Building a Granular + Spectral Instrument – Looking for Feedback

[Domenique83]

Hi everyone,

After many years of producing electronic music and working with granular synthesis, I recently started building my own instrument called Spectra Gran.

The idea wasn’t to create just another granular plugin, but to build something that combines granular processing and spectral motion in a way that feels inspiring, musical and focused on texture design.

The project is still in development, but the core direction is centered around:

* Granular cloud generation
* Spectral processing
* Atmospheric texture creation
* Experimental and electronic music production
* Visual interaction with grain movement and waveform control

Right now I’m mainly looking for feedback from producers, sound designers and plugin enthusiasts.

I’m especially curious about what you feel is still missing from current granular instruments and what would make you genuinely interested in using a new one.

I’ve also put together a small Early Access page for anyone interested in following the development:

http://xaudio.store

No sales pitch, no launch today.

Just sharing the project and looking for honest feedback from the community.

Thanks for reading.

[Domenique83]

Thanks everyone for taking a look. I’m still early in development and genuinely interested in feedback from producers and sound designers

[IvyBirds]

If you are going to do spectral processing having a way where we can get a spectrogram of a sample and then select from that exactly what part of the sample/spectrum to generate the grains

Kind of like a granular based Izotope Iris

[Domenique83]

Thanks for the suggestion!

That’s actually very close to a feature already implemented in Spectra Gran.

By clicking the BANDS button, you can open the spectral band editor and isolate specific frequency regions of the sample.

For example, you can focus on a narrow area around a specific frequency range while reducing or removing others, allowing the grains to be generated primarily from the selected spectral content.

The system is still evolving, but spectral band selection is already part of the instrument and will continue to be refined as development progresses.

I really like the Iris comparison though — that’s definitely an inspiring direction for future development.

[zeph]

Hi - I just read your 6 points on Xaudio.store. That is exactly what I am interested in!!!

Really looking forward to this.

[Domenique83]

Thank you so much — I really appreciate that!

That’s exactly the direction I’m exploring with Spectra Gran: combining granular processing, spectral shaping, deep modulation and an inspiring workflow for evolving textures.

I’m still actively developing and refining the instrument, so feedback like this really motivates me and helps confirm that the concept is interesting to other producers and sound designers as well.

Thanks again for checking out the website and for the kind words!

[Tj Shredder]

I always thought a FFT frame could be also called a grain, though it has a fixed size. The envelopes and overlapping could just be spread in time and you would get a kind of granular blur... And could also have a control over levels and phase for each bin...
Is it that what you do? I'd love to test this...

[Domenique83]

While Spectra Gran started as a granular instrument, it has gradually evolved to include spectral processing as well, so there is definitely some overlap with the ideas you’re describing.
At the moment I’m not exposing direct control over every individual FFT bin or phase relationship, but the spectral side of the instrument is still evolving and I’m actively experimenting with different ways of shaping spectral content.
I’d definitely be interested in hearing more about your thoughts on spectral granulation and FFT-based approaches.

And yes, I’d be happy to let you know when a beta version becomes available. Thanks for the thoughtful comment!

[Dirtgrain]

One thing I like to do sometimes with a given granular instrument is, with a configuration of parameters set, cycle through a bunch of samples. It would be cool if you had a way to cycle through (or even audition somehow nifty like Omnisphere presets) samples quickly and hear how they sound with the parameters however one set them.

I also found with Granulizer 2 that using a step sequencer on the playhead sometimes would make great sounds--BUT it doesn't have a step sequencer and the playhead parameter was not accessible to Ableton Live. I only did it by hand, with the mouse. Some way to do this in your plugin would be nifty, like with the effect sequencer in Rapid or DS Thorn.

I like playing with exponential rhythms. Unfiltered Audio's Sandman Pro, a delay, has a neat ability with multi-tap mode and its spacing parameter, where you can get the bouncing ball pattern where the taps are spread out at the start but get closer together, something like on an exponential or logarithmic curve. I just watched a video on Refractalizer, and it achieved something like this (I have no idea how, but it's damn cool). Maybe give it a look:



A Max for Live device, Iota, allows one to select time and frequency sections of a sample. It has a graphic of the sample and you can draw multiple rectangles of various shapes and have them play simultaneously. It is fun to grab one rectangle and move it around while playing, with a delay after. I've wondered if this could be built upon. Have the playback of each rectangle be granular itself, with multiple playheads going, and be able to sequence playback of each rectangle (in Iota, one can record the movement of a rectangle selection as you move it around with the grab tool. It also allows rectangle selections to be triggered by MIDI, I think). Maybe some more sophisticated tools for selecting parts of the sample could be implemented--like in Izotope Iris.

Here is an example of what Iota is like:


I'm just brainstorming--and I don't know anything about the programming side of these things.

[Dirtgrain]

This is the step sequencer I use in Live:



Maybe there could be one dedicated to pitch, one to the playhead, one to something else. It is close to an MSEG, but there are defined and equidistant slots for whatever time resolution one sets.