Robert Henke’s Granulator 2
Robert Henke’s Granulator 2
Robert Henke’s Granulator 2 is a M4L Granular Synthesizer created by Ableton founder Robert Henke. It’s ideal to create sustained ambient or pad sounds from any audio material.
Granulator 2 divides the audio sample into small grains, which can be manipulated in a variety of ways.
Install Granulator 2: First, download and install the M4L Pack from within the browser directly or from Ableton’s website>Packs
Watch Robert Henke, one of the founders of Ableton and a the creator of Granulator 2 talk about the instrument. Living in Berlin, he is also part of a musical project called Monolake.
Create a new MIDI track and load Granulator 2 from M3L instruments
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In the Grain View we can adjust Grain Parameters, manipulate readout speed and also use an LFO for modulation.
Grain defines how many (very short) crossfading sample chunks are played back per second. The higher the frequency, the more chunks with shorter duration each are created. If the grain frequency is set to 1kHz, 2x 1000 overlapping streams of samples are created per second and each grain therefore has a length of 10ms. The length of the grains has a dramatic impact on the overall sound.
FilePos: Unlike in a normal sampler, the readout position does not move during playback, but repeats for each grain at the file but repeats for each grain at the file position defined by this parameter. The file position can either be set by moving this parameter or by clicking on the waveform. Also there are several ways to manipulate the file position via other parameters.
Spray adds a random variation to the readout position of each single grain. The effect is highly dependent on the grain frequency and the nature of the source material. Very small values can create microscopic smearing and add liveliness to seemingly static sounds.
The LFO can control the file readout position of each voice when turned on and when its amount is set to a value greater than zero.
PostLFOCycle defines the time it takes for a single LFO cycle to complete. Note that this FO can run very slowly in order to achieve slow scans thru the source file.
ScanOn enables scanning through the file in a linear motion, starting from the initial file position. ScanTime defines the speed of the movement thru the file.file. If the Scan Key parameter is set to100% to 100% and Scan factor is set to 1.0 the result will be somewhere close to normal sample playback. Higher/lower factors will create time stretching/compression effects.
ScanCurve defines the speed of the movement thru the file. If the Scan Key parameter is set to 100% and Scan factor is set to 1.0 the result will be somewhere close to normal sample playback. Higher/lower factors will create time stretching/compression effects.
WindowSymmetry The shape of the grain is defined by the window function. Use the standard (Std) window type for the smoothest granulation – it allows the setting of equal power fades between grains. As alternative, other window functions may an be specified: a decaying window function (Decay), a rising window function (Rise), or an experimental noise signal (Noiz)
WindowShape should be set to zero the smoothest granulation. Other settings change the window shape to a more rectangular shape. Actual waveform is a complex interaction between the Shape, WindowType, and Spike parameters. If Type parameter is set to Std. and Spike is set to zero, the WindowShape parameter will create equal power crossfades of adjustable length. WindowSpike is a more experimental parameter. The parameter can best be understood by viewing the resulting waveform as shown in the view above the parameters.
AmON controls the gain of each single grain via a random function If Amount If set to any values other than zero, the amplitude of individual grains can change randomly. This effect can be
achieved by either applying a random variation to grain amplitudes (Flux mode) or by muting grains (Void mode). Higher parameter values will result in greater amplitude fluctuations (in Flux mode) or a higher probability of silence (in Void mode).
In the Filter View we find the some of the more conventional synthesis tools that we already started to use in the previous synthesizer during the course.
