Granular synthesis

Granular synthesis (aka Brassage) is a sound synthesis method for digital musical instruments (synthesizers) that operates on the microsound time scale. It is often based on the same principles as digital sampling but often includes analog technology. The samples are not used directly however, they are split in small pieces of around 1 to 50 ms (milliseconds) in length, or the synthesized sounds are very short. These small pieces are called grains. Multiple grains may be layered on top of each other all playing at different speed, phase and volume.

Further reading

• Roads, Curtis (2001). Microsound. Cambridge: MIT Press. ISBN 0262182157.