I tried your example, but I used 3 instances of granular. One with a piano, other with a voice choir and other with a patch that is kind of a low wind/Storm rumble. And besides the effects you mentioned I used a little of saturation for warmth . Became just epic. Thanks for your video and advice.
You can also feed these Granular soundscapes into impulse responses (dripping water, rain, bonfire, glass breaking, eta) Omnisphere has a lot of these built inside it! That gives the Granular soundscape a lot more movement. I do it all the time! Also try resampling them and adding them to different Sampler VSTs or devices like CMI V, Synclavier V, Kontakt, eta! These all have a distinct character to them!
Another similar trick is using field recordings and a vocoder setup to use the field recordings to play the pad which is also super fun/weird. I do need to experiment with CMI resampling though, I've done that a handful of time with drums and stuff and it gives some wicked results.
@@josephchandler1220oh, you, oh you. The CMI Is One of the best i know to sample stuff into, if you have it still i would also recommend using the built in sequencer to sequence your drums. It creates come beautiful warm percs.
i really enjoy listening to pads made in pigments and falcon really loud while at my front door doing ass yoga after taking Laxatives, sorry ive been indoors to long
If you're looking for a granular engine, Alchemy (stock logic plugin) has a granular synthesis engine. Although it's unavailable for other DAWs, logic's price is on par with some synths and that's with everything included.
dude, you literally have the best youtube channel i think. it always have good valuable information which is presented in an organized way and very understandable. and you are funny but you dont over do it all time. and your voice is top notch man. love you!
I usually am able to figure out my way around plugins but man Ribs defeated me lol. It's too bad cause it does appear to be pretty powerful but man it was NOT very easy to learn, so I picked up Pigments off Splice
I have a late-2013 macbook, i7 quad, and it runs well 👌 If I need several Pigments instances on a project, I just sample the sounds I create or export tracks in audio.
Pigments is great for ambient stuff. The first ambient track I made was using 3 instances of Pigments without any automation. It plays itself, if you set it up right. It's awesome.
So it's not free but Fragments by arturia is amazing. I'm also really picky with my granulizers (FL Granulizer was the best I used but since I switched to Ableton, I had to find an alternative). Fragments is the easiest to use while getting amazing sounds right away. I also have portal but for granular, I prefer this one (plus normally it's cheaper than portal)
Lovely stuff, sir! Any chance you've done sound design work for KV331 Audio(or will do so in the future?) Reason I ask, is that I recently purchased Synthmaster 2, as I fell in love with some of the presets from the Player version. Once I began digging into SM 2, I discovered...much to my dismay, a rather large portion of the presets are these monochromatic chord/arpeggio disaster pieces that are replete with unwanted bleeps, bloops, waggles, farts & various other grotesque sounds. Sadly...I am not a sound designer, but a tweaker and I am not quite getting my money's worth out of Synthmaster. I have high hopes for the upcoming Synthmaster 3...but in the interim, I would like a lot more usable presets to go monkey-shit with...ya dig?
Great tutorial. I picked up pigments on Black Friday last year and have only used a couple of tweaked presets. I was a little intimidated by the interface so still haven’t done a deep dive. I picked it up mostly for ambient pads and landscape textures so this helps.I usually drench my pads using Valhalla delays and reverbs since they turn any type of pads into instant God mode. Time to play.
Glad you enjoyed the video! Pigments is a beast and has a LOT of features under the hood. Perhaps at some point in the future I'll do some new Pigments content to break down some of the features and some ideas on how to use them.
Hi Cameron! I want to have the exact sound that you made. I used a piano melody (from MIDI) as a sound. But the problem is come with very very different sound with you. Can you help me to identify what's the problem? Thanks in advance
omg,cameron has become a philosofer (stone) lol,anyway,great,i have pigtails 2,great synth,also recommend avenger,and arturia's V collection,the soft synclavier is out of this world :-) great tutorial on how to use pigments cameron,learn a lot from videos like this,thanx
Synclavier is a beast from the V Collection for sure - still hurts my head a bit when you really dig into all that it can do haha. Glad the video was helpful!
PolyGas is another free granular synth. I've always found it a little overwhelming to learn but the few presets are pretty nice, "Secret of Winter" especially.
@@VenusTheory Well darn lol. I'm running the latest version, 2.4, in FL 20 fine, but I don't think it's been supported for a few years now. Thanks for all the awesome videos btw! :)
That was a highly useful tutorial. I should probably use a purer wave file. I used a highly processed preset from another synth. It wasn't a bad result in Pigments, but I can't wait to try other sounds. As for CPU usage (running an AMD Athlon 64 Vishera 6-core): The initial note hit about 25/26. Jumping to another note made CPU usage rise to about 42 until the first note faded out and it dropped back down to 25/26. For my next trick: learning how to make the best musical decisions so I can bounce to audio and stick with what I have instead of constantly changing my mind and having to delete audio, change the MIDI, and bounce/freeze again.
Ribs is free and seems very powerful if you can wrap your head around it, but honestly the interface is strange and the fact you have to use it as an insert effect and not sound generator makes it very confusing. I gave up on it and bought The Mangle, it is pretty straightforward and quite impressive after a few days of using it.
Yeah I was about to suggest Ribs in the video but honestly it's so convoluted that I didn't bother haha. It's capable of some really cool stuff but not really 'plug and go' or beginner friendly. Heard very good things about The Mangle though - I'm sure you'll enjoy it!
If you have the full version of Kontakt, Rigid-Audio.com has a number of cool granular based instruments that can be had for super-cheap on sale. Aquiver and Atheos are pretty cool. I think aquiver was 4 euro on Sale over the holidays.
Really getting into granular synthesis thanks to your videos, settled on Quanta for making these sort of pads. I was just wondering if there's any external synths you (or anyone else in the comments) would recommend for this sort of ambient music? Been playing around with my mate's Behringer Model D but despite its brilliance it's hardly ambient hahaha. Cheers
Glad they've been helpful! In terms of hardware there isn't too much I know of that does granular outside the Blackbox from 1010 Music, Waldorf Iridium (upcoming), and the Tasty Chips GR-1. For my own productions for ambient stuff, I really enjoy my Novation Peak and Waldorf Blofeld. Might be grabbing an ASM Hydrasynth or a Waldorf Iridium in the future though. Another great purchase to keep in mind might be the upcoming MOD Dwarf pedal which offers a modular effects environment that you could use with any synth to build some cool ambient machines/sequencers/etc, and it also has some synth engines of it's own!
i think polygas is pretty decent. there is a vst version of paul stretch. otherwise cecilia is pretty good but you should know that :] keep up the good work :)
Hi ! Thanks for the tutorial, great video. I just didn't understand something, but it's just pigments related. I can't drag & drop the sample like you did in the video. I have the latest version of pigments and I'm in Studio One (the drag & drop daw), but I can't do that. Is this possible only in Bitwig ?
Yo! I know Cubase actually has some similar weirdness at times if the samples are in certain directories. You may need to drag it in from your sample folder directly instead of from the timeline in the DAW. If that still isn't working though I'm not really sure haha - perhaps contact Studio One support and they might be able to clarify why drag/drop doesn't work in all cases.
@@VenusTheory Hi ! I tried the standalone version and it works fine, so I guess it's a Studio One problem. I contacted Arturia to see if they can resolve it from their side. If they don't I will contact Presonus. Thanks !
@@VenusTheory given the opportunity - if I may ask - I am a Mac user since ever (graphic designer, using Mac since 1987) but I am considering of using a PC for Adobe's suite also. I have recently purchased Logic, which - as I feel it of course - is very straightforward, user friendly and easy to understand and I can share the licence with my daughters also for the same price!. I am just an amateur but I want to be able to use a DAW also on Windows. To also encourage my daughter to eventually use it. As things are going so bad in Greece, the only affordable DAW for me and for her now is REAPER. Do you think I can adopt and understand the functionality? At first glance, thinks were not so obvious as with Logic X. Can you recommend another DAW which is as "you just do" as Logic Pro? Or if I give Reaper a chance I can work with it just fine?
@@VenusTheory Yes please! It has a few unique quirks as well which I really like! And thanks for all the amazing and to the point content. Love the channel!👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻🙏🏻
Quanta is basically a free granulator, the only catch is that the free trial only lasts 30 minutes before you have to open up a new instance, just Mae sure you bounce it out.
Wow, this was absolutely amazing! I'd never heard about the concept of granular synthesis before! Could you get close to this with a hardware synth, or is this something you absolutely need granular synthesis for?
Yo! Well, there are a few granular hardware synths (microgranny, tasty chips gr-1, waldorf quantum I believe too) so there is that option. However, generally speaking, software is going to be significantly cheaper and probably offer more really haha. Granular is quite a bit of fun and there's not really anything else that sounds like granular synthesis. With some hardware samplers though that allow for extremely short sample loop lengths, you more or less get a 'granular' synth with a single active grain as Granular and Sampling are very very similar processes, just different in how they produce the end result.
morning coffee, upbeat bluesy folksy guitar, post apocalyptic bunker infiltrated by radiation glow of nuclear winter, and no green plants in the background wtflsakdfjlsdk;as;d idk what im supposed to think
Is anyone else having trouble producing sounds this way that are remotely in tune? This sounds amazing but I can’t get it to play nice with the rest of a track.
Hi, i can't say they are finished (and cool ? i don't know :) ) songs but here is my examples from UVI Falcon and New Sonic Arts Granite Falcon-1-Don't Look Bach: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-wPFOBhEY4Xk.html a whole song in the Multi Granular automating and also modulating the Position parameter and modulating the filter and gain parameters to create various background textures behind the simple arrangements (a piano and a bass) in this one i also used Zynaptiq Pitch Map to lock to scale (C-Am) of the Falcon's output. Falcon-2-Freeze in the Phrase: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-wjMXwWuPepI.html a whole song in the Multi Granular automating and also modulating the Position parameter and modulating the gain parameter to create various background textures behind the one-same piano phrase. New Sonic Arts Granite in action ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-8FFLWv5KnBs.html (a little extra info: i am using Reaper and its Lua Extension called LBX Stripper to store and recall the Vst Parameter values and modulations via Stripper's Snapshot system .. Hope make sense.) Cheers!
@@VenusTheory glad you liked, Thank you so much ! .. anytime you are welcome. btw.except the "WORK" playlists mostly the experimental / having fun stuff .