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Wonder Wander

Wonder Wander — live performance (archival documentation)

Category: Interactive work for violin, fixed media, and Max/MSP

Overview:Wonder Wander is an interactive piece for violin and electronics that imagines a wandering journey through an unfamiliar forest. The music moves from sparse, flickering gestures into a more dance-like, disoriented middle section before returning to a transformed version of the opening. The electronics combine a fixed track with a real-time layer that listens to the violin and responds during performance.

Electronic Material & Form:The electronic part is created in Logic Pro and exported as a fixed track, which is triggered from Max in performance. The piece follows an A–B–A′ design. In the A sections, the material is deliberately fragmentary: short, isolated sounds suggest insects, birds, and small movements in the trees. The harmony is not clearly functional, and many of the pitches feel almost random, as if the listener is catching scattered details while walking through the woods.

The B section is where the music becomes more clearly structured. Here the electronics move closer to dance music: a more stable pulse appears, rhythmic patterns lock in, and the texture grows thicker and more driving. This section is meant to feel like getting lost and slipping into a trance-like state, as if the forest suddenly tilts into a strange, slightly toxic dream.

The final A′ section returns to the earlier sound world in an inverted form. Many gestures from the opening are mirrored: figures that previously fell from high to low now rise from low to high, and other musical directions are flipped. The basic layout of the A section remains, but the sense of direction is reversed, as if the listener is retracing the same path while everything around them has been turned upside down.

Interaction & System Design:On top of the fixed track, Max/MSP runs a real-time generative layer that listens to the violin. At specific points in the piece, the violin plays a passage made of wide intervals in a fixed rhythm. Max analyzes the incoming sound—mainly pitch and amplitude—and uses this data to generate new electronic notes and textures that surround the fixed material.

During performance, the performer controls several parameters inside Max, including the density of the generated notes, the pitch range in which the software twists what it detects, and the overall level of the electronic layer. This allows the responsiveness of the system to shift from a light halo around the violin line to dense, noisy swarms that almost overtake the fixed track.

Tools & Documentation:The piece is built from a fixed electronic layer produced in Logic Pro and an interactive engine in Max/MSP, with live violin as the acoustic partner. For the portfolio, a stereo mixdown of the electronics and an archival video of a live performance are presented. The work was originally composed and mixed in 5.1 surround; the current version is a stereo bounce for web listening.

Logic Pro arrangement for Wonder Wander, showing tracks and outline of A–B–A′ form of the fixed electronic part

Routing live violin input through delay, flange, and ring modulation in the full Max/MSP patch for Wonder Wander, alongside playback of the fixed electronics track

Simplified performance interface in Max/MSP, with step-by-step instructions, live meters, and presets for triggering the fixed track and shaping the real-time effects

Live performance of Wonder Wander (archival documentation)