The Granular Synthesis Blog: A guide with video examples

New to crusher-X? In four minutes this tutorial explains how a granular cloud gets its pitches. In crusher-X the pitch belongs to the grain: Speed says how fast each grain is played, Sweep bends the pitch while the grain sounds, and the arpeggiator keeps every grain on the notes of a scale.

You hear it first on a plucked melody: at Speed 2 every grain plays an octave higher, at 0.5 an octave lower, below zero backwards - and the melody keeps its tempo every time. Then one tone is cut out of the melody, and an LFO, the Scale Arp and the mode Random Grain turn it into a cloud of notes.

What you will learn:

• Speed: the pitch of a grain - 2 is an octave up, 0.5 an octave down, the tempo stays
• below zero a grain plays backwards
• one tone as the input sound, cut out of a melody with the DCO's two markers
• Sweep: the pitch rises or falls inside every grain
• an LFO on Speed, with Mod and Freq
• the arpeggiator on Scale Arp: the Speed value picks a key, only the keys of the scale sound
• Random Grain and eight generators: every grain its own note

All crusher-X Tutorials - and the free demo for Windows and macOS (VST, VST3, AU, AAX) to follow every step.

New to crusher-X? In three and a half minutes this tutorial explains the idea that makes a crusher-X cloud move: the vector modulation. A grain modulation is one LFO, but it has a value for every generator. Two sliders, Phase and Spread, say how the generators differ: Phase shifts the LFO from one generator to the next, Spread lets every generator run at its own speed.

You hear it on the pitch: one single tone, eight generators, an LFO on Speed with the arpeggiator set to Scale. With Phase the melody becomes a canon, with Spread eight tempos that drift apart and meet again.

What you will learn:

• one tone as the input sound, cut out of a factory sound with the DCO's two markers
• an LFO on Speed with the Scale Arp: all generators play the same melody
• Phase: the same speed for all, each generator at a different point of the wave
• Spread: every generator at its own speed
• both together, and the same idea on the Panner
• why this is called a vector modulation, and that every grain modulation works this way

All crusher-X Tutorials - and the free demo for Windows and macOS (VST, VST3, AU, AAX) to follow every step.

New to crusher-X? In four minutes this tutorial shows what a grain cloud is made of. Two sliders decide it: Length - how long a grain lasts - and Birth - the time from one grain to the next. Between them lie a rhythm, a stream, sparks, a pitch of its own, and a cloud of 64 grains at a time.

What you will learn:

• Length and Birth: a grain, a pause - a rhythm
• the grain window, and Tilt: grains that start hard like a drop, or swell and stop
• overlap: when Birth is half of Length, the rhythm is gone
• sparks: grains of ten milliseconds
• a hundred grains a second: the rhythm becomes a pitch, and Birth tunes it
• long grains that overlap eight times - and why they still sound like the input
• what makes a cloud: generators, and every grain with a place and a pitch of its own (Random Grain)

All crusher-X Tutorials - and the free demo for Windows and macOS (VST, VST3, AU, AAX) to follow every step.

New to crusher-X? In four minutes this tutorial shows what the Delay grain modulation does: it decides where in the past a grain reads. From there it is a short way to an echo, to a melody at half speed in its original pitch, to time standing still - and to one melody heard at eight moments at once.

Everything you play runs into the grain buffer, and the grains are cut out of it. Delay is the distance between "now" and the point where a grain reads. Move that point with an LFO and you move through time; give every generator its own point with Phase and you hear many moments together.

What you will learn:

• the grain buffer: what it remembers, and how grains read from it
• Delay Offset: reading into the past, and an echo
• Mod and Freq on Delay: the reading point swings through the buffer, the pitch stays
• the Saw mode: half speed at the original pitch, and how time stands still
• Phase: every generator reads at a different moment
• the Play button of the grain buffer: stop the recording and keep reading what is left

All crusher-X Tutorials - and the free demo for Windows and macOS (VST, VST3, AU, AAX) to follow every step.

New to crusher-X? This tutorial takes you from the free demo to a cloud of 48 resonating ladder filters in under five minutes - and shows on the way how the granular engine works.

The filter in crusher-X is not one filter behind the sound. Every single grain carries a filter of its own, so as many filters run in parallel as grains are sounding. The 24 dB Ladder switch turns each of them into a resonant ladder filter.

What you will learn:

• how a sound runs into the grain buffer, and how generators cut grains out of it
• what Length and Birth do, and how generators form a cloud
• how a Grain Modulation works: Offset, Mod, Freq
• why Phase is the important slider: it shifts the LFO from generator to generator, so one LFO becomes eight
• the 24 dB Ladder switch, Q, and the Scale Arp on the cutoff

All crusher-X Tutorials - and the free demo for Windows and macOS (VST, VST3, AU, AAX) to follow every step.

New to crusher-X? The crusher-X Tutorial series explains granular synthesis step by step: short videos that each build one thing from an empty program, to follow with the free demo.

Start here: Not one filter: a 24 dB Ladder filter for every grain

All tutorials