Maxima Compiler Track

Maxima Compiler Track is an original electronic music experimental work inspired by past electronic music pioneers who may have worked with limited resources to record their musical expressions. In this light, I have endeavoured to record a complete composition using only the resources of the Eurorack modular synthesizer system, and a small digital portastudio for the recording of the individual tracks, and to the mixing of the tracks. Here, all the major recording, insert recording and editing would be performed within the digital multitrack recorder. The computer only being used for mastering and minor dynamic touch-ups. Could an electronic music work be created just by oscillators and insert recording? This was the challenge. Six tracks were used to build up the composition. Each track was recorded, and using the "punch-in" recording feature, to record new sounds and sound "objects". Where a new sound was required in the work, one used the insert recording feature to manually record the new sound in real-time. If a mistake was done, the recording would be attempted again. Sometimes mistakes in the recording inserts yielded unexpected editing dynamics which remained in the composition for interest. Each of the six tracks was a mono expression that was ther output of the synthesizer setup at a particular time. No computer editing was used at this early stage. Four x oscillators were ring-modulated by a sinewave to create intensely shimmered chord-like effects. Many interesting shimmer sounds can be created by ring-modulating a chord of four oscillators. A Cloud Generator module was also used for softer vibrato sinewave sounds - similar in tone to an organ. The ring-modulated oscillators were mostly used alone, sometimes with high-pass or low-pass filtering. Sometimes the oscillators were connected so that the output of one (a squarewave) was used to control the FM of another. This proved quite useful when needing simple rapidly extending notes. Within the composition, there was a vague sense of a beginning, middle and a conclusion. Working with this in mind helped to structure the composition so that it became more formalised than a random set of tone expressions. A sense of early electronic music expressions from the 1950s and into the 1960s became highly inspirational. As the work was being assembled, these early music works and their aesthetic became a great source of creativity. Once all the six tracks had been recorded and assembled (much refinement in the editing process), they were mixed to create a stereo sub-master. The visuals are a mixture of pure video synthesis techniques and various kaleidoscopic forms integrated to match the audio. Four separate motifs were created, then using a technique of "automatic editing" (cutting between the visual sequences in real-time), a montage of abstract imagery was created. Many extra elements were superimposed over the edited forms to create an extra richness. The visuals mainly consist of a background animated formation (sometimes logically created) with a circular mandala as a foreground element or theme. The idea of six-fold symmetry proved very effective in realising the surreal and abstract nature of the animation. The animations were created to be pulsating, dynamic and with a certain "organic" quality of self-sustaining movement. In a sense, a form of "automatic animation" was sought - animated forms that develop unto themselves with an internal generative movement like a form of growth. The visuals swirl and flash. "Automatic" pulsations that support the abstract music track. The composition is pure expression, both in terms of the audio assembly and the vision-mixed visuals. Abstraction is the main motivation here. Abstraction can stimulate the imaginative faculties. Abstraction is its own source of reference. Maxima Compiler Track takes our imagination to a different level of experience - of positive energies; of creative energies.