m@ze°2

Electronic music performed live by Karlheinz Essl on his computer-based instrument m@ze°2 (played on an Apple Powerbook G3) on 23 March 1999 and 19 Nov 1999. All tracks have been recorded live without any overdubs. This album was originally released as limited CD edition with artwork by Werner Korn.

As this album is sold out, it was re-released several times on the Internet. Currently it is available on SoundCloud for free.

m@ze°2 is a computer-based electronic instrument which serves as a realtime environment for composition and improvisation as well. This project is another attempt to realize an old idea that has been haunting me for many years: the vision of a music

• which composes itself at the moment of its sounding
• which is not merely a reproduction of a pre-fabricated notation
• which is capable of reacting on exterior influences
• which exhibits infinite temporal expansion
• which never repeats itself.

This software is written entirely in MAX, taking advantage of Karlheinz Essl's Real Time Composition Library (RTC-lib). It is based on an ever-growing database of carefully selected samples. They are processed in realtime by so-called structure generators which are triggered and controlled by the computer keyboard, the mouse, foot pedals, MIDI controllers and a webcam. An elaborated section of DSP routines (including reverb, harmonizer, transposer, pitch shifter, equalizer, LFO, ring modulator, and panning) enables the player to process the generated sound structures on the fly.

Updated: 6 Oct 2015