alchmey granular synthesis help

[sloth]

Hey guys, ive been really getting into using alchemy in the last month of so. i have been loading lots of samples into it and so forth, where i modulate and go nuts with the patches. i have tried using the granular setting on some of the sounds i import to the synth but i never get good results with it.

specifically, i have been importing bass sounds into the synth. when i turn on granular, the sound looses all its power and no matter how i move the perimeters about, i just get strange and un-usable sounds. anyone have any tips on how they use this technique? everyone talks about the power of it but as of now i just dont understand how to make it work.
thanks

[MrBaxter]

Granular synthesis is a very tedious method. Mainly because of the amount of shit you have to go through to get good results, that said i think it is much easier to get useable results with higher frequency inputs, such as pads, leads etc. With basses granular synthesis usually smears the sound so it looses its definition. Tip on how to use this technique? Experiment!

[Turnipish_Thoughts]

Yeah Mr Baxter is pretty on the spot, though (the same as with anything else) the sound you get is largely down to what control you have over which parameters.

Granular synthesis splits the signal into grains (duh) and applies loads of different behaviors to them. Often you'll lose the edge of say, a bass patch, because the 'edge' is coming from the clean waveform's shape, when it gets split and overlapped obviously you're going to loose a lot of the upper harmonics because that element of the timbre is coming from very quick changes in waveform height. Grain offsetting like this is usually used to create pad type sounds.

It literally is down to a lot of experimentation with grain seize, grain envelope shape, grain voicing (how many are playing at once) the rate of overlapping and so forth. You can actually get some really nice sounds I've found by having a pretty hard attack phase of the grain envelope, playing only 2 at once and having a slightly long grain duration, it increases the amplitude obviously (use compression to combat this) but adds an almost comb filter type phasing between the two slightly offset grains playing in unison. Just experiment man. Granular synthesis offers such a wide range of different timbres and sound characters through such minute changes in parameter relationship it's so sensitive and broadly scoped as to require developing an intuitive understanding of what's happening through loads of practice.

Of course the other important point is the sound you get out is largely dependent on the type of sound you put in, which is again pretty unintuitive until you learn to think about what possible directions a given sound will move into given exactly what you're doing to it via granular re-synthesis. An example would be a recording of a footstep in the snow could be turned in to a lot of high end 'crackle' and glisten to layer over a bass patch, purely from how the high frequency content in the original sound will react through certain parameter settings. Try and learn to think about sounds, when regarding them for granular synthesis, in terms of their frequency, timbre and harmonics and not the sound it's self as a singular entity because that isn't what you're going to end up with. It's much more about the underlying components of a sound, that will retain as the character it's self gets re-written. It's really hard to explain tbh lol, hope you sort of get what I'm saying.

Alchemy's granular stuff is pretty geared towards pads and softer timbres purely by way of how it's working under the hood (of course though this isn't 100% true). Try messing with the free granular engine HourGlass. It's one of the best granular engines hands down.

[Aufnahmewindwuschel]

a way to do it is to get your hands on some really nice sounds from the start. like i got myself ripped silent hill 2 sounds (http://silenthillmedia.net/sh2-sound.htm) hope its ok to post the link but basicaly just take sounds you like and throw them granulized on top of a midrange or sub or whatever you get really wierd-epic basssoundcombos from it. like lets say pitch down bas pitch down granulized pyramid head sound at the same rate etc

[sloth]

i messed about with it all today and actually got some monster sounds by just throwing some water sounds into it. really sick results. then i layered it with some other massive patches i made. thanks for the tips