Granular Synthesis II
Through humanity’s quest to mimic sounds of nature, combined with constant technological breakthroughs, granular synthesis emerged as a powerful tool that renders tonal, atonal, abstract and sometimes entirely synthetic soundscapes that have no counterpart in nature.
The first part of this talk, presented at ADC 2025, provided an historical overview of this technique. It traced origins to early tape machines with rotating playback heads to generate grains, do frequency shifting, and layer textures.
Building on this foundation, this talk will examine some experimental and some purely synthetic granulation methods such as glisson, trainlet, and pulsar synthesis as described by Curtis Roads in Microsound, alongside particle systems and cloud generators as natural extensions of the idea of a “grain”.
This talk will be an aurally rich experience and will involve a series of audio demonstrations that hopefully leaves you with a deeper appreciation of its influence on glitch, IDM, techno, ambient, and modern electronic music.
Avrosh Kumar
Research Engineer
Pindrop
Avrosh is a Research Engineer and a fledgling audio plugin developer based in New York, currently working at Pindrop. He has over nine years of experience in speech processing, deepfake detection and voice-biometrics with focus on analyzing challenging, noise-addled real world voice interactions. He earned his Master's in Music Technology from Georgia Tech in 2017, building on a strong foundation in digital signal processing and machine learning. His current interests include sound synthesis techniques and electronic music history. Outside of work, he enjoys playing cricket on Sundays and making pizzas in his wood-fired oven.