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Exploring Granular Synthesis Techniques (Advice Needed!)

#1

Hi everyone,

I’m diving deeper into the world of granular synthesis and I’m really excited about its potential for creating unique and evolving textures. However, I’m still relatively new to this technique and I’m looking to tap into the wisdom of the Cabbage Audio community.

I’m particularly interested in exploring ways to:

Implement different grain shapes and envelopes: Beyond simple rectangular grains, I’d love to experiment with more complex shapes and envelopes to create a wider sonic palette.

Control grain playback and manipulation: Are there any creative ways to use OSC or other methods to control how the grains are played back and manipulated in real-time?

Incorporate external audio sources: I’m curious about using granular synthesis with found sounds or other external audio sources. Any tips or tricks for this approach?

I’ve been looking through some tutorials and documentations Granular synthesis using the soundfiler tool sitecore developer skills https://cabbageaudio.com/docs/beginner_synth/, but I’d really appreciate any advice or suggestions you have for working with granular synthesis in Cabbage. Perhaps you have some favorite resources, interesting code examples, or even just general words of wisdom?

Thanks in advance for your help!

Best Regards

#2

Have you checked out the examples? Check out the effects/time examples, I am pretty sure there are some granular instrument in that. Take a look also in the FilePlayer examples. You’ll find more granular instruments there.

#3

There is definitely a granular player example that I played around with when I first downloaded Cabbage.

When I first learned Csound (1999?), my professor was really excited about granular synthesis. It has been interesting to see the technique develop and become more commonly used.

#4

Grain shape tends to be a slightly less interesting candidate for manipulation in granular synthesis. First of all, using a rectangular envelope will tend to produce harsh buzzing in synchronous granular synthesis and a nasty high frequency artefact in asynchronous granular synthesis. The main purpose in softening the attack and decay of each grain is to prevent these artefacts. Nonetheless, controlled shortening of the attack and decay portions of each grain envelope, while extending the sustain portion, can usefully add emphasis to the upper harmonics in synchronous granular synthesis. Similar effects can be produced by shortening the grain durations and this method may be preferable.

When using much larger grain sizes in the region of 1/2 second and longer - not really granular synthesis anymore, what I call chunkular synthesis - then grain shape acts more like a familiar amplitude envelope.

#5

@zephyrbrooks
The Grain3FilePlayer (from Examples/FilePlayers) is simply amazing.

A question: instead of loading an external file, is there a similar instrument that directly processes the sound that enters from the MIDI keyboard?
Thank you,
t

#6

This is an update of an example that is in the Effects-Time menu.
DelayGrain.csd (19.5 KB)
It processes the live audio input continuously. It doesn’t respond to a MIDI keyboard but I could add that. Of course triggering massive polyphony from a MIDI keyboard can really eat up CPU so some discipline might be needed!

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