Ken Ficara

A crude experiment inspired by my reading about granular synthesis and experimenting with a granular synthesizer for the iPad called Curtis (for Curtis Roads). Granular synthesis involves breaking sound down into very tiny pieces (“grains”) and then rearranging them. This was built up by looping very small slices of harmonica, less than a second’s worth, and layering them over each other. Some of the loops are very lo-fi (eight bits or less). Doesn’t quite qualify as true granular synthesis but I like the resulting sounds. None of what you hear on these two pieces is created by a synthesizer, or treated with filters or any effects other than delay. All the sounds are bits of harmonica, looped, fed back, and layered.