grains

grains

A six-voice granular sample player for monome norns.

Load or record up to six voices. Each voice runs several layers that drift and collide inside the section you set, so a patch keeps moving without ever repeating exactly. Somewhere between a drone, a tape loop and a chord that never quite settles. Shape it by hand or let randomize do the work. A happy accident machine.

Effects include plate reverb, delay, shimmer, chorus, tape, glitch, spiral, sub, wavefolder, bitcrusher, resonator and ring mod. You can morph between two states by hand or with an LFO, and there is a seamless loop recorder.

Everything runs from the norns keys and encoders. A grid is optional.

Still in development, so things might change. :)

requires

• norns or norns shield
• grid (optional)

install

From maiden:

;install https://github.com/danielrigler/grains

Restart norns after installing or updating.

controls

Start here: K1+E1 sets Density, the number of layers spread across the loaded voices. At zero you hear nothing. K1+K2 fills the voices with random files from your audio folder, or set a folder under PARAMS > SOURCE.

Encoders

E1	Master Volume
E2 / E3	Section start / width of the selected voice
K1+E1	Density
K1+E2	Add/Remove Layers
K1+E3	Add/Remove Voices
K1+K3+E1	Tuning
K1+K3+E2	Energy
K1+K3+E3	Pitch Change
K1+K2+K3+E1	Scale
K1+K2+K3+E2 / E3	Voice Spread / Layer Spread
K2+E1	Shuffle Volumes
K2+E2 / K2+E3	Selected Volume / Other Volumes
K3+E1	Shuffle Pitches
K3+E2 / K3+E3	Selected Pitch / Other Pitches
K1+K2+E1	Tilt EQ
K1+K2+E2 / K1+K2+E3	HPF / LPF
K2+K3+E1/E2/E3	Reverb / Delay / Shimmer

Keys

K2 / K3	Select Voice
K1+K2	Load Random Audio
K1+K3	Randomize
K2+K3	Lock Selected Voice
K1+K2+K3	Reseed Voices
K1 hold	Morph Toggle
K2 hold	Record to Voice
K3 hold	Record to New Voice
K1+K2 hold	Freeze Voice
K1+K3 hold	Freeze All
K2+K3 hold	Undo
K1+K2+K3 hold	Redo

Grid

rows 1-6	voices: press to move the section, hold + press to set it
rows 7-8	up / down per column
columns 1-11	reverb, delay, shimmer, dimension, chorus, vibe, wobble, crush, spiral, sub, glitch
columns 12-16	region LFO, volume LFO, reseed / randomize, volume, density

Press both keys of a column to reset it.

pitch

Pitch is relative to the source audio, so any sound works, not just notes. All voices and layers move in steps of the selected Scale and stay in key. Voice Spread sets how far apart the voices are, Layer Spread how wide the intervals between layers are.

To keep the original pitch, turn on Original Pitch under PARAMS > VOICES. Choose the octaves scale to keep the original note across different octaves.

notes

• The more voices you load, the fewer layers each one gets: 14, 10, 6, 5, 4, 4.
• Long files are sliced. Slice Length under SOURCE sets how much is taken, from a random position.
• Recordings and loops are saved to dust/audio/grains/.
• The reverb is a stereo plate inside the engine, so recorded loops include it. To use the norns system reverb instead, set Type under PARAMS > REVERB.
• Locked voices are kept when you randomize. While a voice is locked, Randomize keeps the key too.

credits

• grains by @dddstudio
• inspired by and based on Graintopia by @infinitedigits
• plate reverb adapted from fx_dverb by @sonocircuit, after Jon Dattorro's design
• contains code generated by Claude