Granular synthesis
Encyclopedia
Granular synthesis is a basic sound synthesis method that operates on the microsound
time scale.
It is based on the same principle as sampling
. However, the samples are not played back conventionally, but are instead split into small pieces of around 1 to 50ms
. These small pieces are called grains. Multiple grains may be layered on top of each other, and may play at different speeds, phases
, volume, and pitch.
At low speeds of playback, the result is a soundscape
, often a cloud
, that is manipulable in a manner unlike that for natural sound sampling or other synthesis techniques. At high speeds, the result is heard as a note or notes of a novel timbre
. By varying the waveform
, envelope, duration, spatial position, and density of the grains, many different sounds can be produced.
Both have been used for musical purposes: as sound effects, raw material for further processing by other synthesis or digital signal processing
effects, or as complete musical works in their own right. Conventional effects that can be achieved include amplitude modulation and time stretching. More experimentally, stereo or multichannel scattering, random reordering, disintegration and morphing are possible.
researched how human beings communicate and hear. The result of his investigations was the theory of granular synthesis, although Greek composer Iannis Xenakis
claimed that he was actually the first inventor of this synthesis technique. Xenakis was the first to explicate a compositional theory for grains of sound. He began by adopting the following lemma: "All sound, even continuous musical variation, is conceived as an assemblage of a large number of elementary sounds adequately disposed in time. In the attack, body, and decline of a complex sound, thousands of pure sounds appear in a more or less short interval of time." Xenakis created granular sounds using analog tone generators and tape splicing. These appear in the composition Analogique A-B for string orchestra and tape (1959).
Steve Reich
has also claimed to use the tool of granular synthesis, particularly in pieces Three Tales, City Life, and an upcoming piece in regard to the 9/11 attacks.
Unsuk Chin
has used granular synthesis in her ensemble Work Xi and her piano piece Grains.
Rudolph Widmer used granular synthesis techniques both sonically and visually in a large interactive installation piece at the Berlin Staatsoper on August 23, 2011. The project incorporated video and audio granules obtained randomly from the audience participants. This installation will run in New York through November 2011.
Curtis Roads
is often credited as the first person to implement a digital granular synthesis engine. Canadian composer Barry Truax
was one of first to implement real-time versions of this synthesis technique.
Reason virtual music studio employs a technique known as Graintable synthesis, a technique ostensibly invented by Propellerhead for use in Malström:
Microsound
Microsound 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 scale.
It is based on the same principle as sampling
Sampling (music)
In 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 or piece. Sampling was originally developed by experimental musicians working with musique concrète and electroacoustic music, who physically...
. However, the samples are not played back conventionally, but are instead split into small pieces of around 1 to 50ms
Millisecond
A millisecond is a thousandth of a second.10 milliseconds are called a centisecond....
. These small pieces are called grains. Multiple grains may be layered on top of each other, and may play at different speeds, phases
Phase (waves)
Phase in waves is the fraction of a wave cycle which has elapsed relative to an arbitrary point.-Formula:The phase of an oscillation or wave refers to a sinusoidal function such as the following:...
, volume, and pitch.
At low speeds of playback, the result is a soundscape
Soundscape
A 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 cloud
Cloud (music)
In 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 manipulable in a manner unlike that for natural sound sampling or other synthesis techniques. At high speeds, the result is heard as a note or notes of a novel timbre
Timbre
In music, timbre is the quality of a musical note or sound or tone that distinguishes different types of sound production, such as voices and musical instruments, such as string instruments, wind instruments, and percussion instruments. The physical characteristics of sound that determine the...
. By varying the waveform
Waveform
Waveform means the shape and form of a signal such as a wave moving in a physical medium or an abstract representation.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...
, envelope, duration, spatial position, and density of the grains, many different sounds can be produced.
Both have been used for musical purposes: as sound effects, raw material for further processing by other synthesis or digital signal processing
Digital signal processing
Digital signal processing is concerned with the representation of discrete time 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, or as complete musical works in their own right. Conventional effects that can be achieved include amplitude modulation and time stretching. More experimentally, stereo or multichannel scattering, random reordering, disintegration and morphing are possible.
History
Dennis GaborDennis Gabor
Dennis Gabor CBE, FRS was a Hungarian-British electrical engineer and inventor, most notable for inventing holography, for which he later received the 1971 Nobel Prize in Physics....
researched how human beings communicate and hear. The result of his investigations was the theory of granular synthesis, although Greek composer Iannis Xenakis
Iannis Xenakis
Iannis Xenakis was a Romanian-born Greek ethnic, naturalized French composer, music theorist, and architect-engineer. 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. Xenakis was the first to explicate a compositional theory for grains of sound. He began by adopting the following lemma: "All sound, even continuous musical variation, is conceived as an assemblage of a large number of elementary sounds adequately disposed in time. In the attack, body, and decline of a complex sound, thousands of pure sounds appear in a more or less short interval of time." Xenakis created granular sounds using analog tone generators and tape splicing. These appear in the composition Analogique A-B for string orchestra and tape (1959).
Steve Reich
Steve Reich
Stephen Michael "Steve" Reich is an American composer who together with La Monte Young, Terry Riley, and Philip Glass is a pioneering composer of minimal music...
has also claimed to use the tool of granular synthesis, particularly in pieces Three Tales, City Life, and an upcoming piece in regard to the 9/11 attacks.
Unsuk Chin
Unsuk Chin
Unsuk Chin , is a South Korean composer of classical music, based in Berlin, Germany. She was awarded the Grawemeyer Award in 2004 and the Arnold Schönberg Prize in 2005.- Biography :...
has used granular synthesis in her ensemble Work Xi and her piano piece Grains.
Rudolph Widmer used granular synthesis techniques both sonically and visually in a large interactive installation piece at the Berlin Staatsoper on August 23, 2011. The project incorporated video and audio granules obtained randomly from the audience participants. This installation will run in New York through November 2011.
Curtis Roads
Curtis Roads
Curtis 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 Truax
Barry Truax
Barry 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.
Graintable synthesis
The Malström synthesizer in Propellerhead'sPropellerhead Software
Propellerhead Software is a music software company, based in Stockholm, Sweden, and founded in 1994. They are most notable for the studio emulation Reason.- History :...
Reason virtual music studio employs a technique known as Graintable synthesis, a technique ostensibly invented by Propellerhead for use in Malström:
Programming Languages
- CsoundCsoundCsound is a computer programming language for dealing with sound, also known as a sound compiler or an audio programming language, or more precisely, a C-based audio DSL. 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) - SuperColliderSupercolliderA 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 - ReaktorReaktorReaktor is a graphical modular software music studio of proprietary license developed by Native Instruments. It lets musicians and sound specialists 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
- Pure DataPure DataPure Data is a visual programming language developed by Miller Puckette in the 1990s for creating interactive computer music and multimedia works. While Puckette is the main author of the program, Pd is an open source project with a large developer base working on new extensions to it. It is...
(Pd) graphical programming language for real-time audio and video - ChucKChucKChucK is a concurrent, strongly timed audio programming language for real-time synthesis, composition, and performance, which runs on Mac OS X, Linux, Microsoft Windows, and iPhone/iPad. It is designed to favor readability and flexibility for the programmer over other considerations such...
audio programming language for real-time audio synthesis - Real-time CmixReal-time CmixReal-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 - UsineUsineSensomusic Usine is a Multitouch digital audio workstation used to manipulate, record and edit audio and MIDI in live situations.Usine is developed in Delphi by the French double bass player Olivier Sens, running on Microsoft Windows....
multi-touch visual programming audio manipulation software
Articles
- Granular Synthesis by Eric Kuehnl
- "The development of GiST, a Granular. Synthesis Toolkit Based on an Extension of the FOF Generator" by Gerhard Eckel and Manuel Rocha IturbideManuel Rocha IturbideManuel Rocha Iturbide is a Mexican composer and sound artist.-Biography:Manuel Rocha Iturbide was born in 1963 in Mexico City, he started musical studies when he was 13 years old. In 1983, after studying musical pedagogy in Lyon France for one year, he decided to start a career as composer at the...
- Searching for a global synthesis technique through a quantum conception of sound by Manuel Rocha Iturbide
- Going with the Grain a review of 10 granular synthesis programs by Dennis Miller (2008)
- Further articles on Granular Synthesis
Books
- "Les techniques granulaires dans la synthèse sonore by Manuel Rocha Iturbide. Doctoral Thesis. University of Paris VIII, Paris France, 1999.
Further reading
- Digital signal processingDigital signal processingDigital signal processing is concerned with the representation of discrete time 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
- Texture synthesisTexture synthesisTexture synthesis is the process of algorithmically constructing a large digital image from a small digital sample image by taking advantage of its structural content...
, analogous process for images - Granular Synthesis Resource Web Site