Granular synthesis

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. 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. == Related software ==

• Csound – comprehensive music software including granular synthesis (overview of granular synthesis opcodes) • Max/MSP – graphical authoring software for real-time audio and video • Pure Data (Pd) – graphical programming language for real-time audio and video • SuperCollider – programming language for real time audio synthesis • ChucK - strongly-timed computer music programming language • EmissionControl2 - granular sound synthesizer == Related hardware ==

• Mutable Instruments Clouds – a digital, open source eurorack synthesizer module which has four factory set modes, the first and default being a granular processor. • Make Noise Morphagene – a eurorack synthesizer module built around microsound, or granular synthesis, in addition to Musique Concrète-inspired sound on sound audio manipulation. • Tasty Chips GR-1 - polyphonic granular synthesizer capable of 128 grains per voice, which can add up to a total of 1000+ grains simultaneously. • Instruō Arbhar – a eurorack synthesizer module first launched in 2019 built around the 'Lexer Method' of granular synthesis, with onset detection for automatic sampling into any one of six 10 second audio buffers, mono/stereo configuration, up to 88 polyphonic grains, CV control of all granular parameters, plus user-defined configuration files. == See also ==

• 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 == External links ==