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Granular Synthesis using The Mangle - Electric Bass to Organ

22 December 2020

This is a short demo of a cool church organ sounding patch I created using the The Mangle granular synthesis VST instrument.

The source audio file is a recording of strummed power chords on my bass. You can hear the first strum played back in its original form at 1:10.

The dots on the waveform represent each individual grain. Velocity is mapped to the blue range at the bottom of the waveform - the higher the velocity, the closer to the attack of the bass strum, resulting in a brighter and louder sound, similar to the effect you would achieve turning on stops or turning up drawbars on an organ.

There is a preamp (Kush Audio's Omega TWK) and reverb (d16 group's Toraverb 2) applied as inserts.

Roughly explained, playing a note triggers lots of very short excerpts from the source audio file, according to the parameters I set. In this case, you can see the trigger rate for the grains (one grain triggered every 0.087s). The "moment" that a grain picks is randomized along the blue bar at the bottom of the waveform display, according to the velocity of the MIDI note: a higher velocity will pick a moment closer to the attack of the original strum, making the sound louder and brighter, as if you turned on stops on an organ, or turned up drawbars on a Hammond.

I used this patch on my piece Orfan during the buildup section from 3:05 to 3:40.

I like how it turned out a lot, so I'll probably use it often!

You can read up on granular synthesis on Wikipedia (of course): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Granular_synthesis

The Mangle is available to try and/or buy here: http://sound-guru.com/software/mangle/

Kush Audio - Omega TWK: https://thehouseofkush.com/products/omega-twk

d16 group - Toraverb 2: https://d16.pl/toraverb2