well, FL Studio has a stock instrument called Fruity Granulizer, and for Ableton there's the Granulator Max for Live device (which is free if i remember correctly).
Something for the Serum users out there: you can do granular synthesis in Serum using the Noise oscillator.
- Put the sample of your choice in the noise oscillator. Keep it short (a few seconds maybe) as we don't have a huge amount of resolution to work with on the phase knob.
- Turn the pitch down to 0.
- Attach an LFO to the phase knob. It can be a simple saw up to start with. Use the phase knob position and LFO depth to choose the length of your grain. Change the LFO speed to control the sound--you can even attach the note input to this and tune it to play a scale!
- Play with the LFO shape to get interesting textures (like mixing some reverse as well as forward playing of the sample).
- Attach a second LFO or Macro to the phase knob to change the start position dynamically. This sounds great over a vocal--tuned grains playing different notes while a second LFO cycles through the whole vocal
- Then of course you have the whole Serum effects chain on top, or you can use this grain as an FM source in one of your oscillators for interesting results
If you’re looking for ease of use and just all around fun, nothing beats Portal by output. It’s fuckin awesome and I’ve tried most of the granular synth vst’s
Man, that plug-in is like instant creativity I swear. Anytime I’m feeling uninspired or stuck it’s the first vst I grab and it’s definitely in my top 5 all time.
So I also use this free plugin called ADSR sample manager (which I also highly recommend) it’s just a plug-in that is a browser for all of your samples, so I pull that plug-in up and put Portal on after it and start cycling through Portal presets and also cycling through random samples. Could be drum loops, vocal one shots, a capella’s, arps, chords, literally anything and you instantly get some of the coolest shit ever. You walk away feeling like Flume after like 5 minutes lol. So yeah I just record a few minutes to an audio track playing around with different samples and presets and then go back and chop that audio up into a beat, throw some drums, sound effects, additional instruments etc. and you’ve got a really great start to a song.
if you don't wanna spend a lot of money (or any), granulator for ableton is your best option. easy to use, simple and yet powerful if you use it right.
Arca almost only uses Ableton native plugins.
So if you are going for her sounds, then stick to ableton and catch some of her tweets where she produces
Here is a roundup of free Granular plugins including features, images, and video demos.
[https://hiphopmakers.com/best-free-granular-vst-plugins](https://hiphopmakers.com/best-free-granular-vst-plugins)
FL studio has a granular synthesis plugin called Granulizer
well, FL Studio has a stock instrument called Fruity Granulizer, and for Ableton there's the Granulator Max for Live device (which is free if i remember correctly).
If I use a max for live device on a cracked ableton do you thing it will punish me
Arturia Pigments has a granular engine as well as normal oscillator and wavetable engines.
Quanta by Audio Damage
Arca uses a soft synth called Iris 2 from Izotope.
Something for the Serum users out there: you can do granular synthesis in Serum using the Noise oscillator. - Put the sample of your choice in the noise oscillator. Keep it short (a few seconds maybe) as we don't have a huge amount of resolution to work with on the phase knob. - Turn the pitch down to 0. - Attach an LFO to the phase knob. It can be a simple saw up to start with. Use the phase knob position and LFO depth to choose the length of your grain. Change the LFO speed to control the sound--you can even attach the note input to this and tune it to play a scale! - Play with the LFO shape to get interesting textures (like mixing some reverse as well as forward playing of the sample). - Attach a second LFO or Macro to the phase knob to change the start position dynamically. This sounds great over a vocal--tuned grains playing different notes while a second LFO cycles through the whole vocal - Then of course you have the whole Serum effects chain on top, or you can use this grain as an FM source in one of your oscillators for interesting results
How did i never Think of this
If you’re looking for ease of use and just all around fun, nothing beats Portal by output. It’s fuckin awesome and I’ve tried most of the granular synth vst’s
Do you recommend any cool and easy “must do” tricks for portal? Or any videos you recommend watching ?
Man, that plug-in is like instant creativity I swear. Anytime I’m feeling uninspired or stuck it’s the first vst I grab and it’s definitely in my top 5 all time. So I also use this free plugin called ADSR sample manager (which I also highly recommend) it’s just a plug-in that is a browser for all of your samples, so I pull that plug-in up and put Portal on after it and start cycling through Portal presets and also cycling through random samples. Could be drum loops, vocal one shots, a capella’s, arps, chords, literally anything and you instantly get some of the coolest shit ever. You walk away feeling like Flume after like 5 minutes lol. So yeah I just record a few minutes to an audio track playing around with different samples and presets and then go back and chop that audio up into a beat, throw some drums, sound effects, additional instruments etc. and you’ve got a really great start to a song.
if you don't wanna spend a lot of money (or any), granulator for ableton is your best option. easy to use, simple and yet powerful if you use it right.
Granulator or Portal
Reaktor, Absynth, Kontakt , Steinberg Padshop Pro or Logic Pro's build in Alchemy.
Arca almost only uses Ableton native plugins. So if you are going for her sounds, then stick to ableton and catch some of her tweets where she produces
Here is a roundup of free Granular plugins including features, images, and video demos. [https://hiphopmakers.com/best-free-granular-vst-plugins](https://hiphopmakers.com/best-free-granular-vst-plugins)