GO GRANULAR!

Granular processing is a synthesis and effects processing technique that often appears mysterious to newcomers. This is exacerbated by the fact that even commercial granular softsynths and effect plugins don’t approach it consistently in terms of features – unlike FM, virtual analog, and physical modelling, which all operate within distinct and clearly defined paradigms.

However, as a general rule, let’s go along with Wikipedia, which says: “It is based on the same principle as sampling. However, the samples are not played back conventionally, but are instead split into small pieces of around 1 to 50ms.” So granular synthesis is, in short, a subset of sampling.

Historically speaking, the first artist to prototype a definition for granular sound was the Greek composer Iannis Xenakis, in the late 1950s. Xenakis was also an architect and approached music through geometry and mathematical formulae. His pioneering 1959 composition, "Analogique A-B", for string orchestra, tape, and analog tone generators, was among the first to explore the concept at the dawn of the musique concrète era, so it can also be argued that granular doesn’t even require sampling, just "grains" of sound.

The array of granular software available today doesn’t deliver a unified answer to the question, "What is granular synthesis?", but in this series of tutorials (on both synthesis and signal processing), we’ll explore how to apply granular techniques using only the tools available in Ableton Live.

Getting to grips with granular

Since granular synthesis involves manipulating grains of sound, it can theoretically be accomplished using any synthesis technique, as long as the grain durations are sufficiently short (under 50 milliseconds). That said, the majority of mainstream granular synthesizers are based on the processing of fragments of audio