Granular Manoeuvres: The ReFill of Your Dreams

Mike McKew is an audio engineer and producer from the Washington DC area. As a musician for over 10 years, he has gained valuable insight into many aspects into audio, with a particular affinity for Reason. 

Video overview and sound demo:

Review:

It’s tough to create inspiring and compelling sounds. Anyone who has sat in front of one of Reason’s amazingly capable synthesizers with a blank stare knows what I’m talking about. Synthesis is a deep and complex topic, and it can take a lot of time and practice to get the results you want.

Luckily, in the Reason-verse, we have the ReFill format to help us out. This allows brave souls to take on the work of creating truly exceptional sounds so that the rest of us can get on with making music.

The Granular Manoeuvres ReFill by SKP Sounds is a dream. I was actually on the search for a ReFill just like this, as I’ve always listened in wonder to the beautiful sounds of Boards of Canada and similar artists. You can pick up the ReFill here for £14.95 (a little under $21).

If you are looking for ripping, dirty, aggressive leads and other sounds, this is not the place for you. The place that this ReFill takes you is much more relaxed than that. When I play through the sounds included in the ReFill, I instead imagine a boat on a lake, reading  on a bench in a garden, or camping in a forest. Every sound is tranquil yet rich.

Here you get 250 patches, all for Reason 10’s Grain synthesizer except for 50 Combinator patches which are built off of Grain and other stock Reason devices. Of course, you also receive the 50 waveforms used in the patches. The categories break down as follows: Ambiance, Bass, Combinator, Leads, Movement, Pads, and Waveforms. All patches are normalized to -12dBFS to ensure you don’t accidentally melt your ears when flipping through patches. Of course, each patch is ready to go right out of the box with mod wheel routing and the Combinator patches take full advantage of the buttons and knobs on the device.

For the sounds themselves, I really feel like they fill a sort of niche that needed to be filled. They are all very wide and airy, with plenty of reverb and delay to keep them ringing out for quite a long time. Inspired by the likes of Boards of Canada and Aphex Twin, you will find yourself in no short supply of wavy and grainy goodness with this ReFill. When Nick from SKP Sound Design asked me if I would review this ReFill, I had high expectations; I love that style of music. I must say I was blown away after trying it out. The sounds really hit the nail on the head in terms of style, with each one sounding totally different but cohesive within the context of the set.

Every sound is inspiring. Every patch I loaded up, I could hear a whole world behind it. Each one deserves its own attention. The patches display a masterful knowledge of granular synthesis, with clever uses of the granular engine, the mod matrix, and the built-in effects. From rich ambient soundscapes to lush and rich pads to dreamy leads to rock solid basses, this ReFill really has everything you need.

One thing I really enjoyed doing with this ReFill was using the patches to “make my own” versions. Grain is a uniquely-positioned synthesizer for this technique due to how it loads waveforms. Essentially, you can just load up a patch, navigate to the Waveforms folder, and drop a new waveform into Grain while retaining the original settings. All of a sudden, you have a whole new sound ready to go. You can also try this with Combinator patches: load one up, replace one or both (there are usually two instances of Grain in the Combinator patches) Grain patches with one of the existing ones from the ReFill, and you’ve got something entirely new. This is fun to do with all sorts of ReFills, but I didn’t come across anything that sounded bad when I was playing around with this one. On the contrary, some very inspiring sounds were created.

For the price, this ReFill really can’t be beat. Nick, the mastermind behind SKP Sound Design, is a new entry player in the ReFill field, but he obviously knows what he’s doing. This is a solid package, and the price is right. I think an artist could easily base their entire sound around this ReFill, perhaps with the right set of drum samples.

I am super excited about this ReFill, and I truly hope that you check it out.