Skip to content

Your first sound

This page takes you from opening Grainsmith Field to a sound you can play with. It covers the standalone app on iPad and iPhone in version 1.1.2.

What you see when it opens

Field runs on one landscape screen. There are no tabs and no pages to dig through on iPad. From top to bottom you get the top bar, the waveform, the four control panels, the four XY pads, and the scrub deck.

Grainsmith Field on iPad: top bar with Presets, transport and gear; a waveform with the amber grain cloud; the Main, Reverb, Grain Shape and Morph panels; the four XY pads; and the scrub deck with the Freeze button.

The app opens with a sample already loaded, so you can make sound right away. If the built-in sample ever fails to load, the waveform reads "Drop a sample or tap Files" and you load your own audio first (see Load your own audio).

Make a sound

The transport starts stopped. Tap the play button near the top-right of the top bar to start playback. Grains begin spawning and the amber grain cloud animates across the waveform. Tap it again to stop.

That is the whole loop: audio is loaded, grains read from it, and you hear the result. Everything else on the screen shapes those grains.

Move around the sound

The waveform is a play surface, not just a picture. Touch it and drag left or right to move the read position. The grain cloud follows your finger.

Two more ways to move the read head live on the scrub deck at the bottom:

  • Scrub rockers sit in the bottom corners. They are spring-loaded: push one and the read position moves forward or back; let go and the rocker springs back to center. Push a rocker further to scrub faster.
  • Freeze is the button in the center of the scrub deck. Tap it and the read head holds its current position, so grains keep spawning from one spot in the sample instead of moving through it. Tap again to release. Freeze holds even while you scrub.

Shape the grains

The Main panel holds the five controls you reach for most. Drag a dial up to raise its value, down to lower it. Double-tap any dial to snap it back to its default.

Dial What it does Range Default
Size Grain length. Higher is longer, smoother grains; lower is short, clicky ones. 5 ms – 1500 ms (log) ~137 ms
Density How many grains spawn per second. 1 Hz – 512 Hz (log) ~42 Hz
Speed Playback rate through the sample. Center is stopped; right plays forward, left plays in reverse. −200% – +200% +100%
Jitter Random timing offset added to each grain, for a looser, less metronomic cloud. 0 – 500 ms 50 ms
Spread Random stereo placement per grain, from mono to a wide cloud. 0 – 100% 20%

Speed is a center-detent control: the value arc grows outward from the middle, so you can feel your way back to stopped or to full-speed forward.

The other three panels are next to Main:

  • Reverb has two dials, Reverb (how much) and Space (the size of the space).
  • Grain Shape picks the amplitude window each grain plays through: Soft, Round, or Sharp. Soft grains fade in and out gently; Sharp grains have hard edges.
  • Morph is the single gold knob. Turn it up and it pushes nine grain settings at once along a curated path, so one gesture makes a big move. It offsets from wherever your own dials are set, so turning Morph back to zero returns everything to your values.

Pitch and level

Two vertical ribbons sit to the right of the waveform.

  • Pitch transposes the grains. The center is unison; drag up or down for up to two octaves either way. When you let go, the ribbon snaps to the nearest note allowed by the current pitch mode (set in the gear menu). In Free mode it does not snap.
  • Level sets the output level. The top of the ribbon is unity (no change); drag down to bring it down toward silence.

On iPhone the Level ribbon moves into a compact layout, and the Reverb and Grain Shape controls live in an Advanced popup, but the controls themselves are the same.

Load your own audio

Two ways to bring in your own sound:

  • Drag and drop. From the Files app in Split View or Slide Over, drag an audio file onto the waveform and release. Field loads it.
  • Import from Files. Tap Presets in the top-left, then "Import audio file…" and pick a file. Field accepts audio files through the standard iOS file picker.

Once your sound is loaded, press play and start shaping it with the dials and pads.

Where to go next