JohnKramarchuk - "Head, Heart, Hole"

Head, Heart, Hole.

1: Loss and Acceptance. For the things I can’t change. Three layers of improvised Viol Da Gamba and a pulsing filter built with Max/MSP. Inspired by the melancholy of Early English Music.

2: Evolving Drum Probabilities. Using Max/MSP, I built a Drum Machine and three Granular Synths that work on probability. The user programs a basic beat and probabilities dictate what happens next. The Granulators are playing a 12 second sample of an acoustic guitar with all six strings tuned to C.

3: Searching. The piano is yearning for some accompaniment; none to be found.

4: Benjamin’s Kite. Inspired by the story of Ben Franklin flying a kite into a thunderstorm, this piece features a generative, interactive Max/MSP patch that produces a real-time score for the Viol da Gamba to realize. Aside from the Viol all the weather sounds, wind, rain, thunder etc are produced in Max/MSP. Recorded ‘live’, one take, no post editing.

5: Dementia. Another Max/MSP patch designed to imitate the processes of Dementia, i.e. forgetting, looping, confusing timelines, stuttering etc.

6: Music From Backgammon. Inspired by Satie’s ‘Furniture Music’ and Mozart’s ‘Dice Game’, this piece uses Max/MSP to monitor a game of Backgammon and produce music from that game. The dice roll scores and data from camera tracking the playing pieces are fed into the algorithm to generate music in real-time as the game is played.

7: Melancholy. Written by my good friend JEH and originally recorded with just acoustic guitar and voice. I lifted the vocal track and created a new harmonic background.