I wasn’t adressing you per say I was just utilizing your statement and giving you credit as co-author
soup kitchen.
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I would happily buy a Digitakt if it were stereo samples even though it can’t do granular.
I guess DT mono was so it didn’t cut the OT’s grass. But it is more of a hinderance I think now since they seem stuck on it.
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DT was probably supposed to be training wheels to the OT but I don’t think they expected or predicted it to be a top seller at outset.
zero interest in a granular unit here.
no interest in stereo samples either.
party time
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I have yet to hear a granular patch that didn’t just make me think it sounded crap, the only way to make it sound even worse is to smother it in shimmer reverb. Thin digital garbage, that mostly just annoys my ears.
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Have you tried firing it into a shimmer reverb?
o__o
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I’d really like some kind of granular synth mode if it was integrated into a device like a future Octatrack, + polyphony and actual velocity etc support for external keyboard playing.
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Run this through sample rate reduction, add some chorus maybe, and of course tons of reverb.
Result: every granular patch ever made.
You’re welcome.
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Most clichéd granular patches seem to sound like an annoying Geiger counter, you’re right. But there are much better applications of it. The sample can be of anything after all. Lack of imagination is what makes a bad patch.
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I wasn’t all that into the granular sound and so i tried to use the Lemondrop in other ways without the typical granular artifacts and discovered some sounds i couldn’t have gotten with other methods. Of course these sounds might not be to everyones liking but to me granular synthesis is still pretty cool.
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IIRC this was done on hardware. I can’t find a reference anymore because search is dead.
In this case you can easily tell it’s granular, which really works with the material. But most of the grain synths I’ve tried can produce very well blended sounds that you might mistake for reverb or pitch scaling or whatever, depending on settings. One could even sound like a wavetable synth, which meant you could basically turn a sample into an oscillator without the associated pitfalls, and then optionally scan through it to change the timbre. Window functions ftw.
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Even the little orange f*kboy can do granular.
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I would love to see a dedicated granular synth/sampler box in Digi format though. Would be an insta-buy.
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Microgranny and Lemondrop are both granular but tend to produce sounds that are miles apart.
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Granular is something I like more as a concept than in execution. I think most of the demos in this thread are utterly dreadful, although a couple of the GR-1 videos sound rather nice. I will often start a new tune with some granular pad in the background, then build up from that, but I’ve never succeeded in making it the primary element.
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I’m in the “not interested” camp. It sounds like an effect that you wish had a wet dry control so you can just leave it on dry all the time because it so gimmicky.
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I don’t mind granular FX as way to add interest to otherwise static sounds, or for ambient pads with little glitches etc. A little goes a long way.
I agree that a load of scratchy noise or clicks doesn’t sound great but it’s just a matter of taste. Personally I find most of the bleeps and bloops modular jams I hear sound bloody awful and I’d want my ten grand back but that’s just me.
To each their own.
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If there is ever anything with the power of Emission Control 2 or the Borderlands app in a hardware unit I’ll be very happy. Until then I’ll just use software.
Scrolling through start/end points in a loop on OT/DT/M:S is only about 1% of what granular is really capable of. I don’t even consider it granular synthesis tbh.
And as for those saying it’s thin or a one-trick pony.. as with many deep synthesis methods, of course 90% of the examples out there will sound uninspired. But when software like EC2/Borderlands can get into highly rhythmic and generative territory, that’s where the good stuff starts to emerge.
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I see mentions of granular hardware synths here and there in this thread, but don’t forget about the all mighty Little Deformer 3 y’all… It might be the most powerful granular hardware thing out there, and also a more powerful groovebox than most of the grooveboxes in the market. I mean, 32 automation tracks, come on.
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