[sdiy] What's Granular Synthesis?

[Thomas Hudson]

Nils Pipenbrinck wrote:
> 
> I know.. again a little bit off-topic, but someone posted a "list" of
> several synthesis technics last week. What the f**k is granular synthesis?
> Never heared that before.. How does it work?
> 
Lifted from the web:
 "Granular Synthesis combines grains of sound into sound masses. 
Each grain is typically a very short-duration sound event comprised 
of a frequency, duration, amplitude, starting time, and an envelope. 
Sound masses are created by the combination of potentially
thousands of sound grains to form musical compositions."

There are tools to take input waveforms and slice and dice them into
clouds of sound specks and combine them. CSound has a granular synthesis 
opcode (fof). Needless to say, it is pretty much limited to the digital
domain. Though now that I say that someone will point out a web site
where someone out there is building a 1000 voice all analog model 
using BBDs, tubes, or oil cans. :-)

"All sound is an integration of grains, of elementary sonic particles, 
of sonic quanta." -Xenakis (1971).

Tomy