While we’re in the sample recording phase I thought I might start developing the patches I’ll use to process the sounds Bryan gives me on the 20th.  Here is a modification of a simple generative patch I made for a piece called Growing I finished recently.  Growing is entirely synthesized, but I wanted to see if I could move the things I liked about it into granular territory for this project, since I won’t be working with any synthesized sound.  The patch I’ve started is pretty straightforward, but I’m happy with the direction it is going so far.  Here’s what it does:

1. a sound in a buffer can be played back granularly at different pitches.  i’m using a fixed grain length and jitter amount right now, but I may make it more flexible down the road depending on the sounds I end up working with.
2. the pitches are generated by an extremely simple algorithm that cycles through the first three partials of the overtone series.  growing uses the overtone series as its harmonic world too, and I’m having fun exploring similar ideas in a totally different sound world.  well, not totally different, but different.
3. there are larger “grains” that control the larger changes, each note is just a sine volume envelope whose pitch changes every time it starts over from zero.
4. the pitch is also shifted continuously away from the perfect intervals of the overtone series - the beating and dissonance I think ends up sounding pretty okay!

It sounds more complicated than it really is, it’s probably easier to hear what I’m talking about than read about it.  Click the grey play triangle above to listen.  The source sound for now is an A440 I recorded at a Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra concert a few days ago with my micro cassette recorder.