Granular synthesis
Chop a sound into thousands of tiny grains and rebuild it into clouds and textures.
Granular synthesis zooms all the way in. Instead of playing a sound as one continuous stream, it chops it into hundreds of tiny fragments — grains, each just a few milliseconds long — and sprays them back out in overlapping clouds. From those specks you can build shimmering textures, freeze a moment, or stretch time itself.
try it — grain cloud
The demo takes one short built-in tone and replays it as a swarm of grains from random positions. Two controls shape the cloud:
- Grain size — how long each fragment is. Tiny grains sound gritty and buzzy; longer ones keep more of the original tone.
- Density — how many grains play per second. Sparse is a stuttering trickle; dense is a smooth, thick wash.
Because each grain can start anywhere in the sound, granular can time-stretch — hold a sound still without changing its pitch — which is why it is everywhere in ambient and film music.
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