gRainbow: A New Perspective on Granular Synthesis
The world of music production is constantly seeking new tools to expand its sonic palette. Granular synthesis, with its unique ability to break down sound into microscopic “grains” and manipulate them, is a powerful method for creating textures, atmospheres, and unexpected sounds. However, traditional granular synthesizers often have their limitations. Pitch variations in the input audio can lead to unwanted dissonant sounds. This forces users to limit themselves to short clips with a single pitch, which narrows the sound possibilities of the instrument. Often, manual pitch matching of the input clip is required for correct note playback via MIDI, which can be a tedious and monotonous process. In addition, pitch shifting is usually done using time stretching, which can create unwanted artifacts with significant shifts.
Innovative Approach of gRainbow
It is to overcome these challenges that gRainbow was created. This synthesizer uses intelligent pitch analysis to select the best “candidates” for granular synthesis or sampling directly from an audio file. Instead of simply taking grains from any position, gRainbow searches for those areas of audio whose pitch harmonically matches the desired note.
This approach has several significant advantages:
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Harmonic Accuracy: gRainbow automatically finds audio segments that harmonically align with the MIDI input, guaranteeing a clean and musical sound of the grains without the need for manual alignment.
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Working with Longer Clips: The plugin encourages the use of longer and more varied pitch audio files, opening up access to richer timbres and textures from a single source.
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Minimizing Artifacts: By generating harmonics that are already close to the target pitch, gRainbow avoids excessive time stretching, reducing the number of unwanted artifacts during pitch changes.
How it Works: From Analysis to Sound
The gRainbow workflow is intuitive, although based on complex algorithms:
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Loading Audio: You start by loading an audio file into the plugin.
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Pitch Analysis: gRainbow performs a detailed analysis, segmenting the clip into discrete pitch areas.
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Finding Candidates: For each note (out of 12 in the chromatic scale), the plugin finds up to 6 positions in the audio file where the pitch harmonically matches that note. These are your “candidates”.
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Settings: The user can fine-tune each note and its “generators” (which create grains from selected candidates), changing various parameters.
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Saving Presets: All your settings can be saved as a preset for future use, avoiding re-analysis and quick access to your favorite sounds.
Key Terms of gRainbow
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Notes: One of the 12 notes of the chromatic scale. gRainbow currently repeats its single octave over all MIDI notes, although future updates may include an extended range.
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Generators: Responsible for creating grains for a specific note from a specific position in the audio clip.
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Candidates: A set of suitable positions in the audio clip where the pitch is harmonic with a specific note. These are the sources for your generators.
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Parameters: Organized hierarchically. By default, a global value is used, but it can be overridden at the note or generator level. The lowest level value that differs from the global (generator -> note -> global) is used, providing flexibility without unnecessary complexity.
gRainbow is available in VST format and is compatible with Windows (64-bit), macOS, and Linux operating systems. This makes it a universal tool for musicians and sound designers on different platforms. Discover new possibilities of granular synthesis with gRainbow – a synthesizer that listens to your audio and transforms it into harmonious grains.
