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Granular synthesis is, so far as I can tell, a method of digital musical synthesis that is based upon the principle of taking a source sound and atomizing it into a set of grains, from about 50microseconds down, often visualized as a cloud or fog. The frequencies, duration, amplitude, and various other qualities (dependent upon the program). The progress of the sound can be further modulated by altering source sounds, filters, and delays on all or individual grains, as well as by the interplay or simultaneous sound sources. Now, that's my take on it, and I'm pretty sure that it's flawed pretty heavily. Does anyone have any experience with this technique of sound smashing?
If anyone's interested, there's a simple graulator program, Granulab, here, and an absoulutely crammingly awesome german freeware thing here.
And this is a quote from the Crusher X website by Iannis Xenakis that expresses pretty well what granular synthesis is about.
For this purpose the qualification "beautiful" or "ugly" makes no sense for sound, nor for the music that derives from it; the quantity of intelligence carried by the sounds must be the true criterion of the validity of a particular music. |
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