Higher-order granulation re-granulates already-granulated sound to spawn new mesostructures

Higher-order granulation (regranulation) is a method of spawning new granular mesostructures out of old ones by granulating one or more already-granulated sound files. Because the input is itself grain material, the output can be many times the duration of the original and can develop new phrase-level articulation — for example, a single stream of granulation using large grains and a sharp attack envelope breaks a continuous stream into discrete chunks, and if that stream has wide amplitude variation each chunk gains its own dynamic articulation, creating articulated phrases. Applied recursively it yields successive orders of structure, letting a composer grow large forms out of small granular seeds.

Examples

Roads’s chain Now (2004, a regranulation of Volt air) -> Never (2010, a third-order granulation of Now) -> Always (a fourth-order granulation), each generation adding mesostructure.

Assessment

Explain what makes granulation ‘higher-order’ and why re-granulating grain material can produce phrase-level structure that a single granulation pass cannot.