A granular instrument that plays a guitar recording as a cloud of tiny grains. Pick a take, place the playhead, and play the keyboard to turn a moment of that recording into a pad, a stutter, a drone or a shimmer.
Grain Mini is the original, time-based version of Maru's Granular instrument, kept playable while Granular itself moves on to a different way of choosing grains.
The idea
A granular instrument does not play a recording from start to finish. It pulls many short slices, or grains, from around one point in the take, fades each one in and out, and overlaps them. Hold the playhead still and a single instant of a chord becomes a sustained sound; let it drift and the recording smears forward or backward in time.
Density and Size together decide what you hear. Few short grains are heard one by one, as a stutter. Many long ones overlap until the source stops sounding like a sample and becomes a pad. Spray keeps a frozen cloud from turning into a buzzing loop.
