Granular Synthesis

Granular synthesis was first suggested as a computer music technique for producing
complex sounds by Iannis Xenakis (1971) and Curtis Roads (1978) and is based on the
production of a high density of small acoustic events called 'grains' that are less than 50 ms
in duration and typically in the range of 10-30 ms. Typical grain densities range from
several hundred to several thousand grains per second where the grain itself may come from
a wavetable (e.g. sine wave), FM synthesis or sampled sound. Such high densities of events
made the technique difficult to work with because of the large amount of calculation
required, and therefore until recently few composers have experimented with it. Using a
digital signal processor controlled by a microcomputer, Barry Truax implemented the
technique with real-time synthesis in 1986 and incorporated it within an interactive
compositional environment, the PODX system, at Simon Fraser University. This technique
was exclusively used to realize his work Riverrun.

High and low frequency grains

What is most remarkable about the technique is the relation between the triviality of the
grain (heard alone it is the merest click or 'point' of sound) and the richness of the layered
granular texture that results from their superimposition. The grain is an example of British
physicist Dennis Gabor's idea (proposed in 1947) of the quantum of sound, an indivisible
unit of information from the psychoacoustic point of view, on the basis of which all macrolevel phenomena are based. In another analogy to quantum physics, time is reversible at the
quantum level in that the quantum grain of sound is reversible with no change in perceptual
quality. That is, if a granular synthesis texture is played backwards it will sound the same,
just as if the direction of the individual grain is reversed (even if it is derived from natural
sound), it sounds the same. This time invariance also permits a time shifting of sampled
environmental sound, allowing it to be slowed down with no change in pitch. This technique
is usually called granulation.

Key to all granular techniques is the grain envelope. For sampled sound, a short linear attack
and decay prevent clicks being added to the sound. Changing the slope of the grain
envelope, in classic microsound practice, changes the resulting spectrum, sharper attacks
producing broader bandwidths, just as with very short grain durations.

Common types of granular synthesis are:

Quasi-synchronous granular synthesis:

The top diagram shows a grain stream of equal duration grains, producing
Amplitude Modulation with grain durations less than 50 ms. The bottom
diagram shows 3 grain streams with variable delay time between grains, the
sum of which resembles asynchronous granular synthesis.

Asynchronous granular synthesis:

Grains are distributed stochastically with no quasi regularity.

Pitch-synchronous granular synthesis:

Overlapping grain envelopes designed to be synchronous with the frequency of the

grain waveform, thereby producing fewer audio artifacts.
For further information of frequency-time methods, see this conference paper. Sound
examples are provided on the author's DVD-ROM.

References:
Roads, C. (2001) Microsound. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press
De Poli, G., Piccialli, A. & Roads, C. (1991) Editors. Representations of Musical Signals.
Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press
Gabor, D. (1947) Acoustical quanta and the theory of hearing. Nature, 159(4044), 591-594
Truax, B. (1988) Real-time granular synthesis with a digital signal processor. Computer
Music Journal, 12(2), 14-26