We only ever get fragments of our dreams, but that’s enough to haunt us. These slivers drift through our thoughts for days: loose imitations that stretch and compress and distort, but never fully recede from the mind’s eye.

I promise I’m not here to tell you about my dreams (I saw my old dog!). When I think about what granular synthesis sounds like, I think about remembering dreams: these little slices of audio that morph and fade and disappear only to reappear in a new form. Granular synthesis also reminds me of dreams in that there are only a few ways to achieve both. Well, for dreams, you just have to go to sleep, but for years, you didn’t have much of a chance to encounter granular synthesis if you weren’t an acoustics academic or a scientist in telecommunications.

In the late 2000s and early 2010s, the lion’s share of options for granular synthesis resided in the virtual applications. At the time, there wasn’t a specific product that went by the name “granular synthesizer”; rather, the technique was achieved by the use of several softwares in concert to achieve the effect. In the commercial space, Native Instruments was an early pioneer, offering granular synthesis capabilities in a number of its products like Reaktor, Kontakt, and Intakt; Reason's Malström and Ableton’s Warp function also enabled its users to dive in, but what you could do was limited, especially with processing power of the time.

The hardware world offered even fewer options. The Access Virus was one of the first nuts-and-bolts synthesizers to give fans a glimpse into granular with a so-called Graintable oscillator mode. There was the Make noise Phonogene, and even the unreleased Fragments Generator, a Pittsburgh Modular design released in 2012 that wasn’t a true granular synth, but approximated the effect with a short-burst generator and pair of notch filters.

Then in September of 2014, a little module by the name of Clouds was added to ModularGrid.

Breaking Down Clouds

In the words of Émilie Gillet herself, “Clouds became popular because there was no similar one in the Eurorack market. Even if Clouds has only the main granular mode, I think users like it.” The singularity of Clouds at the time of its release and for years after cannot be overstated in understanding how it became as revered in the synth world as a thick Juno chorus or MS-20 filter.

First, Clouds stood out from other sample-based granular processors because it was built for real-time audio manipulation. It’s fun to boot up a track and play with it to your liking, but you’re only editing the audio contained within that sample. Clouds lets you do that, but more exciting to Gillet and the legions of Clouds devotees is the ability to actively create a patch and then stretch and smear it in real time while playing—no "recording" or pre-preparation required.

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Clouds also presents something of an active competition between simple, tangible design and an expanded set of features. While Gillet went as far as to call Clouds a “mistake” in a Clockface Modular interview (I had to check both the English and French versions to make sure I read it correctly), the module itself is well-designed and inviting. The “Easter Eggs” and hidden features can seem daunting, but there’s a method to the madness; with that bit of knowledge in tow, the power of Clouds will become clear as day.

Let’s start simple. First, Clouds has a small sample memory that records the incoming audio for use in slicing and dicing. Remember the mention of dreams from earlier? In the same way that the short-term memory areas of our brain capture pieces of dreams, the memory bank of Clouds and granular synthesis writ large captures sections of audio to be replayed, stretched, and mutated. Clouds’s recording buffer can capture anywhere from one second (32kHz, 16-bit, stereo) to eight seconds (16kHz, 8-bit µ-law, mono) with four audio qualities selectable by the black button to the right of the front panel.

The array of small LED lights at the top of the module serve a few functions, but foremost, they’re your VU meter for the incoming audio. Volume can be adjusted via the In Gain (“Input Gain”) knob to the lower-middle left, with a range from -18dB to 6dB.

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The little black button to the immediate right of the LEDs allows you to cycle through the four so-called "Blend Modes" inherent in the original Clouds, the first of the module’s hidden gems. In each blend mode, the Blend knob and corresponding Blend CV input impact some aspect of the module's behavior. The first mode gives you a straightforward Dry/Wet mix; the second a Stereo Spread which implements random panning and balance; the third a control over the Feedback of the grains; and the fourth an onboard Reverb mode that lets you really wash the space out.

Grains of the recorded buffer are continually produced, and the streamlined selection of knobs provide multi-functional windows into your workflow. The Position knob selects the portion of the sample from which you draw your grains, and playing around with it yields stretched-back-in-time fun. Size gives you, naturally, grain size, in the amount from a scant 16 milliseconds of audio to a full second at lower audio quality settings. Pitch gives you control of, well, pitch, with no effect to the audio when the knob is at the 12 o’clock position.

Moving down, we already covered the In Gain and Blend knobs, but the two little buddies in between them offer plenty of potential. The Density knob elegantly offers both random and constant grain generation in one knob by starting at 12 o’clock with no generation and giving you random or periodic grain production if you turn the knob counterclockwise or clockwise respectively. Additionally, more grains are generated the further you push the knob. To its right, the Texture knob is one of the lowkey most fun controls and allows you to sculpt the envelope of your grains, yielding shapes from a soft and friendly bell curve to pointy triangles and boxcars.

Oh, did I forget about that big shiny button labeled “FREEZE”? Hell no I didn’t. Freeze lets you grab the last few seconds of audio input and keep it in the memory bank while shooing away any new incoming audio. This can be great for more typical buffer manipulation effects—allowing you to use Clouds as a sound generator/instrument in its own right, without the need for constant incoming audio.

Rounding out the module is a full suite of CV jacks corresponding to its controls (I find an LFO on the Freeze input to be quite fun). You also get stereo Ins and Outs as well as a 1V/oct jack that brings a welcome harmony to your various grains running amok. Speaking of grains: Clouds can produce 40 to 60 simultaneously, depending on the audio quality.

That's a little bit more fun than scanning through a sample on an SD card, huh?

The Many Open-Sourced Faces of Clouds

From the days when she was putting together soldering kits for her first desktop synth creations, Émilie Gillet always had an eye on keeping her work open to her fans and open to iteration. From her days as a software developer, the tenet of open-source work has shone through her work in Mutable Instruments. In posterity, you could even call the company name a consequence of that ethos: her instruments mutated based on what people added or modified.

It’s important to note that Mutable Instruments persists on shelves both analog and digital to this day, exactly because of Gillet’s fondness for open-sourcing. Companies like Tall Dog Electronics, Michigan Synth Works, and After Later Audio have continued the original MI designs, and Clouds in particular remains a mainstay amongst fans. However, we’re not just talking about Clouds, but also what came out of Clouds, both in terms of firmware and hardware revisions.

The first major firmware renovation came from composer and programmer Mattias Puech under the sinister name Parasites. Named so because its added functionality compromises a bit of audio quality, Parasites expanded on the four original modes and added a souped-up Reverb mode as well as a Resonator function similar to Rings.

Next came the Kammerl Beat Repeat firmware by developer and musician Julius Kammerl. In his version, Clouds benefits from a clock-synchronized engine that allows for real-time processing. Lastly, for the reiterated firmwares is the ominously-named SuperParasites, which essentially just takes both the Parasites and Kammerl Beat Repeat and houses both in the same module.

With new renditions of the firmware came new renditions of the hardware. Off the bat, the uBurst was a logical evolution that shrunk Clouds down to a snug 8hp. So then if we can go small, why not go large too? This was the thinking behind Supercell, a kind of Clouds by way of Elements leviathan that clocked in at 34hp and supported the newer firmware.

[Above: a smattering of Clouds-derived hardware designs.]

Naturally, the Supercell was then shrunk down to 14hp, the size of the original Clouds, and managed to cram in all that added functionality. Concurrently, Monsoon hit the scene and expanded the layout of the uBurst while adding clutch sliders that made the module (in this writer’s opinion) a lot more fun. Finally, the formidable Typhoon combined the fan-favorite layout of the Monsoons with the beefy functionality of the Supercell.

Confusing? Don’t worry, you’re not alone. The legacy of Clouds in the hands of third-party developers is tangled and involved. After seeing all of the Mutations that came out of her Clouds design, Gillet decided to take another crack at what a granular synthesizer could be.

Clouds Become Beads

Simplicity and tangibility are two principles at the heart of Mutable Instruments designs. To that end, Émilie found herself increasingly frustrated by the added modes and features and menu diving of her original Clouds. Enter Beads, the spiritual successor.

At a glance, you can see the family resemblance. Both have similar knobs and a semi-similar layout, but the difference here is that Beads leaves it all out on the field. Essentially, everything that you can or would want to do on Beads is available through immediate knob-turning and button-pushing.

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The workflow starts from the tiny button at the center of the module, selecting one of four audio qualities. In an improvement from Clouds, each mode also brings its own tonality, flavor, and reverb, framed as different types of “tape” in the manual. Density, Time, and Pitch should look familiar as well as the light-up FREEZE button, but new to Beads is a SEED button. This feature lets you choose from one of three available grain generation modes: Latched (default), Clocked, which gives you either probabilistic generation turned counterclockwise or division for an incoming signal clockwise. Finally there’s a Gated/Triggered mode, which only generates grains when the SEED button is pushed or when the SEED CV input receives a gate.

More newcomers include the novel “Attenurandomizers”, which give you external CV modulation turned clockwise and randomization turned counterclockwise. Also along for the ride are nifty little buttons to the left and right of the module which give you command over Feedback, Dry/Wet Crossfade, and the type/amount of Reverb.

Taken in totality, the added functionality is something of a nod to the various mods and updates visited upon Clouds by third parties as well as a step forward in Gillet’s own design sensibilities. Personally, I find myself torn between wanting functionality out the wazoo or a streamlined interface that’s just fun to play and easy to operate. Ultimately, I like to think that it means I find something great about every version of a module that has given me countless hours of exploring soundscapes and bathing in textures.

Today, opportunities for granular synthesis can be found everywhere from the Make Noise Morphagene to Ableton’s native Granulator. It’s an impressive, immersive synthesis technique and has duly emerged from the halls of academia and the labs of telecom companies to practice spaces and bedrooms around the world. So, the next time that you sit down to splice some audio into an array of strange, morphing, wondrous grains, don’t forget to thank your lucky stars that Clouds hit the scene and illuminated granular synthesis for everyone.