I thought it would be interesting to see what kind of sounds I could create if I fed recordings of shortwave radio through a eurorack granular processor. Of course it won’t be the same as feeding a real signal through as there isn’t any chance of the random, but nonetheless it’s still an interesting simulation of what could happen.

To create this I used a module called radio music by music thing modular to play back the recording. The module acts as a virtual radio where, with the turn of a knob, you can change between different recordings uploaded onto the module, or ‘radio stations’. I also set the playback mode to loop so it felt like a continuous signal. From there I had this plugged into a granular processor. Controlling size and texture of the samples were 2 separate triangle LFOs that were oscillating at different rates, to create a wide and steady variation in sounds the granular processor produced. These were both plugged into an attenuator which can invert the signal going through them form positive to negative which I varied throughout. On the processor there is a volt per octave input so I connected a noise source to this so the granular samples playback at random pitches because of the random voltages produced by the noise source.

Listening back to the recording, I found it channeled the same organic random feeling, just like listening to the original recording. When the granular processor catches and samples the low tones of the radio broadcaster’s voice it creates quite an eerie, ghostly sound which I thought sounded nice. When recording this I played around with the density knob on the granular processor as well, this decides how many samples are played back. With the knob turned all the way up it creates an interesting drone that reminds me of how aliens communicate in the game halo. You can hear this in effect at 1:03 for a few seconds. Overall I found the sounds to be quite messy which led me to think having a radio signal passing through a granular processor may not produce the most interesting or enjoyable sounds in the world, although, at the time I did have a lot of fun trying it.