Mapping
Manual
Splinter is a granular synthesizer. It allows you to explore timbre and create sound effects from samples by waving your hands above the Leap Motion controller, 'strumming' grains with your right hand and controlling the grains' parameters with your left hand.
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Splinter is created based on research done on mapping strategies in digital musical instruments: the connection between gestural input data and sound generation parameters. Splinter[s] uses simple, one-to-one mapping of Leap Motion data to synthesis parameters, while Splinter[c] uses complex, convergent and divergent mapping. The tables at the bottom of this page show the exact mapping in each version.
Instrument control panel
Use this panel to initialise Splinter. Set your preferred audio output and I/O vector size (lower values will decrease latency but increase CPU usage), and track the CPU usage of Splinter's signal processing.
You can also activate and deactivate the Leap Motion tracking here if your spacebar is out of reach, switch audio on and off, and control whether grains are being triggered. This last option is useful when the Leap is deactivated, but grain triggering still turned on.
Grain control panel
This panel provides general settings for Splinter's synthesis. Choose how many grains can play simultaneously (more simultaneous grains uses more CPU time), activate the right hand's envelope selection capability (or choose envelopes manually, and set the master and reverb volume.
File selector
Browse folders or files to select audio samples, with drop-down menus for file type and sample selection from a folder. Alternatively, drop a file onto the waveform display.
Samples can be previewed using the play button, with a playhead that matches the waveform when maximally zoomed out.
Waveform viewer
This shows the left (top) and right (bottom) channels of the loaded sample. Use the hand tool to zoom in and out on the sample, and selecting a grain starting point with the cursor . Move the selection around with the drag tool , or your sample by drawing in it with the pencil tool . But be careful - any editing you do with the pencil is destructive, and can not be undone!
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The waveform viewer is the only object that provides visual feedback when playing the instrument; the length of the turquoise bar represents the length of the triggered grains and its transparency corresponds to the instruments’ output volume. High volume makes the bar opaque, low volume makes it transparent, and no output makes the bar disappear. The middle part of the bar is unaffected by volume, to always show the length of potential grains.
Splinter[c]​
Splinter[s]​
For more information on granular synthesis:
For more information on mapping strategies:
Controls
As shown in the diagram below, Splinter is controlled with both hands above the Leap Motion controller. Like with string instruments, the right hand excites the instrument and the left hand controls its parameters.
The diagram is an exact representation of the mapping in Splinter[s], but Splinter[c] has more complex connections. This is shown in the mapping table below.