Grain Science
| Category | Price | Seller | Device |
|---|---|---|---|
| Music | $9.99 | Wooji Juice Ltd | iPhone, iPad, iPod |
• Palm Sounds App of the Week (Christmas 2011) • iDesignSound App of the Week (January 2012) • “I ----ing love this thing!” — Discchord video review •
Grain Science is a beautiful synthesiser for iOS. Designed for musicians, soundscape artists and SFX engineers who want to go beyond our Sylo Synthesiser, Grain Science is built on similar principles of granular synthesis, but is vastly more powerful. Unlike many “experimental” granular apps, Grain Science mixes it up with traditional synthesis techniques to bring you an exciting hybrid synthesiser.
Use the built-in waveforms, or record or import your own — then use the sophisticated grain engine to create something completely new from them! Grain Science is easy to get to grips with, but offers lots of depth to explore: instead of offering one or two LFOs, almost any parameter in the system can be programmed to vary over time in complex ways.
Using careful optimisation techniques we provide two grain units per voice, which you can combine for morphing or complex modulated sounds, then send through a configurable FX chain. Pick any 4 from the collection of FX units (including various types of distortion, high- and low-pass filters, phaser, flanger, chorus, resonance and echo), and connect them up in any order. Other audio tweaks include soft loop, reverb, glide and supercharger controls, and the ability to affect granular synthesis in realtime (live grainbending).
Also featured are an arpeggiator with both chord and step-sequence modes; Core MIDI support, including Virtual MIDI, background audio, and “tap & twist” learning for setting up controls; and a customisable performance screen with a collection of XY Pads and wheels.
Rounding it off, Grain Science plays nicely with others: Dropbox, Twitter and email integration are all included, for sharing or exporting your waveforms, recordings of your performances, and instrument (patch) designs. And now featuring Audiobus support to stream your performance live to other compatible apps!
Hear Grain Science in action at http://soundcloud.com/wooji-juice
Reviews
great tone workshop
3pine
Amazing reverb, have had the app for 7years and learned overtime much about the morphological beauty of granular synthesis. Certainly not ABSOLUTELY perfect, but 95% of it is. The most notable thing is the reverb disengages upon a notification or phonecall, but to get it back engaged, one simply moves the “gain” or “wet” reverb parameters a wee-slight bit, then the reverb is fully present most importantly, the way you had it set originally. The one issue I wish wooji juice to buckle down is the “arppegiator” tempo really isn’t fully accurate, and it seems only explained by comparing how powerful the synth and signal path can be that maybe there isn’t enough left in the App to ensure real time BPMs. I love the idea of the parametric sequencer but it’s under the same clock issue so i don’t use it because it can’t articulate smooth parametric changes if the clock isn’t on time. One of the many home runs is the “lock” for the keys, and the “chord” arppegiation which can be used to compose MASSIVE drones and soundscape, morphing guitar sweeps(if you record into the mic) and sequences that take about a month to cycle through. Combining that with the most notable tool, the parameter LFOs found on about 90% of controls(including flange and chorus rate for doppleresque effect!) you can modulate both octave and pitch with their own respective wave shapes and make sequences last over a year, see you next thanksgiving! The xy section is a truly advanced area and should come way after one grasps the apps main functions, along with the ribbon controler. One more occasional glitch occurring during looping grains can be heard to shift harmonics for no reason, so just switch out of the synth mode during looping and switch right back, glitch erased. so these two glitches can be worked around, i would ask apple to implement a sixth star if you make the clock keep accurate BPMs, but pretty sure your over it. I’ll still enjoy the inter dimensional sounds coming out of this phone, regardless. thank you.
Interesting!
Eriptron
Just bought it. Sound is descent. One thing right off I noticed is once you get to the last screen, of which there are 11, to get back to the first screen you have to go back through all the screens in linear reverse order. Needs to wrap from first to last and last to first otherwise live performing can get cumbersome. Sometimes there is audio noise when switching instruments and there is always audio noise switching instruments if you are playing a note when switching instruments. That is a serious problem. I find the 11 screens unworkable unless you plan not to change anything while performing. Try going from Grain Unit 1 to either performance pads and back without missing a beat. Now as a "sound lab" it can definitely make some really intriguing sounds but as a performing instrument I can't see this filling the bill very often.
I'd like it a hole lot more if...
CHOMPY007
...it didn't hang when unpacking samples off Dropbox. I should be able to cancel an unpack rather than watch it grind forever. I tried closing the app by double clicking the home button and relaunching, but the app reopened and was still in unpack mode. Grrrr. All I could do was delete the app and reinstall, which is pretty shoddy. I can see lots of potential, but until I can load samples in without hang, it's almost a waste of $10. But, I guess they already have my money now. :)
Outstanding Update!
vurnt22
Was a little on the fence about Grain Science; this update got it a star .5 boost from me.
Elegant, powerful, off the hook!
Soft Machine
Hard to put this thing down. The UI is wonderous and contains an incredible depth of control without losing the user in a dungeon of fiddly lists. The approach to sound shaping really makes other apps look 2D. This thing is at least 4D. See the fine reviews from Sonic Touch #6, discchord, and Touch Producer, then buy it and smile. Thanks Wooji!
really cool, could use a few changes
steubig
had this for a few days now. already making sound/music (which is the point) with some very cool sounds. caveats (room for improvement): 1. layout of the pages (scrolling to get to x/y pad) makes this less conducive to live performance than i would like. let me explain. to load a sounds, you have to be on the far-left page, to get to the x/y pads and wheels you have to go to the far-right page. in my opinion, it would be better to have the patch load/select page and pad/wheels pages directly next to each other and have the programming pages as pop-up pages. this would make it easier to do this stuff on the fly. 2. it would be nice to have an indication (a dot or something) of where you are on the x/y pad. 3. the auto reset on the pads doesn't really seem to take you back to the original setting (least ways for me it doesn't). makes performance a little trickier. all in all, i was really excited when i saw this reviewed and picked it up right then. there is some great stuff in here, so don't be put off by my caveats . . . just hoping this feedback helps improve an already stellar ipad synth
Love this alot
Mic Gee$
Although I feel the gui is a little too travely... This synthesizer is inspiring Surreal And reminds me a bit of the roland vsynth mixed with a bit of absynth ...but dont get confused it is its own device. If you design sound, work on movie atmospheres, horror sound design, sci fi ...well welcome aboard!
Doesn't fit iPhone screen
Appitap
Waste of money. It doesn't fit the screen. You cannot switch to anything. I can see half of 4 buttons in the top screen but I can't press on them. This is not ready yet :(
iPhone 4s
Tripinside
This is a great app. At first I thought it wasn't working correctly, you can only see half of the function tab on the screen. But you need to swipe down the mini-keyboard to get to the functions.
Buggy?
Buddy Lingus
Had some initial issues when playing the default preset... popping in the audio and a crash... but subsequently playing with some of the other presets I have not had the same issues. I know granular synthesis can be CPU intensive, and I'm getting some cool sounds out of it... So I'll delay passing full judgment until I've had a bit more time with it.
