Sometimes, looking back at pioneers can be nostalgic. “Back in my day,” goes the story, “electronic composers were real electronic composers.” But then you hear from someone like Curtis Roads, and his mind-blowing ideas are coupled with a belief that we’re only now reaching the Golden Age of electronic sounds. Rory Ahearn writes to share the latest episode of the show Motherboard on VBS TV, which talks to composer Curtis Roads. Roads was ground-breaking in his early granular synthesis work in the 1970s as he continues to be today.

You may have heard about Pure Data (Pd), the open-source cousin to Max/MSP and a powerful tool for visual programming or “patching” music and multimedia. Pd has even appeared in the iPhone app RjDj and creating generative music for EA’s hit game Spore. But actually learning how to use the thing? Or learning some of the more advanced possible techniques in sound synthesis and processing? That’s another matter.

I think we’ve reached a geekdom singularity. Nintendo Wii controller + physical computing + OpenSoundControl + Mac + Kyma granular synthesis = Star Wars lightsaber sounds?

Nicely done, Matteo Milani! More details from these Kyma sound synthesis experts at Unidentified Sound Object, which also has lots of resources on sound design in general on the main blog.

Ready to do this yourself? Full details on how-to at kyma-tweaky, the Kyma collective, for users of this advanced DSP-powered synthesizer.

This demonstrates the potential power of granular synthesis, so geeking out aside, there is something to be learned here. What’s fascinating is just how much power it takes to reproduce the original sound, which was far simpler (and yet still sounds better). Sound designer Ben Burtt explains:

This is by far the most exciting free-plug release so far this year. It’s comparable to Reason’s Maelstrom, but allows one to import any .wav files (mono only) into the plug for manipulation.

Audio Demos:
Grain_Demo_1.mp3
Grain_Demo_2.mp3
Grain_Demo_3.mp3
Grain_Demo_4.mp3
Grain_Demo_5.mp3
Grain_Demo_6.mp3
Grain_Demo_7.mp3
Grain_Demo_8.mp3

Direct Downloads of plug + support files:
Grainz_0-1-0.zip
Granular.zip
SKGrains_manual_draft.pdf

Developed by Sknote

Ed: Some really fasinating ideas here: 1 pluck oscillator, physical modeled, plus 2 graintable oscillators, and interaction between the two, plus filters and multi-stage envelopes. Future versions plan an arpeggiator, control matrix, bow model, and other features. The developer has some other interesting plugs, though thanks to Adrian for sorting out the links — site is a bit disorganized. Now go enjoy! -PK