#granularsynthesis

[rofilm1]

A Short History of Granular Synthesis – Part 4

This is the last article concerning the history of working with sonic grains. But the matter itself – doing granular synthesis, granular tweaking of sound, granular processing in general – this matter will be dealt with in the next series called “In the World of Grains”). And if you´d like to dive deep into working with sonic grains at once, well, take a look here: https://www.dev.rofilm-media.net/node/332

For those of my readers, who like to dive deeper into the science of working with grains of sound I strongly recommend the book “Microsound” written by Curtis Roads (MIT Press, 2004).

The example of Prof. Paul Lansky is kind of atypical for the matter of this book. After pioneering on the field of computer based sound generating and sound processing, and after working on this field for about 44 years, he turned his back on all kinds of electronic music and went (back) to composing acoustical instrumental music.

But what he left back had strong influence on a whole generation of electronic and/or computer based musicians, composers and producers. He developed not only software for generating and processing sound and for composing, but invented even the computer languages, which made it easier to write those software.

Thanks to Paul Lansky the processing of life sound became a manageable matter at all (more about this aspect in the next series about granular sound processing called “In the World of Grains”).

Lansky worked with so called “real-world” sounds a lot, and here his emphasis lay on processing the sound of the human voice. In his works “Idle Chatter” (1985), “just_more_idle_chatter” (1987), and “Notjustmoreidlechatter” (1988) he used a special kind of granular technique, which is now called “micromontage”. The generated and used grains are uncommonly large (80 ms and more). Their contend is pitched to common scales, and their arrangement builds clear rhythmical structures. (the video is available only in the e-book)

Prof. Barry Truax focusses on real-time granular synthesis. In fact he was the first to work with this technique, the first, who even made it technically possible. “Real-time granular synthesis” means a (mostly presampled, but sometimes even played life) stream of sound is processed, chopped into grains, which are manipulated (pitch, length, structure) and arranged in time (density, rhythm) in real time, opposed to the non-real-time techniques of before, where grains were generated from diverse sonic material, stored somehow (on tape in the beginnings of granular synthesis, later on computer storage media), and then manipulated and arranged, more or less piece by piece, grain by grain.

(the video is available only in the e-book)

All of the popular granular applications (VSTs, AUs etc.) of today work with real-time granular synthesis, some more, some less consequently (see the upcoming series of articles called “In the World of Grains” here at my site, or read about my book here: https://www.dev.rofilm-media.net/node/332).

Truax was also the first, who worked with samples as raw material for granular sound processing in his compositions.

And he was the first to explore the sonic potential of the field of – or should I say the area of conflict -synchronous and asynchronous granular synthesis, where the grains are arranged equally along the time axis, generating the notion of frequency and pitch, and enabling pitch shifting and time stretching effects (synchronous order), or appear in a random, irregular order with unequal spaces between the grains (asynchronous order).

(the video is available only in the e-book)

His composition “Riverrun” from 1986 is an impressive demonstration of using this field of sonic conflict in a creative way (see below).

Truax developed a detailed system of how to compose using granular sound processing, a system, that may be called even a set of comprehensive rules. He himself used to call it a compositional “strategy”.

As this chapter is meant to give just a brief overview, only one last matter shall be mentioned here, before I spend some words on the composition “Riverrun”. In his essay “Ecologically-based granular synthesis” (together with Damián Keller, 1998) Truax and Keller explored the matter of classifying environmental-based sounds and using them in compositions utilizing granular synthesis, thus taking a huge step forward in structuring the idea (perhaps even the ideology) of what I like to call “The World is Sound”, and making it manageable in real compositions.

But now for “Riverrun”. Let me quote the composer himself:

“Riverrund is based on synthesized grains … . However … the resulting textures are always dynamically changing and range from swarms of relatively isolated sound events to fused sound masses of great internal complexity, much like environmental sound generally and water sound in particular. The fundamental paradox of granular synthesis – that the enotmously rich and powerful textures it produces result from being based on the most “trivial” grains of sound – suggested a metaphoric relation to the river whose power is based on the accumulation of countless “powerless” droplets of water.” (in “Composing with Real-Time Granular Sound”, JSTOR “Perspectives of New Music Vol. 28 n.2, 1990)

I apologise to all of the younger musicians, composers and scientists, who are working with granular synthesis, exploring the field of granular sound processing, and finding their own ways and systems to develop the utilizing of sonic grains in art until today, for not mentioning them here. As I mentioned above: this chapter is meant to deliver only a brief historical overview.

Even if dealt with in more detail in the chapter about software later in this book, the DAW based software application “Reaktor” (first publicly available version in the late 1990s) by Native Instruments deserves to be mentioned here in the history department of this book, as it is the first DAW based and popular piece of software, which is able to do granular processing of sound.

or you might like to visit our Facebook group https://www.facebook.com/groups/rofilmmedia

… to be continued.

[severalnoise]

PAINTING TIME, a visual granular synth. Let the ink be your grain.

Made in Max MSP.

by Rafael Arsénio

[faxlore]

Video for our track "Hemo Impluvium" which was featured on Passed Recording's recent "Passed Love" compilation for Valentine's Day. TOYS IN THE STATIC https://pinebox.bandcamp.com/

[plugins1]

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[rofilmmediamodular]

All e-books contain hundreds of example videos. This offer ends 15 January 2023 and won´t be prolonged. Read all the details here: https://dev.rofilm-media.net

Enjoy your day!

Rolf

[osaki01]

🎦 app…#glitchstudio #filto #distressedfx #trigraphy ・ #glitch #geometric #abstract #photoartwork ・ #ipadmusic #iosmusic#tardigrain#granularsynthesis #plethorax5 #tcelectronic #loop #guitartone #guitareffects #Kalimba #カリンバ ・ #noisemusic #atmospheric #chill #soundscape #experimentalmusic #ambientmusic #lofi #electronicmusic https://www.instagram.com/p/CNGDE9EBYj2/?igshid=6hn9z2jgti0v

[notational]

More from last night. #noise #granularsynthesis #bastlmicrogranny #zoomg1x4 and a sequencer that in this case I am not sure if it is affecting anything. https://www.instagram.com/p/CDqFUNEl5UB/?igshid=q75his8kqpao

[toddbotblog]

Soundtrack for Hypnotic Squares #dailybleeps - #sounds #minimal #ambient #iosmusic #ambientmusic #soundtrack #synthesizer #musicforfilm #videoart #lowfi #simple #synth #quiet #soundscape #experimentalmusic #electronic #slow #tapeloops #granularsynthesis #modularsynth #pixels #korgvolca #volcakeys #volcafm #modularsynthesis #squares #colors #modularsynthesizer https://www.instagram.com/p/CFYY7V2B-mc/?igshid=1pwf7lf6x17cs

[kenjokenjo]

Fragmento de un poema sonorizado.

Prender un faso y escribir en la libreta. Llevar la pluma hasta la luna, esa es la meta. Hay que llegar paso a paso. Pecho firme me deslizo razo al piso. Por no confiar en uno mismo la palabra se deshizo. El dinero que se queme en el fogón Nada dicta el ritmo de las olas Solo el oráculo en tu voz.

[rofilm1]

A Short History of Granular Synthesis – Part 1

When we look at the way how granular sound processors, namely granular synthesis VSTs and other granular sound processing software, are used, we might think this technique is practised either by quite old so called “serious” electronic musicians, or by quite young artists and producers, who are interested in spectacular effects generated with free granular synths, or with expensive graintable synthesizers, doing granular sampling, or using hardware granular synths. Either way it looks like being a quite young approach to working with sound. Being asked my oldest grandson told me that it was – maybe – 10 years ago, when musicians started to process sound on a granular basis, whereas one of my sons-in-law thought to know it better, when he claimed, that it was in the 1940s, when someone – he didn´t know the name – started using granular techniques with sound.

Both were terribly wrong – and so was I before I started preparing for this book. (see also “In the World of Grains” here: https://www.dev.rofilm-media.net/node/332 )

The idea of understanding sound as a more or less organised aggregation of short grains was firstly uttered by the Dutch philosopher and scientist Isaac Beeckman in the first decade of the 17th century, more than 400 years ago!

But without the technical requirements and conditions to make musical use of the idea, all thoughts and thinking about a possibly granular structure of sound vanished into oblivion for more than 330 years.

It wasn´t a musician nor a philosopher who revived the notion of sound as a cluster of grains – probably without knowing about Beeckman at all.

During the first half of the 20th century the development of the quantum theory gained speed. Leading physicists like Max Planck, Niels Bohr, Werner Heisenberg and others smashed the notion of things like time and space as a continuum, and proved, that time, space and even reality as a whole has a corned, a grained, a granular structure, with these “corns”, these “grains” called “quanta”. Quantum physics was the new rock´n´roll of the scientists.

And therefore it might not be that astonishing, that – in 1946 - it was the physicist and mathematician Dennis Gabor, who came up with what would lead to the modern granular processing of sound of today.

He even constructed a number of electro-mechanical machines producing “quanta of sound”, as he called them. These machines were huge “monsters” reminding of cinematographs.

But his most important contribution to the further development of working with grains of sound was his research concerning the influence of the length of a grain and the frequency of its content on how the human ear conceives them. These researches laid the ground for bringing the matter from the realm of physics to the area of art and music.

Still – it would last 13 more years (1959/1960) before grains appeared in a piece of musical art, and it was the Greek composer Iannis Xenakis, who let the world hear the first composition, which was – partly – based on granular techniques: Analogique A-B.

Without going into too many details here in this short brief, there shall be mentioned the following at least: Xenakis recorded a string orchestra, cut the tape into certain tiny parts, rearranged them, glued the snippets together again, added the sound from electronic tone generators to the rearranged snippets, and re-rcorded the whole thing. Then he let the orchetra play a small part of the previously recorded piece. Then the orchestra stops playing and gets a musical answer from the tape. The answers from the – let me call it – composed grains get more and more perfect. It seems, that the tape sound undergoes a kind of learning process. Then both, the acoustical instruments as well as the tape, the grains and the electronically produced sounds play together.

Imagine, what an immense amount of working hours and how detailed a compositional plan it will have needed to work with tape snippets of grain lengths in such a manner!

Later – in 1971 – Xenakis published “Formalized Music”, a book in which he layed out a musical theory of how to compose using grains of sound.

But in the meantime – between 1960 and 1971 – some other interesting things happened. Things, which would accelerate the development of granular sound machines and software.

… to be continued.

or you might like to visit our Facebook group https://www.facebook.com/groups/rofilmmedia

[quarterinchjackofalltrades]

Granular Synthesis - The Micromontage

“To stubbornly conditioned ears, anything new in music has always been called noise. But after all, what is music but organised noises?” - Edgard Varèse (1962)

What Is Granular Synthesis?

Granular synthesis is a sound synthesis technique that operates on minute timescales. It is the method of arranging so-called ‘grains’ of sound that last “typically between one thousandth of a second and one tenth of a second” (Roads 2004, p.86). According to Curtis Roads, the roots of granular synthesis date as far back as the antiquity but it was not until the mid 20th century that the likes of Iannis Xenakis began utilising these techniques in compositions:

Xenakis’ Concret PH electroacoustic composition (1958) was created using recordings of “burning wood-embers, cut into one-second fragments” (Solomos 1997 in Roads 2004, p.64). The sound of the embers burning is still audible when the sounds origin is known but at times takes on an almost metallic quality and is a separate sonic entity to the original source material.

Granular Synthesis Techniques - The Micromontage

In his book Microsound (2004), Curtis Roads identifies and outlines various granular synthesis techniques. One of these techniques is the ‘micromontage’, which derives its name from the world of cinema, referring to a sequence of rapid images. In the world of audio, the micromontage utilises particles from existing recordings and reorders them (Roads 2004, pp.182-3). This can be laboriously done by ‘hand’ using a piece of audio editing software, manually reordering the particles of sound, or by utilising computer scripts or algorithms to automate the process (Roads 2004, pp. 183-5).

Horacio Vaggione’s Schall (1994) is an example of a micromontage in action, the raw material for the piece “consists of sampled piano sounds, granulated and transformed by convolution, waveshaping, and the phase vocoder” (Roads 2004, p.186). The piece contains tens of thousands of sound particles obtained from the sampled piano material (Roads 2004, p.313). The effect of the composition is a transformation in timbre of the ubiquitous piano: some of its granular descendants are recognisable as being derived from piano recordings, whilst others lurch into the realm of mechanical sounds and unrecognisable clouds of grains. Vaggione’s use of different time spectrums also allows original piano notes to peek through the granular textures and introduce small elements of familiarity into the piece.

“The work plays essentially with tiny textures of feeble intensity, composed of multiple strata, which contrast with some stronger objects of different sizes, in a kind of dialog between the near and the far - as an expression of concern with a detailed articulation of sound objects at diferent time scales.” - Vaggione 1995.

My Granular Experiment

Inspired by my reading into the subject I have attempted to quickly piece together a minimalist granular piece in a micromontage style. Given the labour intensive nature of manual micromontage creation, I opted to attempt creating a short experimental piece using the Max instrument Granulator 2 created Robert Henke, but utilising an algorithmic approach simillar to that outlined by Curtis Roads. I used only 3 sound sources: a contact microphone recording of a bong, a strip of velcro and a female choir singer. Each track had a MIDI note pulse generator and instead of selecting synthesis parameters by hand I created a complicated network of modulation sources  to change the grain size, file position, MIDI input note and MIDI note rhythm. I wanted to keep human agency to a minimum beyond setting up the granular ‘system’. I added some reverb and delay to gel the elements of the track together slightly and added a small amount of automation to the levels of the tracks to give a sense of progression and to bring an otherwise infinite piece to a close. The final result can be heard here:

https://soundcloud.com/sub-denizen/vholcrist/s-6Lh9h

References

Books

Roads C. (2004) Microsound. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Music

Vaggione H. (1994) Schall.

Xenakis, I. (1958) Concret PH.

[slenterendebeer]

We’ve just released “Shinbyeong”, the official #soundtrack to the book of the same title by our good friend @flowen_nl. The track for the first chapter is called “Army Of Lost Souls”, dark and chaotic #techno made with our trusty #volca synths. We added a layer of #ambient soundscapes using the #spacecraftgranular synth by @markwattdeltavaudio. You can buy the book from shinbyeong.com and download the music from our Bandcamp (link in bio). #darktechno #improvisedmusic #electronicmusic #granularsynthesis https://www.instagram.com/p/BxN1TBeg5h9/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=1jlqzg7f4eh75

[thesoundofchild]

(excerpt) #soulscape #child #excerpt #ambient #ambientmusic #experimental #video #sun #thesoundofchild #op1 #granularsynthesis #tape #loop #comingsoon #new #art #balticsea #life #album #avantgarde #artist #wabisabi https://www.instagram.com/p/Bty75w0l6vG/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=q2ea1ay49h73

[tarikuta]

(Brodo)

[buffaloattack]

Piel, just a week ahead of being available on Spotify. . . . [Crazy marketing stuff but idgaf] . . . #buffaloattack #piel #ambientmusic #ambient #ʟᴏᴠᴇsᴏɴɢ #chilloutmusic #ambience @jorge.mzs #yogamusic #granularsynthesis #abletonlive11 #electronicmusicculture #electroacousticmusic (en PIEL) https://www.instagram.com/p/CZcqjlspDB9/?utm_medium=tumblr

[theschumachers3]

Playing with SpaceCraft Granular Synth. Recorded a clanging metal water bottles and a krinkling bag. #virtualsynth #synth #granularsynthesis #ipadpro #noise #soundscape # (at Fairview Park, Ohio) https://www.instagram.com/p/Bn1z7SCAHqf/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=1gha64zgq5yvk