Granular Synthesis EXPLAINED

∿ Download my music on Bandcamp

∿ G r a n u l a r T o o l s ∿

∿ L e a r n M o r e ∿

∿ M o d u l e s U s e d ∿

∿ Nebulae and Chance by Qu-Bit Electronix
∿ Clouds by Mutable Instruments
∿ Arp and Pluck by 2HP
∿ STO by Make Noise
∿ Pamela's New Workout and Tangle Quartet by ALM Busy Circuits
∿ uJack and Buff Mult by Intellijel
∿ StrongPWR by Konstant Lab
∿ Travel case prototype by me

∿ L i n k s ∿

∿ INSTAGRAM: @gregwht
∿ TWITTER: @gregwht

[Thebadpiper]

Thank you so much. It’s weird to watch a video for the first time, and instantly knowing my whole life is changing because of it. This is the world I want to explore

[otisdone]

Your vocabulary when talking about sounds is so inspiring.

[narbra]

Amazing. I don't believe it. Gave a good, clear and concise definition in about a minute and provided the summary along with it instead of making you wade through 10 minutes of bullshit... and then offered examples... holy shit you purple unicorn you <3

[datavalisofficial]

I genuinely thought that i invented it and i was probably the only person or one of a really small group of people that did it
I was just messing with the LMMS's built in sampler called audiofileprocessor and decided to cut very short waveforms of random samples
Then i got a youtube shorts recommended to me called "microsampling tutorial"
And i thought "ok more ppl do this but not like i do cuz i use a bunch of different "micro chops" or whatever at the same time
Then i came to this video
Thank you very much by the way i rly enjoy how you edit your videos and your voice for some reason sz

[OmriCohen-Music]

Oh wow, that was really nice! This combination of Nebulae and Clouds is mesmerizing... Thank you!

[solitudeguard]

I use granular synthesis in almost all of my compositions. Bineural processing too.

[MoonsOfJupiter]

Easily the best explanation of granular synthesis I've ever heard - easy to understand and well presented: thanx! Subscribed: hope you'll be adding more videos!

[noahbrown]

In love with the quality of your videos..

theyre all crazy informative at the depth i would want while never wasting time, always visually appealing, and educational in ways you never expect. All the while you actually source everything.

Thanks so much and please keep it up!

[col]

I put some granulated sugar in my coffee

[simpson]

i like your volume balance. a lot of music making channels have their music way up so it sounds more big and impressive and probably so you can hear the details, but i just feel fatigued at the end of those videos and don't want to work on my own music anymore.

[jneedell]

Found my way back to your channel now that I've finally begun my modular journey! Love that you include VST examples here... another one I've been using is Reason's aptly named "Grain" which offers lots of control over things like loop points, playback direction, jitter etc

[LukasFink]

There actually was a device that allowed to alter pitch and speed independently completely analog. The principle was pretty similar to granular synthesis: It head a read head that rotated above the tape. The speed with what it rotated can alter the pitch, while the linear movement of the tape can alter the speed.

[songsofsusannah]

Thank you! As a self-producing singer/songwriter, I keep seeing granular VSTi's and I had no idea what that meant, until today! Now, I understand how granulation allows digital audio to be sped up and slowed down without changing the pitch. I grew up with a record player and used to play with changing the speed, so between that experence as a toddler, and your video, I really feel that I understand granulation now, in a very in-depth way, and how it could apply to my future projects.

[anthonyadeyemi]

Thank you. I've just started my journey into sound synthesis.

[soniccompost]

Thanks I've been experimenting with granular synthesis in audiomulch but didn't really understand what I was doing. This has given me more things to try.

[woulg]

Absolutely brilliant explanation of granular synthesis! So inspiring! One small note is that the complex and complex pro warp modes in Ableton are actually spectral stretching, which just means you doing a Fourier transform on the signal, store the amp and phase of all the bins, and then play back from that buffer. You can sort of think of it as granular since the Fourier transform happens on little grains at a time (this is called your fft window), but depending on how you do either inverse fft or you can just resynthesize it by using a bunch of sine waves (that's sometimes called additive synthesis). The key difference is whether you do the Fourier transform or not, that's what makes it "spectral". Also, side note, there are other transforms you can use that do the same thing like wavelet or constant q, I think there are others as well, but they are less common afaik. In terms of how it sounds you can tell the difference by how sloshy it sounds, granular usually has sort of grainy sound (although that nebula thing sounds reaaaally smooth and nice) and spectral has more of a sloshy kind of sloppy sound. This is due to the fact that the Fourier transform has a trade off between fidelity in the frequency domain vs the time domain, you can kind of solve this with overlapping the fft windows but it does still sound kinda sloshy imo.

Anyway, absolutely beautiful video again, I'm really happy to have found your channel and am looking forward to watching more. Great production, super clear explanations, wonderful sounds, all around brilliant.

Edit: 3blue1brown does a couple good explanations of Fourier transforms and the Fourier series if you're interested

[fragileyouth]

You never fail to make me want new modules! Fantastic job my man :) also I love the discreet hainbach cassette

[jppagetoo]

GlitchMachines make several VST plugins that include granulation in them. FractureXT and Quadrant are two examples. These plugins are meant to entitrely reprocess the source audio. The granular synthesis is a part of the larger overall sound processing engine. I watched your video so I could understand better how to use this processing. Thanks for the great info.

[reggiep]

I've always had a deep interest in modular synths since the Doepfer A-100 came in the scene in the mid 90's as it was young and new and not dusty, old and smelling of Kraftwerk, not in a bad sense ;-), but they were the unaffordable synths we'd never ever get to play with and then suddenly we could all enjoy playing with them.

With more powerful PC CPUs arriving in the late 90's/early 2000's, emulated synths became a thing and lowered the prices of everything. My own first experience of what I'll call 'ghetto mod synthing' was using the synths and modules in Reason (first version I got was 2.5) and patching them in a primitive fashion and using a keyboard with knobs on to get the closest I could get to the perceived experience and most importantly without wobbling pitch of the hot, old beasts.

And here, in this video, you've got a good micro modular/travel unit and the units are affordable and with all the hands on feel and the immediacy of patching and jabbing a lead in a few different places out of pure experimentalism and just enjoying the warbling, burbling or grinding tones.

Going to binge your content having recently found you after featuring in Sam look mum no computers's vid you featured in and now a new sub!

[erikeh]

Was just about to buy a microclouds, this video helps solidify the choice, thank you!