Granular Rack

Granulator III is Live 12's native granular instrument: it plays grains from a sample (or from live input in Live mode) with Grain Size, Spray, Scan, pitch and FM, and it understands MPE out of the box. This rack wraps it with Spectral Time for freezing and Hybrid Reverb for space, so one pad plays a texture that can be a frozen pad, a stuttering cloud, a pitched drone or a rhythmic grain pulse depending on six macros. It is the go-to for ambient, trip-hop atmospheres, dub-techno background, cinematic drones and for turning a one-second field recording into a chord. Starting assumption: a 2–6 s source sample with some harmonic content (a vocal "ah", a piano chord, a bowed string); drums work but want shorter grains.

Layout

How it's built

1. Drop Granulator III on a MIDI track, drag a sample into it (a 3 s vocal "ah" at C3 is a good first source). Group it into an Instrument Rack (Cmd+G), name the rack "Granular Cloud" and the chain "Cloud".
2. Granulator III settings: mode Classic (not Live input). Grain Size 80 ms, Spray 40 ms (random offset per grain), Scan 0 (the playhead does not move on its own), File Position 30%, Pitch 0 st, Random Pitch 0, FM amount 0, Grain Shape around 50% (a rounded window; shorter ramps click, longer ramps blur). Voices 8, Spread 50% for stereo grain placement. Filter LP at 8 kHz, resonance low. Amp envelope: A 400 ms, D 1 s, S 0.8, R 1.5 s.
3. Enable MPE in Granulator III. Map Pressure → Grain Size (+40%), Slide (Y) → File Position (±20%) and Pitch Bend range 48 st for full-finger glides. On Push 3, each finger's pressure then changes its own grain size — the cloud gets denser under the finger that presses harder.
4. After Granulator III, add Auto Filter: MS2, Lowpass, 12 dB, 6 kHz, Res 10%. This is the Space macro's darkening filter; a reverb that gets longer should also get darker.
5. Add Spectral Time. Mode Freeze, Freeze off, Fade In 80 ms, Fade Out 200 ms, Spray 10% (small drift inside the frozen spectrum), Tilt 0, Dry/Wet 100%. When Freeze is engaged the device holds the current spectrum indefinitely — a true infinite sustain that ignores note-offs.
6. Add Hybrid Reverb. Algorithm Prism (bright, metallic diffusion suits grains; use Dark Hall for warmer sources), Decay 8 s, Pre-delay 30 ms, Size 80%, Blend 60% algorithm / 40% convolution (IR: a plate), Low Shelf −4 dB at 150 Hz so grain clouds do not build mud, Dry/Wet 25%.
7. Add Utility with Width 120% — grains are already stereo from Spread, this just lifts the sides. Keep Bass Mono on at 100 Hz if the source has low content.
8. Create a second chain, Pulse: duplicate the Cloud chain's Granulator III (Alt-drag), delete the other devices, and set Grain Size 15 ms, Spray 0, Scan synced to 1/16 so each grain fires on the grid, Grain Shape 20% (sharp). Add EQ Eight HP 300 Hz. Chain volume −6 dB. In the chain list set its chain-select zone to 64–127; Cloud stays at 0–127. Key zones: both C-2 to G8; velocity 1–127.
9. Enter Map mode. Position → both Granulator III File Position 0 → 100%. A single knob scrubs the sample in both layers.
10. Grain → Cloud Grain Size 5 → 500 ms and Grain Shape 0 → 100% (shape softens as grains lengthen). Below 20 ms grains sound like a pitched buzz at 1000/size Hz; above 200 ms they sound like overlapping samples.
11. Spray → Cloud Spray 0 → 400 ms and Random Pitch 0 → 30 cents. Spray spreads where in time each grain starts; the small random pitch adds chorus-like thickness.
12. Pitch → both Granulator III Pitch −24 → +24 st, macro centre = 0. The Pulse chain follows so the two layers stay in tune.
13. Freeze → Spectral Time Freeze (off → on, switches at macro 64) and Spectral Time Dry/Wet 0 → 100%. Below 64 the device is effectively dry; above, it freezes and takes over. Quantise your moves: the freeze captures whatever is playing at that instant.
14. Space → Hybrid Reverb Dry/Wet 10 → 70%, Decay 3 → 20 s, Auto Filter Frequency 8 kHz → 2 kHz. Three targets move together: more space, longer, darker.
15. Pulse mix → the rack's Chain Selector 0 → 127. Above 64 the rhythmic layer joins. Exit Map mode.
16. Randomization settings: exclude Freeze and Pitch (random freeze mid-phrase is a jump cut; random pitch kills the key). Save Macro Variations: "Pad" (Grain 60, Spray 40, Space 50), "Drone" (Freeze 100, Space 80), "Ticks" (Pulse mix 100, Grain 10, Spray 0), "Scrub" (Grain 20, Spray 10, Space 20).
17. Save as a rack preset with the sample. In Live 12, the sample is referenced; use File → Collect All and Save before taking the set to a gig.

Macro map

Signal flow notes

Grain size versus pitch: grains shorter than about 20 ms produce their own pitch at 1/size (10 ms → 100 Hz). Combined with the Pitch macro that is a second tuning system — tune the Grain macro to the key (e.g. 7.6 ms → 131 Hz ≈ C3) and the buzz becomes a note. Spectral Time's Freeze captures a spectral snapshot, so freezing a buzz gives a steady tone, freezing a cloud gives a smeared chord.

Variations

Live input granular

Switch Granulator III to Live mode and route the track's audio input from a eurorack voice, the TD-3 or a return. The buffer fills continuously; Position then scrubs the last few seconds of whatever you played. Freeze macro becomes the "catch that" button. Great for dub-techno chord stabs recorded on the fly.

Sampler-based fallback

No Granulator III (Intro/Standard)? Simpler in Classic mode with Loop on, a 30 ms loop length and Loop Fade at max, plus LFO → Sample Start, approximates a grain cloud. Add Grain Delay after for Spray. Much less controllable but the macro layout survives.

Rhythmic texture rack

Drop the Cloud chain's Spray to 0, set Scan synced to 1/8 and Grain Size 40 ms, and add Auto Pan-Tremolo (12.3) in Tremolo mode at 1/16 before the reverb. The pad turns into a gated, pulsing texture for industrial and techno. See industrial techno.

Drone chord rack

Add a third chain with Wavetable (Basics > Sine, Sub osc on) tuned an octave down at −10 dB, key-zone limited to C-2–C3, so low notes carry a fundamental under the grains. Map Space additionally to Wavetable's filter cutoff. See drones.

Vocal chop cloud

Source: a sliced vocal phrase. Grain Size 120 ms, Spray 200 ms, Random Pitch 0, Pitch quantised to the scale via Live 12's Scale awareness on the clip; use the Position macro as the main performance control and Freeze to hold vowels. See vocal chop rack.

Performance notes

• Push 3 MPE: enable MPE on the track (track input "MPE" in the I/O section) and on Granulator III. Pressure → grain size, slide → position, per note. The macros still work globally on top. Push 3 in Note mode with a chromatic layout; use a Scale set in the clip so wrong notes are impossible.
• Encoder page: macros 1–8 on the first page. Position and Space are the two you ride; Freeze is best on a pad (MIDI map the macro to a pad, non-toggle, so release = unfreeze).
• Macro Variations: "Pad" → "Drone" → "Ticks" works as a three-scene progression in an ambient set: establish, hold, rhythm. Recall from Push's device view.
• Automation vs modulation: in Arrangement, automate Position slowly (a 32-bar ramp across the sample) and leave Grain/Spray on the macros. For evolving textures without automation, add an LFO (M4L) device on the track mapped to the Position macro at 0.02 Hz.
• CPU: Granulator III at 8 voices with 500 ms grains and Spray is moderate; Hybrid Reverb convolution is the heavy part. Two Granulator III instances per rack is fine; four racks of this on stage are not. Freeze the track if you only need the pad as audio.
• Polyphony: keep Voices at 8 and the amp release at 1.5 s; long releases with high voice counts are where grain clouds go from lush to a wall.

Related

• Pads & atmospheres
• Textures, foley & noise
• MPE expressive sounds
• Drones
• Spectral processing
• Reverb & space
• Tuning, scales & MPE
• Pad rack
• Texture rack
• Ambient