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Granular Synthesis With Maximum Control & Instantly Effective Results

Granular Synthesis is the process of taking short slices of audio – or ‘grains’ – from a longer section of audio. These short grains are typically less than 1 second in length, often much shorter. They are then triggered at certain intervals, sometimes overlapping each other.

Waveform Area

The waveform area shows the currently loaded audio, and the ‘jellyfish’ which is the positional control for the plugin. Click and drag the jellyfish to move its position on the waveform. This will change the place — or ‘buffer position’ — from which grains are sampled.

There are also three buttons at the bottom of the waveform area:

• Record – record into the The Jellyfish from the audio input
• Clear – delete the currently loaded audio
• Learn – enable/disable the MIDI markers learn feature

Primary Controls

• Grain Interval – the time between grains, in milliseconds (range: 10ms to 1,000ms). Larger grain intervals will create a slower pulsing sound, while smaller grain intervals will likely lead to overlapping grains which result in more of a drone sound. In tempo-sync mode, the time between grains is instead measured in terms of the metric subdivision (1/4 note, 1/8th note, etc.)
• Grain Length – the length of each grain, in milliseconds (range: 1ms to 1,000ms).
• Transpose – the transpose control allows you to change the pitch of each grain. The buttons below the transpose slider switch between:
  • Semitone transpose: transpose pitch in whole semitones
  • Microtonal transpose: transpose pitch in fractions of a semitone

Secondary Controls

• Panning Width (Range: 0 – 100%) – each grain is given a random panning position. The panning width control determines how wide that panning is. If it is 0%, no panning is added. If it is 100% then panning positions can be up to 100% left or 100% right. Values in between reduce the amount of panning.
• Buffer Jitter (Range: 0 – 100%) – a random variation in the position of each grain in the buffer. Small amounts add light variation that adds to the complexity of the sound. Larger values cause much more wild variations as the grains are selected from a wider range of locations in the audio.
• Pitch Wobble (Range: 0 – 100%) – a random pitch variation added to each grain. If a short grain interval is used, leading to a drone, then small amounts of this pitch variation can add an effect similar to a chorus.
• Smoothness (Range: 0 – 100%) – this parameter controls the shape of each grain. Smooth grains will have a soft, slow attack. Less smooth ones will have a faster attack, leading to a sharper sound.

Playback Settings

• Grain Position – switches between ‘manual’ and ‘auto’ grain position modes:
  • Manual – The Jellyfish will remain in the same position, unless moved by the user
  • Auto – The Jellyfish will move according to the current playback mode and speed
• Playback Mode – selects the movement behaviour of The Jellyfish when the ‘auto’ grain position switch is active:
  • Loop Forwards: The Jellyfish will loop forwards over the waveform
  • Loop Backwards: The Jellyfish will loop backwards over the waveform
  • Random Walk: The Jellyfish will move to a random area of the waveform and then select a new random area and move towards that, and so on
  • Random Jump: similar to Random Walk except The Jellyfish will jump to a new random position as it reaches each destination
  • LFO: Low Frequency Oscillator (LFO) movement of The Jellyfish according to a sine wave
• Playback Speed – controls the speed of the movement of The Jellyfish when it is in ‘auto’ grain position mode
• Reverse Grains – when active, each individual grain is played in reverse rather than forwards

Tempo Sync

(NOTE: This feature is available in the VST3 / Audio Unit plugin only.)

In the VST3/AU version, below the grain interval slider is a button labelled ‘Tempo Sync’. If you click this button, you will put the plugin into tempo sync mode.

In tempo sync mode, the plugin will trigger grains according to the host DAW tempo and transport information. It is important to understand that in tempo sync mode, if the transport is not playing in your DAW, The Jellyfish will not produce any sound.

When tempo sync is active, the grain interval slider will change behaviour to allow you to set the grain interval in metrical subdivisions, such as 1/4 note, 1/8 note, 1/16 note, etc.

For more detailed information read the [User Guide].