Surf Wiki
Save to docs
general/sound-synthesis-types

From Surf Wiki (app.surf) — the open knowledge base

Granular synthesis

Sound synthesis method involving samples shorter than 0.1 seconds

Summary

Sound synthesis method involving samples shorter than 0.1 seconds

Granular synthesis is a sound synthesis method that operates on the microsound time scale.

It is based on the same principle as sampling. However, the samples are split into small pieces of around 1 to 100 ms in duration, called grains. Multiple grains may be layered on top of each other, and may play at different speeds, phases, volume, and frequency, among other parameters.

At low speeds of playback, the result is a kind of soundscape, often described as a cloud, that is manipulated in a manner unlike that of natural sound sampling or other synthesis techniques. At high speeds, the result is heard as a note or notes of a novel timbre. By varying the waveform, envelope, duration, spatial position, and density of the grains, many different sounds can be produced.

Both have been used for musical purposes: as sound effects, raw material for further processing by other synthesis or digital signal processing effects, or as complete musical works in their own right. Conventional effects that can be achieved include amplitude modulation and time stretching. More experimentally, stereo or multichannel scattering, random reordering, disintegration and morphing are possible.

History

In 1947, Dennis Gabor introduced the idea that sounds can be represented by a series of elementary "grains," each grain being a short pulse containing both temporal and frequency information. Greek-French composer Iannis Xenakis is known as the inventor of granular synthesis, having expanded upon Gabor's theoretical foundation.

The composer Iannis Xenakis (1960) was the first to explicate a compositional theory for grains of sound. He began by adopting the following [lemma (logic)

American composer [Curtis Roads was the first to implement granular synthesis on a computer in 1974. In 1986, Canadian composer Barry Truax implemented real-time granular synthesis using the DMX-1000 Signal Processing Computer.

Microsound

This includes all sounds on the time scale shorter than musical notes, the sound object time scale, and longer than the sample time scale. Specifically, this is shorter than one tenth of a second and longer than 10 milliseconds, which includes part of the audio frequency range (20Hz to 20kHz) as well as part of the infrasonic frequency range (below 20Hz, rhythm).

These sounds include transient audio phenomena and are known in acoustics and signal processing by various names including sound particles, quantum acoustics, sonal atom, grain, glisson, grainlet, trainlet, microarc, wavelet, chirplet, fof, time-frequency atom, pulsar, impulse, toneburst, tone pip, acoustic pixel, and others. In the frequency domain they may be named kernel, logon, and frame, among others.

Micromontage is musical montage with microsound.

Microtime is the level of "sonic" or aural "syntax" or the "time-varying distribution of...spectral energy".

References

Bibliography

Articles

Books

  • {{cite book
  • {{cite book
  • {{cite book
  • {{cite web |access-date= }}

Discography

  • Curtis Roads (2004). CD with Microsounds. MIT Press. . Contains excerpts of nscor and Field (1981). .
    • nscor (1980),
  • Iannis Xenakis. Analogique A-B (1959), on and
  • Truax, Barry (1987). Digital Soundscapes

References

  1. Xenakis, Iannis (1971) ''Formalized Music: Thought and Mathematics in Composition''. Bloomington and London: Indiana University Press.
  2. Roads, Curtis. (2001). "Microsound". MIT Press.
  3. (1988). "Real-Time Granular Synthesis with a Digital Signal Processor". Computer Music Journal.
  4. [[Curtis Roads. Roads, Curtis]] (2001). ''Microsound'', p.{{nbspvii and 20-28. Cambridge: [[MIT Press]]. {{ISBN. 0-262-18215-7.
  5. [[Horacio Vaggione]], "Articulating Microtime", ''Computer Music Journal'', Vol.{{nbsp20, No.{{nbsp2. (Summer,{{nbsp1996), pp.{{nbsp33–38.{{Page needed. (June 2015)
  6. Roads, Curtis. "Software".
  7. (21 August 2021). "Understanding Clouds and Its Derivatives".
  8. (6 July 2019). "Morphagene".
  9. "Make Noise Co. {{!}} Morphagene".
  10. "Tasty Chips GR-1".
Wikipedia Source

This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page.

sound-synthesis-types
Want to explore this topic further?

Ask Mako anything about Granular synthesis — get instant answers, deeper analysis, and related topics.

Research with Mako

Free with your Surf account

Content sourced from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.

This content may have been generated or modified by AI. CloudSurf Software LLC is not responsible for the accuracy, completeness, or reliability of AI-generated content. Always verify important information from primary sources.

Report