Grain Controls

Overview

The Grain Controls are the first stage of the granular engine, where Lucid breaks the incoming audio into grains and shapes each one. Beyond setting how often grains fire and how long they last, you can reshape their envelopes and loosen their timing, creating everything from sparse, rhythmic textures to smooth, cloud-like ones.

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1. Grain Rate

Sets how frequently grains are generated. The available values depend on the selected Grain Rate Mode.

Use slower rates for spacious textures and rhythmic effects, or increase the rate into the audio range where overlapping grains blend into a pitched, oscillator-like sound.

2. Grain Rate Mode

Selects how the Grain Rate is calculated. Each mode generates grains relative to time, tempo, or pitch.

• Free: Sets the grain rate in milliseconds, independent of project tempo. Ideal for natural, evolving textures and traditional granular processing.

• Synced: Locks the grain rate to musical note divisions for tempo-synced rhythmic effects.

• Straight: Uses only straight note divisions.

• Triplet: Uses only triplet note divisions.

• Dotted: Uses only dotted note divisions.

• Scale: Locks the grain rate to the selected musical scale, keeping pitched grain tones in key. At higher rates, the granular engine behaves like a tuned oscillator, with the input audio acting as its waveform.

• MIDI: Follows incoming MIDI notes, allowing the input audio to be played melodically. The control adjusts the pitch offset in semitones. Refer to your DAW documentation for MIDI routing instructions.

3. Grain Size

Controls the duration of each grain.

When Grain Size Link is disabled, the value is measured in milliseconds. When enabled, Grain Size is set as a ratio of the current Grain Rate.

Longer grains create smoother, more continuous textures by increasing overlap, while shorter grains produce more percussive, gated, or textured results.

4. Grain Size Link

Links Grain Size to the current Grain Rate.

When enabled, Grain Size automatically scales with changes to the Grain Rate, maintaining a consistent grain density as the rate is adjusted or modulated. When disabled, Grain Size and Grain Rate can be controlled independently for a wider range of sparse or densely layered textures.

5. Grain Window Shape

Adjusts the envelope shape applied to each grain.

Positive values produce flatter envelopes with longer sustain and faster fades at the edges, resulting in fuller, more sustained grains. Negative values create sharper, triangular envelopes with a shorter, more percussive character.

At slower Grain Rates, this primarily affects each grain's envelope. At audio rates, it also influences the harmonic character of the resulting sound.

6. Grain Window Skew

Offsets the balance between the attack and decay of each grain's envelope.

Negative values emphasize a faster attack with a longer decay, while positive values create a slower fade-in with a shorter release, producing swelling or reverse-like textures.

7. Grain Rate Jitter

Adds random variation to the timing of individual grains.

At 0%, grains are generated at perfectly regular intervals. Increasing the value introduces progressively more timing variation, creating looser, more natural rhythms. At higher Grain Rates, Jitter can also introduce additional texture and noise-like characteristics.