Which sounds do you use for granular synthesis?
...figured this was the best place to ask, really. More granular users per square inch than anywhere else on the net ;)
I ask, because I was fiddling around, trying to find the best sounds for my patch (thanks again, Brendan!!) and I can't really suss the pattern of good/bad sounds.
Some plinky-plonky sounds, arpeggios, and a good solid ambient sound going on in the background seems to work well..
for reference: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/12606333/wetterberg_-_chump_meta.mp3
^^^that sound is really fun to granulate. I'm wondering if you guys had any favourites?
cheers.
Hi Andreas
really pleased to hear you are getting good artistic mileage out of Granary. I find that Granary works 'best' with sounds that have robust and obvious attack/sustain/decay characteristics - woodwind, brass for example. Plucked and struck sounds, meh, not so much. If the timbral identity exists at the microsound level, Granary doesn't excel. But hey, prove me wrong !!
Remember there is a clear difference between granulation synthesis (microsounds) and granular playback/re-synthesis, and Granary is a hybrid in this regard.
Best
Brendan
By way of clarification.
What I mean is, to get to grain sizes less than say 20ms, and using a simple sound source (an FM tone or such), I don't think Granary excels at this. Which is why I suggest sound sources that have 'longer' attack/decay portions, to zoom in on.
HTH
note to self, read Truax and Roads.
I find that any sound with a good range of harmonics and amplitude values give the most interesting outcome. It gets done almost to death, but human voices are always an interesting source to play with.
yeah, I'm really digging sounds that have a sort of "macro" thing going on - several instruments, different chords in one sample, that sort of thing. That way you can "reveal" different elements by scanning across.
Essentially I'm in it for the wavescanning, not "clouds" as much.
Shooting this through quad Genelecs in about 12 hours! :D
I made a 21-minute piece of music entirely from grains extracted out of two speaking voices
https://corkcitygamelan.bandcamp.com/album/pay-back-your-stolen-colours
(It was a LOT of work - my main attitude: ALL sounds can be used for making music)
Violin/fiddle/bowed strings sound amazing when granulated. It brings out strangely beautiful vocal timbres. I usually use a modified version of Chris Muir's The Mill:
I've tried more granular techniques than I can count but I always end up using Muir's approach for any critical sound design work. So yeah, thanks Chris!