breaks/motors (2001) 8'41"
One of my many jobs involves restoring/remastering recordings from the 1920s to the 1960s. One of the many fascinations I find in these recordings is in the breaks between movements, where I usually go to start working out equalization for hum, hiss, squeal, rumble, etc. removal. I took several of these "breaks," looped them in differing lengths, and emphasized the "unwanted" components for this piece. The other sound source came about when Brian Reinbolt asked me to look at a project he was working on which used a very tiny stepper motor. I loved the sound of this tiny motor and made extensive recordings of it. These two ideas sprang up around the same time, so I blended the two types of sound sources (with equalization, convolving, phase vocoding, and granular synthesis) into this composition. As with all my work, spatialization is a major interest. There is no active panning in this work as I recorded the motor at a very close distance and in enhanced stereo.

Maggi Payne
is Co-director of the Center for Contemporary Music at Mills College where she teaches recording engineering, composition and electronic music. She also freelances as a recording engineer/editor.

Her works have received honorable mentions in Bourges (2X) and Prix Ars Electronica Festivals and have been performed throughout North America, Australasia, Japan, and Europe. She has received two Composer's Grants and an Interdisciplinary Arts Grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, and video grants from the Mellon Foundation and the Western States Regional Media Arts Fellowships Program. Her works often contain visual elements, most typically using video.

Her works are available on the Lovely Music, Music and Arts, Centaur, MMC, CRI, Digital Narcis, Frogpeak, and Asphodel labels and the Mills College Anthology.