Granular synthesis: pads and textures from any sample

Granular synthesis cuts a sound into tiny overlapping grains and plays them back in a new order, speed or pitch. A two-second vocal becomes an endless choir; a piano note becomes a slow, shimmering cloud. Here is what each control does.

Turn a layer into grains

In TENFOLD, press GRANULAR on a layer and its sample becomes a cloud of grains. A playhead moves through the sample at the layer's SPEED, and grains are picked around it. Each of the ten layers has its own granular engine, so one layer can be a cloud while the next plays normally.

The controls that matter

• SIZE (5 to 500 ms): the length of each grain. Short is buzzy and glitchy, long is smooth and lush.
• DENSITY (0.5 to 8): how many grains overlap. Below 1 gives sparse clicks and gaps; 3 to 8 is a dense cloud.
• SPRAY: how far from the playhead grains may start. Low is tight, 100% is anywhere between START and END.
• PITCH (±24 semitones): transposes the grains and lands on the selected scale. Try +12 or +7 for shimmer.
• RANDOM: a random pitch for each grain. A fraction of a semitone sounds like tape detune.

Freeze a moment

Turn on FREEZE and the playhead holds still at START, giving an endless texture from one spot. Drag START, or drag an LFO chip onto it, to scrub slowly through the sample.

Shape every grain

Press MORE for the extra controls. SHAPE sets each grain's volume curve: SMOOTH for a soft cloud, HARD for choppy, PLUCK for percussive, SWELL for a reverse-like bloom. REVERSE sets the chance a grain plays backwards and WIDTH spreads grains across the stereo field. PITCH LOCKED keeps the pitch the same whatever you do with size and speed.

A frozen grain cloud

From the TENFOLD manual: GRANULAR and FREEZE on, SIZE 200 ms, DENSITY 6, SPRAY 40%, RANDOM a fraction of a semitone, SHAPE Smooth, WIDTH 80%, then an LFO 1 chip onto START with a slow sine.

Good source sounds

Sustained, harmonically rich sounds work best: voices, strings, pads, bells, field recordings with tone in them. Load a second layer with the same sample un-granulated for a clear attack in front of the cloud, then send it to a long reverb.