Granular — grain clouds & textures

A granular sample player: instead of playing a clip straight through, it sprays many short, windowed grains read from one point in a clip, overlapping them into a cloud. Hold a position for a frozen drone, sweep it for a smear, or pitch the grains for shimmer. Great for textures, pads, beat-repeat stutters and lo-fi atmospheres.

How it works

slot selects a clip from the project sample pool (the same pool the Sample machine uses); it is p-lockable.
Grains spawn at a rate set by density (grains per second). Each grain is size milliseconds long and fades in/out through a raised-cosine (Hann) window, so overlapping grains blend without clicks. A grain that would run past the end of the clip is shortened to finish there, window and all.
position is the read point (a fraction of the clip) every grain starts from; spray scatters each grain's start randomly around it for a thicker, less static cloud.
tune pitches the grains (semitones); spread randomises each grain's pitch a little for a chorused / shimmering texture.
A global attack/decay amp envelope shapes the whole cloud, then level sets the gain.

Pitched: tune sets the grain pitch, and is p-lockable per hit like any parameter.

The grain jitter (`spray`, `spread`) is **deterministic** — the same sound plays the same cloud every time, so a pattern is reproducible.

Using it

Select a track, set its machine to Granular, and Load Sample a clip into its slot.
Set position to the part of the clip you want to granulate; raise density and size for a fuller cloud.
Add spray to thicken it, spread for shimmer, and shape the tail with attack/decay.
The grain tile draws size × density as a scatter you drag; the rest are their own handles. Every param is p-lockable / LFO-able — sweep position with an LFO for a moving texture.

Parameters

Param	Range	Default	What it does
`slot`	0 … (pool size − 1)	0	Which sample to granulate (p-lockable)
`size`	5 … 200 ms	50	Grain length
`density`	1 … 100 /s	20	Grains spawned per second (overlap / thickness)
`position`	0 … 1	0	Read point in the clip (fraction)
`spray`	0 … 1	0	Random scatter of each grain's start position
`tune`	−24 … +24 semitones	0	Grain pitch in semitones (p-lockable per hit)
`attack`	0 … 0.5 s	0.001	Global amp-envelope attack
`decay`	0.01 … 8 s	1	Global amp-envelope decay
`level`	0 … 1	0.9	Output gain
`spread`	0 … 1	0	Per-grain random pitch (chorus / shimmer)
`normalize`	0 … 1	0	≥ 0.5 scales the source to full scale (make-up = 1/peak)
`gain`	−24 … +24 dB	0	Manual gain trim (0 = unity)

Plus the shared voice chain — a filter or lo-fi stage pairs well with a grain cloud — and the velocity layers / round-robin map, drawn on the VELOCITY strip, for choosing the source slot by velocity or per hit.

Design recipes

Frozen pad — position fixed, high density, long size, long decay; add a touch of spread for movement.
Smear / wash — LFO or p-lock position to drift through the clip; raise spray.
Beat-repeat stutter — short size, moderate density, short decay; p-lock position per step to jump around a loop.
Shimmer — tune +12 and spread up for an octave-chorused cloud.
Lo-fi texture — add the chain fx_crush / fx_srr for a dusty, downsampled grain bed.

Notes & limits

Stereo playback with linear interpolation: grains from a stereo clip keep its left/right image; a mono clip clouds centred.
Up to 24 concurrent grains; very high size × density settings cap there (extra grains are dropped cleanly, never clicking).
The clip is resolved on the first render after a trigger, so a per-step slot p-lock takes effect from that hit.