spore! wrote:
> 
> Thanks to the latest issue of Keyboard, I'm finally learning what granular
> synthesis is all about.  After browsing through the Csound manual, it
> appears 'fof' makes use of granular techniques in building its data.

Hi Matthew,

There are 4 opcodes in the recent version of Csound that can be used
for various kinds of granular heaping: fof, fof2, grain and granule.
In the most recent version of Csound from Bath/Montreal (v 3.46)
there is also fog. It's a version of fof, but it's not documented yet 
(hopefully it will be soon).

The granular generators all have their peculiarities. 
   fof is only meant to use a waveform ftable (like a sine), but has
versatile and interesting control functionality, mostly geared towards
generating bandpass filtered (formant) tones.
   fof2 keeps all of that, and adds control over where in the ftable
each grain begins. This means you can use a recorded sound and do
cheapo timestretching, or just pick it apart. (it's my fav of the lot.)
   grain is the easiest to use, but each soundblip will begin 
reading the ftable from a random point, so no timestretching there.
   granule handles up to four different grain streams with individual
pitches. However, most parameters (including timestretch) must be set
at init time, so the only thing you can control during performance is
grain density.

If you are a Mac/PowerMac user, you might want to use the Mills version
- it seems quite popular. Not sure if all the abovementioned opcodes are 
included there however. 
Anyway, you should check out GrainWave, which is available from there.
Haven't used it myself, but it's somewhat popular at the studios where 
I work (play).

	Get it at ftp://www.mills.edu/ccm


Happy chopping.

	re