Granular synthesis with Curtis
The Strange Agency has updated its granular synthesizer, Curtis For iPad, to version 2.0.
New in the update:
- all new user interface
- amplitude envelope
- scratch mode
- chromatic pitch quantize
Curtis For iPad is $4.99 in the App Store.
About Curtis For iPad
Granular synthesis works by combining many tiny grains of sound from an existing recording, creating new sounds with the texture of the original, now with endless temporal possibilities. Play the sound forward, backward, or even at a single point!
Unlike scratching a record, pitch doesn’t depend on how quickly you move through the recording. Try with spoken word, singing, synths. Mangle your recordings or create soft, gentle textures!
This release allows you to record audio with your iPad or add your own WAV files via iTunes. No more in-app server setup; just drag-and-drop!
The secrets of morphing
Frequency modulation or FM synthesis is a form of audio synthesis where the timbre of a simple waveform is changed by applying another modulating frequency, resulting in a more complex waveform and a different-sounding tone. In this tutorial learn how to use the Morph section within Native Instruments FM8 synth for create new, unusual sounds.
Granular synthesis processing
Dan Overholt’s Matrix synthesizer is a unique new instrument that gives users a 3-dimensional tactile interface to control sound.
According to Overholt, “Matrix provides a very intuitive method of manipulating sound with an amount of control that has never before been implemented in real-time.”
The Matrix generates musical output by mapping a performer’s expressive gestures to a variety of sonic parameters. It acts as an input device that directly manipulates the parameters of a synthesis engine (eg. additive, granular, wave-terrain…), or an effect alogrithm (eg. delay, reverb, filter-banks…) in response to the changing shape of the interactive surface.
One mapping uses the individual rods of the Matrix to directly control the digital waveform of a sound, thereby “sonically sculpting” the timbre of the sound.
See Overholt’s site at MIT for more information and demos.
Sylo Synthesiser features live time-stretching technology
Sylo Synthesizer is a free iPad synth that lets you build sounds from basic waveforms, or capture them using the iPad’s built-in microphone.
Sylo Synthesiser features live time-stretching technology based on granular synthesis, and a suite of filters.
Options include:
- Speed up or slow down a recorded sound to use as an instrument
- With a regular wavetable synthesiser, higher-pitched notes are also faster, like chipmunks, and lower-pitched notes are also slower, as though they are moving through treacle, Enable “Sync Speed” feature, though, and lower or higher-pitched notes still play back at the same speed, keeping them in sync with each other
- Adjust the speed control even while you’re playing notes: Slow, stop or even rewind the sound in the middle of notes — without changing the pitch
- Granular synthesis allows you to create instruments or effects from a recording, that do not sound like the original, yet retain its realistic, natural sound
- Frequency modulation, ring modulation, echo/delay, distortion, and a low-pass filter with resonance control are available
Sylo Synthesiser is a teaser for Sylo Synthesizer Pro, which adds these features:
- Use existing audio files as the building-blocks of your instrument: import audio from wave, aiff, mp3 and aac/m4a files
- Save recordings to your iPad or to Dropbox1 online storage
- Save your new instruments to the preset list for fast acces
Granite and Iliadis – two new flashy VSTs
Sonic Arts has released Granite, a new granular synthesizer instrument for Windows.
Description:
Granite is a granular synthesizer particularly suited for generating evolving, organic textures and atmospheres. It is also capable at creating dark bass tones and loop processing.
Granite’s sound is highly dependent on the input material, but the grain engine parameters have been refined and scaled to allow complete transformation of material in a fast and musical way.
Most parameters can be modulated with internal movement recorders, in addition to being controllable by host automation and MIDI CCs.
Granite is available now for Windows PC (Standalone/VST) for US $60. A demo version is available.
Iliadis has announced the iVF Combo Organ, a virtual organ instrument plug-in for Windows.
The iVF Combo Organ is a Two Manual Transistor Organ Simulation for Windows Compatible VST Hosts, inspired afer famous Transistor Organ models, with special characteristics and the feeling of an incredible Retro Sound close to the sound of favourite models of the past.
Iliadis iVF Combo Organ
iVF Combo Organ will be soon be available as a VST instrument plug-in for Windows PC.
More information: Iliadis
Argotlunar, a real-time granulator effect plug-in
Mike O has released Argotlunar, a real-time granulator effect plug-in for Windows and Linux VST hosts. It’s free and Open Source – the source code is licensed under GNU GPLv2.
A grain is a sho rt sample of an input audio stream. Argotlunar can play up to 20 grains simultaneously, with each grain having unique and adjustably random settings of delay, amplitude, panning, duration, filter, pitch and glissando. The implementation is comparable to the AudioMulch Nebulizer.
Details:
- Parabolic grain amplitude envelope.
- 12dB state variable filter (HP/BP/LP/Notch).
- Program change can be modulated by VST parameter.
- Feedback is capable of self-oscillation.
New inspiring book on modulation
Roland Kuit is a composer, artist, sound designer, and teacher who lives in The Hague in the Netherlands. He has released a new e-book on modular synthesis called SouldLab.
Click the image below to see a larger view or click here to load a printable PDF version.
The book is about modular synthesis in general and Roland uses he Clavia G2 hardware editor/Demo version to illustrate concepts. The screenshot below is from the end of chapter one where he illustrates patching old subtractive modular systems like the ARP 2600.
Visit his blog to learn more and buy the book.
The Density granular synth
Density is a granular synthesis application for Windows and Mac designed to create a wide range of realtime effects.
Density is available now for 25 EUR. Details below.
Density Features:
- 8 granular streams simultaneously.
- Loading up to 12 sound-files (aiff,wav) for each stream (96 tot.).
- Dynamic scrub pad, wrap-around selection, crop, normalize draw, etc….
- Scrub quantize: zero-crossing, bpm, phase and samples.
- Multi sounds buffer windows (resizable), fine scanning explorations.
- Rapid change sndfile, just jumping between the windows.
- Envelope/windowing menage up to 12 shape prototypes.
- Envelope/windowing loading and menage 12 sound-files (aiff,wav).
- Dynamic buffer load/save, normalize, crop, resize length etc…
- Main mixer, 8 channels, 1 master, solo/mute and VST slots.
- Quick-record export master channel, progressive autoname file or directory and re-sampling and quantize outfile.
- Trigger granular streams: foreground, sync, all.
- VST support: one for each channel + one for the master.
- DSP settings and infos report on the statusbar.
- Snapshots memory allocation up to 24 for each stream and 24 for the main mixer.
- Fast snapshots presets for store/recall.
- Simultaneous (streams and main) transition (interpolation), between two snapshots in a given time.
- Clients menage: include/exclude widgets from transitions.
- Four table to draw transitions curves.
- Micro-pad interpolating between four snaps.
- HV_pad (i.e. hyper vectorial pad), combines 9 snapshots (multi dimensional) and provide auto-explore engine (spiral, dunk, reflects).
- MIDI Input mapping: learn/manual functions, range map/rescale, exponential curve.
- MIDI Output sync: enable/disable, continuously/mouse up send.
- Shorts key for voices selection, dragging sliders etc…
- Windows float/no float mode.
- Fully managing the project, save/save as and load.
- Drag and drop audio files (streams and windowing) and drag and drop project folder (main).
- Oscilloscope and spectralscope tools.
In need for 600 oscillators – Alchemy is here
Alchemy is the ultimate sample manipulation synthesizer. It’s a synth powerhouse and yet is very easy to use thanks to its performance controls and remix pads. Just tweak the library of excellent presets from many of the world’s top sound designers or dive in and analyse your own samples – it’s up to you!
Alchemy features additive, spectral and granular synthesis and resynthesis, sampling, and a very capable virtual analog engine with unison and PWM. You can morph or crossfade between sources. You can import your own samples from SFZ, WAV or AIFF files. A wide range of analog modelled filters are included, in addition to a flexible rack of effects which includes all those from CamelPhat and CamelSpace as well as many new effects such as a high quality reverb. The innovative modulation system is extremely flexible, yet easy to use. Alchemy also features a powerful arpeggiator with the ability to import the groove from any MIDI file for immediate synchronization to a beat.
What is Alchemy all about?
- Additive, spectral and granular synthesis and resynthesis, sampling, virtual analog engine with unison and PWM.
- 4 stereo sources each of which has additive, VA, spectral, granular and sampler engine, morph between sources using advanced harmonic blending and precise time alignmen, crossfade between sounds with vector mixin.
- Performance controls and remix for easy tweaking by non-programmers. 16 controls per preset carefully assigned by the preset designer, for instant access to each presets most tweakable paramete.
- 8 remix pad variations per preset – click and drag to morph between variations two XY squares
- You can import your own samples from SFZ, WAV or AIFF files.
- 2GB of samples and analysed content.
- 300 presets covering everything from pads and soundscapes to keys, basses and leads designed by many of the worlds top sound designers.
- 16 effects types including all of the CamelSpace and CamelPhat effects!
- 128 Step Groove Arpeggiator
- Extensive modulatation routing with midi learn
Additive:
- Very high quality analysis and resynthesis – import vocal phrases, drum loops made possible by 600 stereo oscillators
- Realtime modulation of amplitude, pitch and pan spectrums by any modulator – for example, control the odd/even harmonic balance, pan partials using LFOs, stretch or contract the harmonic spectrum and lots more
- Individual amplitude, pitch and pan envelopes for each partial
- Easy to use additive editor with unique detail knob to simplify sounds for editing
Spectral Synthesizer
- Phase vocoder analysis for high quality pitch and time stretching
- Noise resynthesis mode using 256 band noise shaping
- Advanced graphical sonogram editing – choose from a range of brushes and select the colour and opacity
- Graphical spectral cut, copy and paste – cut or copy and paste specific frequency and time regions
- Sampler or granular playback modes
- freely modulatable parameters including grain size, density (up to 10 simultaneous grains), random grain time and random pan
- Selectable and customizable granular window shapes
Reason tutorial – Using granular effects and timestretching
Since I have been asked quite a bit about granular synthesis in Reason I thought I’d share a couple of good tutorials on the subject
A demonstration of a custom granular audio manipulation system in Reason 4.0. A variety of patches based on this system are currently in development.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VAw7nsslmqs]
Tutorial making use of Reason’s NN19 Sampler to simulate the effects of timestretching and granular synthesis by increasing the length of a sound without changing it’s pitch.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yb3cf9NwqWM]
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