Grains

In granular synthesis, a grain is a small, individual sound segment used as the building block for creating new sounds. Usually, only a few milliseconds to a few hundred milliseconds long, grains are very brief audio snippets. They are frequently taken from longer sound files, like recordings of musical instruments or natural sounds.

These tiny sound particles are combined, layered, and processed in various ways to produce new sounds in granular synthesis. The grains can be altered in real-time using different parameters like amplitude, panning, and filtering and being played back at various speeds and pitches.

Granular synthesis can be used to produce a variety of sounds, from the sounds of conventional instruments to more experimental and abstract sounds. The method is renowned for its capacity to create intricate and dynamic textures and its innovative sound manipulation.

A granular synthesizer may use a live audio input, samples, or even a combination of the two to implement granular synthesis in various ways. The grains may be produced in real-time or in advance. The grains can be played back in several ways, including random order, specific order, or in a loop.

In granular synthesis, grains are the basic building blocks of sound, and manipulating them is the secret to producing distinctive and intricate tones.