Sculpting the Sound Atom: Towards Per-Grain Parameterisation in Granular Synthesiser Design

Nathan Carter, Jim Murphy, and Mo Zareei

Proceedings of the International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression

Abstract

This paper presents a number of custom-designed granular synthesisers built around interfacing with sound grains on an ‘atomic’ level. Developed in Max/MSP by the first author (Nathan Carter), these synthesisers explore per-grain voice parameterisation that uniquely interfaces with individual grain signal processing properties in larger granular sequences. The paper outlines how these synthesisers provided the sound materials to compose Carter’s original soundscape work ‘Matter and Void’ – conceptually inspired by ancient Epicurean physics and painterly expositions on atomism in Lucretius’ poem ‘The Nature of Things’ (c. 55 BC).

Citation

Nathan Carter, Jim Murphy, and Mo Zareei. 2025. Sculpting the Sound Atom: Towards Per-Grain Parameterisation in Granular Synthesiser Design. Proceedings of the International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.15698817 [PDF]

BibTeX Entry

@article{nime2025_21,
 abstract = {This paper presents a number of custom-designed granular synthesisers built around interfacing with sound grains on an ‘atomic’ level. Developed in Max/MSP by the first author (Nathan Carter), these synthesisers explore per-grain voice parameterisation that uniquely interfaces with individual grain signal processing properties in larger granular sequences. The paper outlines how these synthesisers provided the sound materials to compose Carter’s original soundscape work ‘Matter and Void’ – conceptually inspired by ancient Epicurean physics and painterly expositions on atomism in Lucretius’ poem ‘The Nature of Things’ (c. 55 BC).},
 address = {Canberra, Australia},
 articleno = {21},
 author = {Nathan Carter and Jim Murphy and Mo Zareei},
 booktitle = {Proceedings of the International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression},
 doi = {10.5281/zenodo.15698817},
 editor = {Doga Cavdir and Florent Berthaut},
 issn = {2220-4806},
 month = {June},
 numpages = {5},
 pages = {150--154},
 title = {Sculpting the Sound Atom: Towards Per-Grain Parameterisation in Granular Synthesiser Design},
 track = {Paper},
 url = {http://nime.org/proceedings/2025/nime2025_21.pdf},
 year = {2025}
}