5.2 Extending the use of granular synthesis
 

There are many areas that still require looking into in the world of granular synthesis. Barry Truax has suggested looking for new ways of defining grain contents, and organizing granular textures. (Truax 1988: 25) This area has been explored for some time now, but due to the atomic structure of granular synthesis, this area is of near infinite proportion. A question arises when investigating this area. Are new contents and algorithmic ideas actually producing anything new? This is debatable. Essentially the sine grain is the most pure impulse of sound. Using this it should be possible to create or recreate any type of sound or texture using the parameters available in granular synthesis. In reality the technology available is not able to do this yet. This means we must go beyond the sine grain to create certain textures and sounds. This limitation has already been realised, which is why the search for new sounds continues. As control over granular textures improves though the need for new contents should diminish, then again by the same token it may increase, due to ease and creativity.

The use of wavelets as a compositional tool, as mentioned in chapter 2, lies as a vast new area awaiting in-depth research. Indeed any new idea for changing the shape of a granule of sound would provide a large platform for further investigation

As for algorithms, they are the means of gaining better control over granular textures and as such need to be explored. Rather than exploring algorithms for grain order though, it may be more useful looking at clusters and how to organise grains into clusters that produce certain effects. This could begin by building a set of clusters or gestures that can imitate the phonetic alphabet, such as is done with FOF synthesis, but with a little more reality. As with chemistry, one must start with the basics and build up. If granular synthesis can be compared to the atomic theory then it would make sense to create molecules or clusters with the atoms before one tries creating anything bigger. This is best achieved through devising algorithms as the control would be too fine for a human to control. Of course there are many types of clusters that could be created, the alphabet is just a starting point. Then there are higher level algorithms that can be created to control the clusters. Using the alphabet again as an example, it may be useful to create algorithms that sort the clusters to create words. This would probably involve using synchronous granular synthesis algorithms for creating the clusters and asynchronous granular synthesis algorithms to lay out the clusters.
 

Another area that needs work is within the real-time use of granular synthesis. For the general computer user, the option of real-time is still very limited. Computers are much faster now and can process phenomenally faster than imagined. This has meant that many people can work at home on Csound and other synthesis programs creating granular textures. But many programs cannot work in real-time, the ones that do are largely unreliable (Appendix 5).
 

Working in real-time is not essential, but it does improve the conception and realisation of textures. This is due to the practical nature of working in real-time. When working in real-time it is possible to change a parameter and receive instant feedback. This will allow the user to become used to the controls very quickly. It will mean that different textures are quicker to create and recognise. When working in non real-time, making changes to algorithms and grains is a mechanical process which then needs to be executed before the results are even known. The action, delay, and reaction process that evolves through such a process interferes with ideas. Results that may have been achieved could be substituted for a lesser quality.
 

Barry Truax spoke on real-time granular Synthesis:

....Curtis Roads had done it in non-real time, heroically, hundreds of hours of calculation time on mainframes, just to get a few seconds of sound. He had done that, but it remained a textbook case. As soon as I started working with it in real time and heard the sound, it was rich, it was appealing to the ear, immediately, even with just sine waves as the grains. Suddenly they came to life. They had a sense of what I now call volume, as opposed to loudness. They had a sense of magnitude, of size, of weight, just like sounds in the environment do. And it's not I think coincidental that the first piece I did in 1986 called Riverrun which was the first piece realized entirely with real-time granular synthesis.... (Iwatake 1991).
 

Unfortunately whilst there have been real-time granular synthesis programs since 1986 such as the PODX system, they have not been widely available. The main reason is due to that fact that most home computers still can't handle that kind of processing. Hopefully with the new wave of computers that are coming out, there will become programs available that can handle granular synthesis in a real time environment. This will excite more people into realising the potential of granular synthesis, because lets face it, composers and musicians don't get excited by numbers on a page, they get excited by what they hear. This is something that has become integral in music for two centuries now. It is what motivated the imaginative revolution, known more commonly as the romantic era. Nietzsche described music as a force to seize hold of the heart and introduce the listener and indeed the composer to crystalline ecstasy (Wilson 1987: 1). Music is not music until it heard. Using a real-time environment would also increase the potential to make sound clusters, and experiment further.
 

That last thing that should be mentioned is texture. This idea has already been looked into previously in this thesis, but like grain contents and algorithms this area is also vast. It needs to be examined as a large field of infinite proportion that is capable of producing anything. All the previously mentioned algorithms and clusters can be implemented in the exploration of this territory. Granular synthesis has for a long time been divided into two separate sections, the orchestra and the score, or the sound and the structure (Truax 1990: 120). This is just following the original conventions of music. Composers write a structure, whilst the musicians make the sound. Using a texture as a musical terms requires changing the way one thinks of music. The texture is the score is the orchestra. It is a single entity. It has many parameters which have been defined in granular synthesis, maybe there are others that still need defining or at least refining.