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Free SpaceCraft Code to the First Responder/ Let's talk SpaceCraft and Granular
( I had to change to first responder as I figure you guys will sit around waiting for the fifth spot. What was I thinking?)
Hey, I got a free code for Spacecraft from Mark Watt. I will pm the fifth responder to this thread with the secret code. I had emailed a question and he responded immediately. [email protected]. A really nice guy. I know he would be open to any questions or comments you might have to offer.
I bought SpaceCraft after accidentally inputting Tardigrain into Cubasis. It coupled with a jazz improvisation (Laughin' With Monk). The result was unexpected and really worked.
I just wondered how folks are getting along with it. How does it differ from other granular synths? How would you differentiate the granular and its uses from other types of synthesis? How have you used it in your tracks?
How would you characterize the sound? It seems capable of a kind of primeval grandeur not found elsewhere. I often search for pads that give an epic feeling. Seems more possible in granular for some reason... At least to me. Kind of like looking thru a magnifying glass makes an ant terrifying... By George... That's what the darn thing is!
Please post your granular and especially SpaceCraft tracks!
Here's my first use of a granular (TG)...
Comments
First responder. Does that make me a fireman or something
It means you get a nice two engined spaceship to go with your rather meager looking meal @ecou. Code sent! Best.
Thank you so much!
I actually love to use Spacecraft as kind of a meditational tool. Especially when I am on the road. Just capturing sound while sittin in the bus or train and then drifting along, finding interesting spots in the sound. It really helps me when I am stressed out and once it even helped me quite a bit to fight against an attack of anxiousness. The immediacy of the controls really helps to make it a playable instrument.
If you don't have it and have $7 and have the day off get it. Because Granular!
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/spacecraft-granular-synth/id1391256308?mt=8
My guesses about Granular sound?
They can include a lot of hiss, white noise, upper frequencies that are dissonant.
This hissy sound can sound like bursts of wind near your ears and I think these types of sound seem like outdoors and very natural in that sense.
They make great pads but the bass notes also have strange powers.
The "SpaceCraft Granular Synth" makes granular immediately useful just by sliding your finger over the imported audio sample to select a "grain" (small audio fragment) used to generate the sound.
Then "Spacecraft Granular Synth" adds a great little step sequencer "spreadsheet" where you pick a box and get a repeating note. Great for making an ostinato bassline or pattern. But what about polyphony... STOP there's more.
Open the second complete "Spacecraft Granular Synth" and create a competitive sound that can be aligned to generate notes with the original craft or shift to a new tempo to create poly rhythms.
You never need to leave the page to create a driving raging looping pattern.
Then it also responds to MIDI in to be a playable instrument.
It's one of the best examples of a single page: synthesizer, step sequencer app that's also playable externally.
Don't like the sound? Import a flute sound (yes... it records audio in) and pick a nice sounding flute segment. Play a flute. Works for any app sound you like (using AB3 or AUM to make the connections) or by picking a wave file up.
I used it over a LumBeats Drummer to make an "Chase Sequence" pattern using a very early release that didn't sync the two synths I think so the 2 repeating sequences are just close but not exact. Is it my music? Well, I pushed the buttons. It's actually @deltaVaudio's little slice of genius.
SpaceCraft can do granular and sample(?). The grains can be quite long.
The sequencer was for me instant gratification.
Then I tested it with my Linnstrument in MPE - Mark Watt is very enthusiastic about it - and discovered why it is called SpaceCraft. It takes you to the stars.
I have a playlist in Soundcloud with some jams. Nothing special but I enjoyed playing a lot. This one was for my daughter:
Is there any code left ? 😁
Sweet give a way !
Spacecraft.... Where to begin...
It's simply amazing. There is nothing quite like it and the way mark is developing spacecraft to work with mpe is truly powerful. The creative possibilities are endless and it's always a joy to just open up spacecraft and jam out, either with the built in sequencer or with the roli seaboard.
I've been creating some great arps, poly rhythms and soundscapes with the mpe and now I'm beginning to design leads and bass riffs ,...
It's my go to synth these days
Great ambient constructions! Nice slow builds. The closest stars appear to be about 8-12 minutes away. Lovely, trance inducing, non-looping music.
SpacesCraft Ganular Synth - $7 to reach the stars
Business Class Vessel
Linnstrument - $1,499 does MPE input
Coach Vessel
KB-1 MIDI Keyboard $10 does MPE input
I saw this earlier and almost added four responses! but decided against making a mockery of your generosity
Ah, @Oblique, I knew you were out there!
@tiantong, you fortunate fellow, a Linn! Can you post a little about your experience with it? And a lovely clean track. Thanks!
Thanks @McDtracy , I always learn from you and the hours you must put into this stuff,
@johnba, sorry, babe, the one code was for me but I had already bought it. And not sorry I did,
{HUMOR INTENDED}
Please mock the @Linearlineman and his re-gifting "generosity". He craves the attention and loves a good round of mutual abuse (Circle-Jerks? too much?). He's rolling in Turkish Lira but with Turkish inflation... sad. We might need to have a fund raiser for him to upgrade his speakers this year. His controller costs more than the rent on my first apartment for 3 years in the early 1900's - an example of a useless fact.
FACT CHECK: The rent went up %500 in the first three years but the math involves multiple additions and ya-da, ya-da so it was probably closer to 18.54678 months using 30.41666... days in a month. Wow everyday includes an infinity of 6's. In C Major that would be an A=440 hum. Weird.
If this thread extends to 3,000 posts of @LinearLineman mocks it will encourage him to re-gift more Apps when he begs for a code and then just buys the App anyway.
@McDtracy , I am already considering asking Mark for a couple more codes. Mocking, shmocking, I don't need to show you any stinking mocking shmockings!
[HUMOR INTENDED... we talk like this off line]
Mark can pass out the cookies too you know. What he needs is more customers you socialist. Rent? Heard of the concept?
No come back for the Circular Jerk aspersion? Cat got your keyboard?
[HUMOR OFF]
CONTEXT: We're both retired.
Love me some SpaceCraft, been using it in most of my songs since it was launched although Im starting to diversify a bit now. Made an albums worth on ambient I need to organize and release, most are on SoundCloud already.
The soundtracky one below is a favourite, I started with a SC jam using both parts live, then I set drums and other sounds to it after. The 3 note arpeggio sounds cool with the 4/4 drums on top, I think that makes it 3/4 or 6/4 maybe?
@McDtracy ... No getting round it, I would know a circular jerk when I saw one, and we don't fool around like this. When we pm it's all business and blues.
You're kidding, right? It's hard to tell. Do you still do business? Can you play the blues?
{I'm kidding... I know you're a white dude without much soul which the blues requires and I'm a white dude that sold his long ago to mammon rather than become an artist}.
@LinearLineMan - If we can keep this up Mark will make $15 today with additional sales
because everyone here has SpaceCraft.
I meant we talk about iOS and cry in each other's beer, @McDtracy ... there, now everybody knows! Yeah, Mark should definitely not quit his day job, but he sure has created something bee-yuh-tiful.
Winner. Great post, friend.
SpaceCraft is lovely, really easy to get some very nice sounds. It is, perhaps a bit of a departure from “classic” granular synthesis, but considering classic granular tends to the experimental or academic more traditional tonalities aren’t a bad thing, just different.
Classic granular deals with clouds of microsounds, typically 1 - 50 ms, the idea being that the individual grains are not distinguishable, but from the cloud the aggregate character emerges. Typically, those grains are sampled stochastically from a source, again adding to the indistinct tendencies.
SpaceCraft differs in that a good portion of the grain control window has grain lengths that are clearly discernable snippets of the source audio. Also, the grains are individually played instead of “smeared” in a cloud of grains. Finally, the sampling is deterministic, with regular LFOs oscillating from the selected point instead of random selection.
This is not to say SpaceCraft is wrong, it’s a different approach that yields more controlled and traditionally musical results. Contrast this with Borderlands Granular which has a more “classic” granular approach (microsounds, layering of grains, random selection of grains from within a bounding box). Amazing and beautiful instrument, but it does tend towards more abstract sounds.
Even the sequencers of both emphasize their different approaches:
SpaceCraft has an arpeggiator that plays traditional pitches in series.
Borderlands has a motion recorder that captures your movements of the grain clouds traversing the samples.
Because you’re sampling another sound source, it’s very much dependent on what the sample is. That said, because of the discontinuities and/or layering, it will tend towards a more harmonically dense sound. Also, by virtue of the grains / clouds, it’s a bit harder to get sharp, clearly defined sounds (when you do get this with SpaceCraft it’s typically because you’ve stretched the grain out to a larger, defined snippet of the source). As such, granular synthesis is typically used for more pad-type sounds whether sustained or pointellistic.
Instruments like Quanta, tardigrain, iPulsaret use granular synthesis as the oscillators of more traditional synthesizer engines. Here, you can get whatever you want, as the granular cloud is pitched and further shaped with filters, envelopes and other modulation. Still, it will tend to more harmonically rich sounds than traditional subtractive synthesis that starts with a sawtooth wave.
For SpaceCraft, as a background pad sound. One tip: use a sample of the song you’re working on as the source for the granulations, especially the main melodic line. This retains a harmonic echo of your track, but recontextualized. It also helps keep the sound from overwhelming the rest of your track.
I’ll often do this live with Borderlands as it can continuously sample a defined-length buffer. So the granulations are a real-time processing of another source, providing a fractured “echo”.
Granular is the sound of swarms, of aggregate actions, like a wave crashing on a shore. Yes, it can be epic! But, depending on how you use it, it can also be indistinct, a fog in the background that makes all the colors bleed together.
Excellent information and advice w.r.t. Granular Apps and SpaceCraft Granular in particular. It is exceptional musical while many of the others are exceptionally "different" which can be a good thing but not to everyone's taste.
I was also wondering, with an app like SpaceCraft at what grain size does it become sampling...and could I get in trouble for it
@aplourde, great post! Many unfamiliar with granular will now understand a lot more. This should go on @McDtracy's FAQ thread... or better yet, a new category. @michael, can you hear me. I am knocking on your door!
I got an email from Mark Watt. He is developing a MPE function for an update and also getting it to work with KB-1. He seems to be working on other interesting stuff, too. He is definitely an innovator.
Hey. It was intended to be the Forum FAQ Finder thread (3F's). So, when someone asks the same old question we can suggest they FAQ First Friend (3F's). Rude? Probably.
OK. You're probably just trying to give me some credit. Sorry.
You'll still write, McD, 3F one this will ya? (Delegation is the key to empire).
While I have the mic: What's the best DAW for Polka Music?
FAQ Off.
I've only had it for a couple of months so I'm still getting used to it. I used to play bass, 20 years ago, so the grid is precious to me. In a keyboard I can't see the notes.
What I find most difficult is key pressure. By the way, SpaceCraft's beta version in MPE mode has a nice note pressure indicator (it is one of the modulation sources) so I use it as "training" device too.
It plays really well with Animoog. In non-MPE mode you can use it with whatever: synths, drums, CC faders.
I'm not ready yet to post a track, even less ready for it to be clean and/or lovely. Sorry.
You and @McDtracy are training in the same zen school? Only Rinzai people talk like you do
@McDtracy, I'm in my mid 40s. A Linnstrument and a blackout tattoo is how I deal with it.
KB-1, at 10$ will cover the synths I happen to be using. Besides I cannot rest in it, there is no place for doubt.
Well this is a nice thread!
@aplourde that was a very interesting post. It's true that in many cases SC is not doing proper granular synthesis. The way I programmed the granular engine and interface gives the option to use lower frequency grains which tends go more into 'sampler' territory.
However, if you move up to the top right of the grain panel you get highest frequency grains with maximum overlap. Behind the scenes there is also a hardcoded grain timing randomisation algorithm that avoids any phasing artefacts. So when you are playing in the top right of the grain panel I think you are then in typical granular synthesis territory (but I'm no expert on the academic side of granular!).
Regarding MPE I'm working on a big MPE-oriented update that I'm REALLY excited about. I'm also collaborating directly with the Geoshred team to make sure they work well together (now that Geoshred is AUv3). Anybody with MPE hardware is more than welcome to join the beta to try it out! So far it has been tested on Seaboard, Roli lightblock and linnstrument.
This is huge! I'm going to test the beta to see what "glides" and subtle vibratos sound like in SpaceCraft (mostly) Granular. I think your decision NOT to use strict Granular techniques helped make it stand out as a synth. I bought it when Granular went exponential along with Tardigrain and have since added a couple more as sales made them attractive. But SpaceCraft just sounds thicker and now I can see why. I always pick from the core (close to the X axis) of the sample. When I reach for the edges (large plus or minus Y values) I loose interest in the tone but might use those sounds for drones or sound effects if I was scoring a film.
The GUI is genius even on an iPhone you can make something fast or be amused at the DMV (Department of Motor Vehicles) where you might face 2-3 hour wait times.