Content You Need: Petra

The idea behind granular synthesis is fairly simple. Very short “grains” of sampled sound are played in rapid succession, layered (often very densely) and usually faded a little at the beginning and end. From there you can customize the effect in countless ways like adjusting length of grains, pitch, buffer position, and of course the source material.

There’s something irresistible about the challenge of implementing granular synthesis, and of putting one’s one mark on this now classic technique. From this basic idea, countless of Max patches have been constructed over the years, and a number of well-known externals as well.

Our latest addition to the Package Manager is Petra, a new set of granular synthesis objects from Matthias W. Müller, aka circuit.music.labs.

"There are many ways to to build granular synthesis patchers in Max, and most of them require you to dig deep into the theory to achieve what you want. But what if you just want to insert an object to get your grain clouds going? Download the Petra package for sample-based and live-input granulation." - Matthias

You can find Petra in the Max 7 Package Manager (File > Show Package Manager).