quantized to fit the nearest semitone (in other words the chromatic scale) if nothing is plugged into the QUANTIZE socket.

If an S-Poly chord or scale signal is plugged into the QUANTIZE socket then the pitch adjusts to the nearest note in the chord or scale signal but retains its octave.

If you are unfamiliar with S-Poly then don't worry as an explanation follows.

D = Down, U = UP. In these modes the internal arpeggiator comes in to play selecting a new note every time a grain is seeded, cycling either down in pitch order or up.

The choice of notes is determined by the signal fed into the QUANTIZE socket, but if nothing is plugged in then a C minor 9th chord (C, Eb, G, Bb, D) is used to demonstrate the potential. So what you can hear in the demo video are all riffs on Cmin9.

Two important things to note here.

First, the arpeggiated pitch is ADDED to the pitch from the knob, modulation source and any V/OCT signal and then fed into the quantizer. It is not simply selecting a note in the chord/scale. This introduces a slightly chaotic but highly musical twist to the arppegiation. And remember the final pitch is quantized so whatever all the various signals are doing you always end up with a note that belongs to the chord or scale.

The second thing to note is that when the seeding rate is sufficiently fast and/or the grain size is large enough then multiple grains overlap and the result is a "granular chord".

One of the beautiful things about granular chords is that each grain can have it's own unique parameters. So the result can be incredibly rich and complex.
ColinP
Posts: 940
Joined: Mon Aug 03, 2020 7:46 pm

Re: Introducing the Granular Synth (Youtube)

Post by ColinP »

The Granular Synth needs to work with chords and scales but rather than embed a limited number of chords and scales inside the module, the whole problem is off-loaded to external modules via the S-Poly QUANTIZE socket.

S-Poly Chord and Scales

This part of the CA forum is something of a backwater so most of you are probably already familiar with S-Poly but some may be unaware.

S-Poly is one of the special technologies in LSSP (along with V/Bar and Time Splitting).

It piggybacks on the regular VM poly cables but the actual data is transmitted behind the scenes using high-speed shared memory. But you can just think of them as special poly cables that aren't crippled by the NUMBER OF VOICES setting.

On top of the technology sits a very simple convention for carrying chords and scales down a single cable. The first channel tells you how many notes are in the chord or scale and the other 15 channels list the pitches in regular 1 V/Oct style.

So it's all dead simple.

Experienced users of LSSP will immediately realise that this means that the Granular Synth can handle chord progressions. All that is required is a single cable connecting the output of a Progression module to the QUANTIZE socket for instant harmonic sophistication.

However it would be unfair to expect users of Granular Synth to adopt LSSP. So I'm going to include the Chord and Chord Memory modules from LSSP as free add ons.
ColinP
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Joined: Mon Aug 03, 2020 7:46 pm

Re: Introducing the Granular Synth (Youtube)

Post by ColinP »

The Chord module enables you to select any of the most popular 23 chord types.
chord.png
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ColinP
Posts: 940
Joined: Mon Aug 03, 2020 7:46 pm

Re: Introducing the Granular Synth (Youtube)

Post by ColinP »

The Chord Memory module enables you to construct chords or scales by clicking on the keyboard graphic.

Alternatively you can hit the RECORD button then enter chords simply by playing them on an external MIDI keyboard.
chordMemory.png
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ColinP
Posts: 940
Joined: Mon Aug 03, 2020 7:46 pm

Re: Introducing the Granular Synth (Youtube)

Post by ColinP »

In addition to the Granular Synth (which will come bundled with free copies of the Chord and Chord Memory modules from LSSP) there will be two extra modules - the GS Breakout and the Sowing Machine. These will probably be sold separately in order to make the Granular Synth on its own reasonably affordable.

I'll start a new thread on the Breakout module shortly but the Sowing Machine is something special that I'm going to leave under wraps at the moment.

Beta testing should begin next week and if everything goes smoothly the release should be in June.
GusGranite
Posts: 71
Joined: Fri May 14, 2021 2:16 am

Re: Introducing the Granular Synth (Youtube)

Post by GusGranite »

Really interesting. I hadn’t thought about the need for compression with granular synthesis. Makes total sense.
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