In my third example of using Granulator I started by manipulating some of the Granulator parameters manually during the recording. I followed this up by improvising on the keyboard to create an abstract landscape of metallic tones. It might sound like it, but no processing was applied before or after the Granulator instrument, or to the snow globe recording.
Granulator Demo Part 3
For my second experiment with Granulator I used the same Three Wind-Up Snow Globes recording, but changed many of the settings including seting up velocity sensitivity so that I could play the grains expressively with a MIDI keyboard. Here’s an excerpt from what I played. Once again, no processing was used other than what is built into Granulator.
Granulator Demo 2
By now most Ableton users, especially Max for Live developers, know about the latest update and price cuts to Max for Live. Peter Kirn has written a couple of articles on the topic (see Music Patchwork: Ableton Makes Max for Live Cheaper, Showcases Creations by Henke, Hawtin, More and Ableton Delivers Max for Live Improvements and Guidelines, Responds to Feedback). Consequently you may already know that Ableton is giving away several amazing Max for Live instruments. These are perfect devices to explore for my One Synthesizer Sound Everyday project, and although I’m already backed up with weeks worth of analog sounds in the can it won’t hurt to interject some experiments from the M4L pool.
The first one of the new devices that I tried was Granulator by Robert Henke. Within a couple of hours experimenting I had enough material for a couple of weeks! Granulator is brilliant. Having developed my own M4L instrument, Grain Machine, I can really appreciate what Mr. Henke has done here. I even opened up his perfectly organized patch in Max for Live to get a look under the hood and I fully endorse his work (not that this means anything coming from me, but trust me it’s good). Here’s the first of a series of sounds I produced using Granulator with a recording of Three Wind-Up Snow Globes. Absolutely no processing was applied before or after the Granulator instrument, or to the snow globe recording.
Snow Globes Granulator Demo 1
As I’ve mentioned in some previous articles, I have been working on a multi-media dance collaboration, Words to Dead Lips, with Annichia Arts since last December that has finally come to a close. We staged three performances at Intermedia Arts in Minneapolis this weekend to a mostly full house. My part in the collaborative effort was to produce the music, and I was given an open mandate to do so. As is my preference, I opted to perform the work to the dance and projected imagery, rather than submit pre-recorded material. Although I adhered to an agreed framework for the soundscape, the improvisational nature of this approach made every performance unique.
The main tool that I used to generate the sound was my Max for Live patch, Grain Machine that explores granular synthesis via a multi-touch controller. I loaded it with five samples including Snow Melting into Lake Superior, One Hundred Sounds in Eight Seconds, High and Low Frequency Drone, and a couple of others for the piece.
Another component to the sonic environment was the noise shield. This device, that I built into saucer sleds, was used by the dancers to synthesize sounds using body contacts and a light dependent resistor. Here’s a five minute excerpt of audio from the closing night’s performance.
WTDL Closing Night Excerpt
Here’s a new look at the Grain Machine M4L device. Since last time I have updated the device to allow drag and drop samples that are stored with the Live set, and added a visual for the filter that’s controlled by the accelerometer on the controller (iPad, iPhone, or iPod Touch).
The best thing about using this in Live is being able to live-loop and layer the output from Grain Machine into clips on different tracks, not to mention processing. Another advantage is saving the state of the device in the Live set so that one document has sample set X, while the next has sample set Y. Here’s a piece I created with the Grain Machine in Ableton Live using some samples I randomly selected from my sound library.
Grain Machine Layers