Once upon a time there was a computer music system called GROOVE (GeneratingRealtime Operations On Voltage-controlled Equipment, Bell TelephoneLaboratories, Murray Hill, New Jersey) which outputted in the realm ofsound, and was a wonderful and still-unique tool for the compositionthereof. At that time a then-young composer who was using GROOVE for musicgot the harebrained idea that if she made a few minor changes here and thereshe could use it to compose images as well. This she did in 1974-6, andthough the untimely demise of the system prevented creation of muchdocumentation in the form of aesthetic works of its output, the system didfunction sufficiently to make some description worthwhile. While it is truethat the mid-1960s DDP-224 computer on which GROOVE became a VAMPIRE (VideoAnd Music Program for Interactive Realtime Exploration/Experimentation) wasa massive room-sized computer, it has by now long been eclipsed in power bythe constantly improving home computer. It is worth describing the conceptsinvolved in part because there are by now many small computers capable ofemulating its musical methods. Besides, I had a deep personal relationshipwith that computer, and wish to commemorate it. Here then follows the taleof Graphical GROOVE, aka the VAMPIRE.