What are sampling and granular synthesis?
Sampling and granular synthesis both start with recorded sound. Sampling plays recordings back as instruments, mapped across the keyboard and shaped as you play, and granular synthesis breaks a recording into thousands of tiny fragments, called grains, and rebuilds them into textures, clouds and rhythms.
How sampling works
A sampler maps recordings, called samples, to keys and playing strengths, so playing higher or harder chooses a different recording or plays one back faster. Loop points let a note sustain for as long as a key is held, and round robins rotate between alternative recordings of the same note, so repeated notes sound natural. Once a sample plays, it can be shaped like any synthesizer’s sound, with filters, envelopes and modulation.
How granular synthesis works
Granular synthesis treats a recording as raw material. It plays many short grains, usually from a few milliseconds to a few hundred long, each with a smooth envelope so it starts and ends without a click. The position each grain reads from, its size and pitch, and how densely the grains overlap decide what you hear.
The read position moves independently of time and pitch, so granular synthesis can freeze a single moment, stretch a second of sound across a minute or change its pitch without changing its speed. Scattering the grains’ positions and pitches turns a recording into a shimmering cloud.
What it sounds like
Sampling brings the detail of real instruments, voices and found sounds to an instrument you can play. Granular synthesis turns any of them into something new, from ambient washes and frozen chords to glitching rhythms and textures that evolve for as long as you hold a note.
Key terms
- Sample
- A recording used as the sound source of an instrument.
- Mapping
- Assigning samples to ranges of notes and playing strengths.
- Loop
- A section of a sample that repeats, so a note can sustain.
- Grain
- A very short fragment of sound, typically a few milliseconds to a few hundred long, with its own envelope.
- Grain density
- How many grains play at once, from sparse particles to a continuous cloud.
- Time-stretching
- Changing a sound’s length without changing its pitch.
In The Particle Star
The Particle Star is Xionia Audio’s sampling and granular synthesizer. It brings the two together in one engine, designed to turn recorded sound into expressive, playable instruments, and its smallest fragments into evolving textures, intricate rhythms and new sonic forms. Its position, pitch, grain density, grain size and scatter can each have a Motion Wave of its own.