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maxWerk - Copyright 2000-2007 Çikira Amanda Pehlke
Published by RedMoon Music - www.RedMoon-Music.com
RedMoon's
maxWerk
~ mad scientist's music composing tool ~
Users' Guide
Revised March 2007
Application and documentation by
Çikira -- Amanda Pehlke
Copyright 2000 - 2007
All rights reserved
RedMoon Music
evolutionary electronica
www.redmoon-music.com
This document uses the Arial font.
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maxWerk - Copyright 2000-2007 Amanda Pehlke Published by RedMoon Music - www.RedMoon-Music.com Contents Meet maxWerk / System Requirements I. Concepts and a Tour 1. Global Setup 2. Menu Items 3. The Main Screen 4. Features to Note 5. Automute 6. Basic Loops 7. Drum Loops 8. Controllers 9 The Transposer 10 Melody 11. The Block Map 12. Improv 13. Noodle II. maxWerk In Depth 1. Main Settings 2. Patch Changes 3. User Scales 4. Loop Magic 1 5. Loop Magic 2 6. Step-Split Tracks 7. Offset Note Lines 8.
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maxWerk - Copyright 2000-2007 Amanda Pehlke Published by RedMoon Music - www.RedMoon-Music.com Meet maxWerk maxWerk is a loop-based MIDI composition tool that gets its name from the Max programming language with which it was built. It can give endless musical suggestions, but it also encourages entirely original ideas. Using tracks set up in GS mode, you can work with a set of standardized but editable sounds in a single-device environment, and prioritize the construction of your Werk before bec
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maxWerk - Copyright 2000-2007 Amanda Pehlke Published by RedMoon Music - www.RedMoon-Music.com • Two control patterns and pitch bend. Control destinations are freely selectable, and pattern choices include various generated or hand-drawn sweeps, which can retrigger with new notes. You can enter step-synced patterns, and you can have patterns dynamically creep or randomize. * A pattern of progressively mutating the core note-pattern and reverting to the original, with adjustable parameters Eleven
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maxWerk - Copyright 2000-2007 Amanda Pehlke Published by RedMoon Music - www.RedMoon-Music.com You can use external hardware or software as a MIDI clock source or destination. Your finished Werk plays in a locked-tempo mode as it records its output to a standard midifile for export to a full-featured sequencer. Support for an optional Peavey PC-1600 or PC-1600x MIDI controller unit is included. What maxWerk Doesn't Do maxWerk contains no music at all when you begin a new Werk, except for arpeggi
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maxWerk - Copyright 2000-2007 Amanda Pehlke Published by RedMoon Music - www.RedMoon-Music.com • A MIDI sound module compatible with the Roland GS standard is highly recommended. Alternatively, you may address multiple polyphonic and multi-timbral synthesizers. Bear in mind that maxWerk allows up to sixteen polyphonic parts, and you are likely to think of uses for all of them! This fully functional version of maxWerk is freeware, and your comments and feedback are sincerely appreciated. Being in
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maxWerk - Copyright 2000-2007 Amanda Pehlke Published by RedMoon Music - www.RedMoon-Music.com I. Concepts and a Tour It's fine to explore maxWerk without first reading this Guide, by simply entering some notes and playing with its various functions as a voyage of discovery. The material that follows covers almost everything you'll find out this way, and listed later on are descriptions of maxWerk's key commands that expand on some of the terms you'll see in the Key Commands reference window. Mo
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maxWerk - Copyright 2000-2007 Amanda Pehlke Published by RedMoon Music - www.RedMoon-Music.com be the target for each of maxWerk's tracks and your live “Noodle” play. maxWerk creates a list of available preset names for GS mode use according to the GS module model parameter setting in this file. You can find the GS mode MIDI channel layout of maxWerk's tracks in the "Werk Files" section near the end of this Guide. Checkboxes let you transmit or suppress sending and recording to midifile of norma
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maxWerk - Copyright 2000-2007 Amanda Pehlke Published by RedMoon Music - www.RedMoon-Music.com existing file, you will find copies of alternative template files in the "maxWerk Filing Cabinet" folder that can save you having to make many tedious associated editor window changes. Once you are used to maxWerk, you might wish to use these as a basis for creating your own template files, especially if you find you often use loops longer than one bar. Be sure to rename Werk files you wish to save! It
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maxWerk - Copyright 2000-2007 Amanda Pehlke Published by RedMoon Music - www.RedMoon-Music.com progress command restores your sound generating setup to match the current state, saved or unsaved, of maxWerk's MIDI message- based settings and patches, according to the Global Setup. Revert to last save lets you go back to your last-stored set of information. The Commands menu simply lets you bring up an important reference list in the Key Commands window. Typing [shift-k] does the same. The Key Com
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maxWerk - Copyright 2000-2007 Amanda Pehlke Published by RedMoon Music - www.RedMoon-Music.com these work, but using them comes easily once you get a feel for making looping tracks. While maxWerk supports only one Meter choice per Werk, but tracks based on step numbers that are multiples of 6 and 8 counts are compatible in the same Werk, and may be included in either Meter. In other words, besides steps in multiples of 8, you can choose step numbers of 12, 24, and 48 in an 8-count Werk. Similarl
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maxWerk - Copyright 2000-2007 Amanda Pehlke Published by RedMoon Music - www.RedMoon-Music.com contributions. Important dynamic indicators in the lower left section of the Main Screen show the four elements that contribute to maxWerk's transposition status at every bar: a Key number from 0 through 11 representing A though G# with an offset flag, a Scale name, a Tonic note number, a (+)Note number, and a triad chord quality. We explain fully the significance of these below. A panel of window-open
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maxWerk - Copyright 2000-2007 Amanda Pehlke Published by RedMoon Music - www.RedMoon-Music.com Pairs of arrow-shaped "Go-to" bar buttons appear in many edit windows. Some edit functions take effect beginning at or only on the last "go-to" bar you manually set. To go to any bar quickly, hold an arrow button or one of the command keys for bar scrolling, or simply press one of the locator buttons and then fine-tune the bar location. 1.5 Automute In order to offer a perspective of a full Werk, we'l
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maxWerk - Copyright 2000-2007 Amanda Pehlke Published by RedMoon Music - www.RedMoon-Music.com where you can enable or mute all 128 bars of the track at once from any point in the Werk, depending on the status of the window's control button. Double-clicking the track label brings up a pattern- entry dialog, where you can enter a binary pattern of ones and zeroes that will apply starting with the last set "go-to" bar. At each bar where a track is muted, maxWerk also resets the loop it plays to it
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maxWerk - Copyright 2000-2007 Amanda Pehlke Published by RedMoon Music - www.RedMoon-Music.com relative to data present in any other track. Keep in mind that processing always begins from the "go-to" bar. Automute has a global end bar setting, a refinement to which is found for each track in the lower panel of the Note Editor. There you'll find a 16ths sustain on mute menu setting for each loop that determines the number of sixteenth-note durations the last step plays before automuting cuts note
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maxWerk - Copyright 2000-2007 Amanda Pehlke Published by RedMoon Music - www.RedMoon-Music.com the number of bars it contains. The length of a Basic or Drum Loop with no change of play direction can be from one to four bars. In order to be able to tell what is going in a multi-track Werk and to be able to edit loops easily, it is a good idea not to overdo the total number of steps; that is, the steps per bar menu number multiplied by the number of bars. Instead, think of maxWerk as an analog- st
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maxWerk - Copyright 2000-2007 Amanda Pehlke Published by RedMoon Music - www.RedMoon-Music.com either stored or played live) from a transposition engine that is separate and independent of the one triggered by values 1 through 7. Although an 8-step has the appearance of being “larger” than the other values in the display because its vertical bar is longer, the Scale pitch value that it represents can in fact change at each bar, and it is always mapped to correspond to one of the other seven. A v
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maxWerk - Copyright 2000-2007 Amanda Pehlke Published by RedMoon Music - www.RedMoon-Music.com The data in the octaves display, the third of the set, defaults to a value of 4. This initially places all the notes you enter into the octave that includes middle C. While maxWerk stores Basic Loop pitch step information in the default middle sound range, notes' octaves shift according to changing data that comes from this set. Octave values range from 0 through 8, and they are read on a per-step basi
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maxWerk - Copyright 2000-2007 Amanda Pehlke Published by RedMoon Music - www.RedMoon-Music.com forward direction, but applies a note-scrambling function that causes a fresh shuffle of existing step values at each new loop-start, while leaving unchanged the pattern of durations that gives the loop its rhythmic feel. The next play direction is random, followed by ends- inward and two variations of this pattern, alt ends-in and rdm ends-in. These play the first step, then the last, the second, the
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maxWerk - Copyright 2000-2007 Amanda Pehlke Published by RedMoon Music - www.RedMoon-Music.com The fourth item is random retrig, and at this setting note values of zero produce note-offs as always, but repeating values 1 through 8, which would tie notes in play-changes mode, instead trigger new notes randomly, so that each repetition of the pitch pattern is given a degree of unpredictable rhythmic interest. The final six modes of play are sets of alt1 and alt2 notefilters. Each set includes all-
