GRAIN: Detailed Information

by Archer Endrich

Key Features of the CDP GRAIN set

• Includes straightforward time-varying granulation.
• Find and Count grains functions help to set an appropriate gate level (low level which separates grains)
• Supplementary to the main granulation programs – enable a range of specific special effects.
• These effects include changing grain order, pitch, rhythm, duplicating grains, stretching or shrinking the overall sound (but not the grains).
• Chaining effects can be a useful way to achieve interesting results.

Some possible musical results with GRAIN

• grain time gaps which expand, contract, or create rhythmic patterns (proportional to the original times between grains)
• patterns which repeat on each grain and therefore cycle round
• cycles of pitch transpositions
• an unusual way to reverse a sound: the grains stay pointing forward, but their order goes from the end to the beginning of the file
• file timewarps which don't affect the length of the grains

Other forms of granulating in CDP

• BRASSAGE from Release 3 provides an alternative method of granulation by adjusting three main parameters: segment_size, overlapping, and time_expansion.
• Release 3 SAUSAGE also has a useful cycling pitch transposition function.
• BRASSAGE in Release 4 provides the full complement of granulation techniques, with GRAINMILL as a graphic option with some additional features (PC only).
• TEXTURE creates lengths of soundfile which can be small enough to produce granular effects (or long enough to include the whole input).
• Spectral analysis windows can also be used in a way which produces granular effects, such as by shuffling, weaving or interleaving.

General observations

• The CDP GrainMill tutorials set forth a large number of possible effects which can be achieved with the main Granulation programs.
• The GRAIN program set provides another range of possibilities.
• TEXTURE always reads from the beginning of the file for a specified length. The BRASSAGE and GRAIN programs always move through the whole file. This is an essential difference between Texture and the Granulation programs proper, a difference which can be used to advantage: Texture enables a more controlled sound, whereas the Granulation programs more easily achieve transitional effects, for example if a time-strectched source is used.

Last updated: 25 October 2006