Cloning one particle into a repeated stream builds a pitched tone from a single grain

Particle cloning synthesis constructs a sustained tone or tone pip by repeatedly copying (cloning) one sound particle end-to-end over a chosen duration. The particle may come from any source - transient drawing, an extracted sample transient, pulsar synthesis. Because the repetition is periodic, the number of clones equals the total duration divided by the particle duration, and the resulting pitch is set by the particle period: a 10ms particle yields a 100 Hz tone. Above about a 50ms particle period the repetitions no longer fuse and the result flutters rather than sustaining. The cloned tone is then shaped: amplitude-enveloped, pitch-shifted to the target pitch, and bandpass-filtered. The technique elevates a micro-scale particle to the sound-object time scale and is typically a manual, sound-editor process, well suited to fabricating unique singularities.

Examples

Extract a 35ms particle from a drum sample, clone it 50 times to make a ~200ms tone, pitch-shift up two octaves, add a slightly delayed second channel, and apply an exponential decay envelope to form a distinct pitched sound object.

Assessment

You clone a 20ms particle to fill a 2-second region. What fundamental pitch results, and what happens perceptually if you instead use a 60ms particle? Explain in terms of period and perceptual fusion.