MMultibandGranular: controlling the rate / speed of the emitted grains

[Neon Breath]

Hi folks (and dev )

I love the MGranular, really great tool. But I’m struggling to find a way to control the speed / rate of the grains. I can control the pitch, the delays, the size of the grain and all that… But can’t figure out how to control the flowing speed of their emission. It’s a constant flowing granulation. How can I emit let’s say, grains at intermission every 5-6 seconds for example? Grain emission, silence for 5 second... Another grain emission, silcence 5 seconds...

Any idea & tips?

Cheers !

[MeldaProduction]

Hi,

well, you can probably modulate some parameters. Note that it just cannot know everything you might ever want. For example the idea with the 5 seconds, 5 sec silence, 5 secs... is, well, extremely specific. But again this is what the modulators are for.

[Neon Breath]

Thanks for the reply!

I don’t think you understand what I mean. It was just an example of a very slow grain density speed/rate. Very slow rate = grains emitted sparsely every few seconds. That’s what I meant…

For doing it with modulation, what parameters would you module to achieve that slow grain speed rate? I still don’t understand how to do it with MMgranular unfortunately. In most granulators, there's a speed parameter (sometimes called density) controlling the grain rate emitted. With a very low setting, well grains pop and are emitted very slowly.

Would it be possible maybe to have that type of control over the grains in a future update maybe? Instead of finding a way and try to modulate a bunch of parameters to mimic the effect. I think it's a must granular parameter that is missing in your MGranular...

[jmg8]

I think its the transformations sections you want?

You can create your own transformations (up to 16) and select or randomly switch between.

Click the Transform button to take you to the graph.
On the graph the X represents input time and the Y is output time. So when the graph is a straight line (default) the grains will be released at the same speed as the input audio. By changing this graph you can speed up or slow down the release of the grains.

[Neon Breath]

I think its the transformations sections you want?

You can create your own transformations (up to 16) and select or randomly switch between.

Click the Transform button to take you to the graph.
On the graph the X represents input time and the Y is output time. So when the graph is a straight line (default) the grains will be released at the same speed as the input audio. By changing this graph you can speed up or slow down the release of the grains.

Thanks alot for the clear explanation! Will try that

I still think having a nice Speed slider / parameter to slow down or speed up the grain emission at will would be more convenient and easier to use than drawing a line in a graph.

[MeldaProduction]

Well, I can only repeat - speed IS the same thing as pitch, so the slider is there, just named differently .

[Neon Breath]

Well, I can only repeat - speed IS the same thing as pitch, so the slider is there, just named differently .

So, in other words you say all the other granulators have 2 useless duplicate parameters that control & do the same thing? I don't get it. Speed (also often called Rate, Time or IOT) & Pitch are not the same thing, I don't buy it sorry.

[Gone soft]

Isn't speed/time/rate pretty much the same as grain size in MMultiBandGranular? But I think what you'd want is an additional parameter for how often a grain is "triggered", such as some granular processors have something called "birth rate" or something like that for grains. Then you'd set the "birth rate" to be a longer time period than the grain size so for instance every 6 seconds a grain or burst of grains of 450 milliseconds is "born", then there'd be a period of silence of a bit more than 5 seconds after the grain(s). Does this make sense?

[Neon Breath]

Ok, since a sound is worth a thousand words, here a very quick and dirty example I did with another granulator, playing with the speed control. Starting at a high speed rate, then going down very slow with lot of space between the grains at the end.

Here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/uyhklmdo5mh6c ... e.mp3?dl=0

So basically you say I can to that with the Pitch parameter? ...Even with the Transformation fonction, I'm not able to achieve that type of slow rate effect. If you know how to with MMGranular, can you post something, a video or an audio example with clear explanation on how to do this with MMGranular? That would be appreciated, cause really.... I tryyand try, and can't figure out the way to do it

Cheers.

[jmg8]

Well, I can only repeat - speed IS the same thing as pitch, so the slider is there, just named differently .

I think while Vojtech is talking about the playback speed of each grain, which IS the same as pitch.
The original poster is talking about the speed of the release of the grains. Or in other words, the amount of gap between each grain. This is NOT the same as pitch. Granular resynthesis is a technique used to speed up or slow down the time of audio without effecting it's pitch.

[Neon Breath]

Well, I can only repeat - speed IS the same thing as pitch, so the slider is there, just named differently .

I think while Vojtech is talking about the playback speed of each grain, which IS the same as pitch.
The original poster is talking about the speed of the release of the grains. Or in other words, the amount of gap between each grain. This is NOT the same as pitch. Granular resynthesis is a technique used to speed up or slow down the time of audio without effecting it's pitch.

That's exactly what I mean, said in other words. Thanks for your input! And so far in MMGranular, I didn't find how to control that. (Would love to though! Since I really like MMGranular)

I'm sorry if I was not clear in my previous posts, I thought I was. My audio example posted explains better than my words too

[MeldaProduction]

Hmmm, no gap settings or something like that, sorry. That would open about an infinite of more potential settings and there's already more than enough. But if you want to actually "kill" certain grains, you can do that using the transformations - set a transformation to horizontal line and it will technically be a "single" sample, hence silence. Then you can use somehow change the transformations using modulators or something.

[sandbags]

Hmmm, no gap settings or something like that, sorry. That would open about an infinite of more potential settings and there's already more than enough. But if you want to actually "kill" certain grains, you can do that using the transformations - set a transformation to horizontal line and it will technically be a "single" sample, hence silence. Then you can use somehow change the transformations using modulators or something.

Honestly I've been a little surprised not to find a density control, I assumed I was just not finding it. I particularly like the sound of sparse grain streams which seem a little hard to come by in MMBG.

Can you give slightly more step-by-step instructions for your suggestion above? I have some of your plugins but am struggling a little with anything beyond the basic the UI as yet.

Kind regards,

Matt

[MeldaProduction]

I think what you can Density is called Copies here . I assume you mean the number of grains, which with high number creates kind of a grain cloud. Copies is better than Density, because it tells you how many grains are being used.

[MeldaProduction]

To the original post - I'm thinking, isn't Freeze exactly what you want? Just attach it to a modulator and that's it.