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 becoming preoccupied with sound design and multiple-device mixing. Using normally enabled tracks, you can include up to 16 different devices if you prefer to address a favorite synthesizer setup that suits your creativity. maxWerk lets you experiment as you compose, making changes to various ways of structuring your music without disturbing or changing aspects that you already like. You can produce widely divergent flavors of music in maxWerk without formal training, instrument "chops", or knowledge of music notation.
maxWerk can incorporate your recorded MIDI input to its looping tracks along with generated ideas and on-screen edits. As your maxWerk composition develops, you can create and change any of the following components:
*A note pattern: one to four bars long, with a selectable number of steps per bar
*A corresponding velocity pattern, randomized in groups
*A pattern of octave shifts per step
*A pattern of wrap steps (octave cutoff points) per step
*A harmony pattern (several types are available)
*A mode of note duration (various types), including a random treatment of durations
*A loop timing offset relative to global bar lines
*Up to three parallel note lines. You can offset the above elements independently in each one, and you can reassign each to play through any other Basic Loop instrument.
∙A pattern of play direction
