Granulator II – Robert Henke

Robert Henke is one of my biggest inspirations, both artistically and as an instrument developer. I’ve been following his career for a while now and this is actually the second post I make of him since a I started this degree. But this post is going to be focused in his M4L device Granulator II, one of my favourite tools to use in my creative practice. This device is also essential in Henke’s practice, using it to create a bunch of his work like for example in his Monolake records. More specifically he used Granulator II for his piece for sound diffusion, the composition is called Dust and its comprised of vast grain textures and repetitive motifs. I was very lucky to see a reproduction of this piece in the venue Stone Nest in central London, played in a diffusion system of 32 speakers. Henke’s website here.

Granulator II is a M4L device that utilises quasi-synchronous granular synthesis. It is a granular sampler that allows you to playback samples through notes and midi, with some granular manipulations control and a wide variety of modulation. Henke’s has been working in this device since the late 90’s and now its free to download with Ableton Live Suite. The following video explains how the device works and gives some examples of it. More information about quasi-synchronous granular synthesis here.

There is two main things that stand out for me from the Granulator II, that I find the most useful. First is what he calls Spray that is randomly triggered grains near to the position of the play head. If you increase the amount of Spray, the grains start to be trigger in wider positions from the play head. This control allows you to create interesting textural elements or pads, from recordings of a percussion. In the video above you can see how Henke does this with the recording of a gong. Secondly, one of the most useful functionalities of this device is that it can be played quite easily as an instrument. It has amplitude envelops that shape the sound to be more musical. It also has great midi integration and polyphony, allowing the Granulator II to be played with a keyboard and building up chords with it.

For my device I would like to implement some sort of Spray manipulation, just as in the Granulator II. Instead of giving the user a knob for them to change this parameter, I would like to have custom modulation of this parameter that creates interesting results, and hiding this from the user. This conveys my concept and at the same time creates interesting timbral results.