Connection between circuit bending and granular synthesis?

[impaler42]

I was wondering if someone could elaborate on the connection between circuit bending and granular synthesis. I know circuit bending has had a long history and granular synthesis is somewhat more recent development. I'm just now starting to collect some circuit bent drum machines and I noticed that much of the sounds resemble the types of sounds you can generate using granular synthesis. I've always thought of granular synthesis as being restricted primarily to software, but it seems like (and correct me if I am wrong here) hardware granular synthesizers are often based around circuit bending simple sound generating units. I'm just trying to clarify my understanding on how these two very cool forms of sound generation might be related.

[Hybrid88]

Very different things.

Granular synthesis is basically short samples of audio sliced and diced, rearranged and manipulated.

Circuit bending is changing the circuits of a synth to do something wildly different, generally experimental rather than by the book electronics theory.

So yeah, if you have a synth that has PCM samples and you bend it to repeat and manipulate said sample I guess you could call it granular in a roundabout kind of way.

[impaler42]

Yeah I get that they are very different. I guess I'm just wondering if circuit bending a digital synth with PCM samples, as you were saying, qualified as a form of granular synthesis.

[Hybrid88]

Sure yeah, I guess it'd be a rudimentary form of it