Starboard Quest

Following, are the proposed seven steps of the Alchemical transformation of sound, being attempted by Starboard Quest. This process is symbolic of course, and is used simply to help you understand the process that we hope to place sound through. 

1- Calcination 
This is burning modern history’s music down to the ashes of its finest and most basic ingredients. This is so that the process of analyzing the good and bad in music can begin. It is setting the individual elements of music out before you to look at both the good and the bad. This was accomplished by burning it down to musical ashes so to speak. 

2-Dissolution 
This is dissolving the bad and harmful elements within the ashes of the music down by placing them in symbolic musical water so they can become liquified. For example, further reducing the solidity of harmful frequencies, rhythms, tunings and mathematical inconsistencies within the sound. This is to get ready for the separation stage of the process. These first two stages are called the black stage. 

3-Separation 
Separating the bad qualities in music from the good. This is the washing away of bad musical qualities from the good which have been loosened from the good by being liquified during the dissolution stage. At this point, a more purified musical essence or quintessence of sound begins to emerge. 

4-Conjunction 
During this stage, the more highly refined purified essences of music are combined to form a new type of music. Proper Pythagorean tuning, frequencies, and rhythms are brought into play. This creates a type of music not commonly known in modern times. This is called musical conjunction. It is at this point that an attempt is made to bring both mathematical and ideological realities from the macrocosm into the microcosm. 

5- Fermentation 
This is when the new music form, which has come together out of the purified musical essence, begins to take life and become a creative force. Light comes forth in a type of sonoluminescence and new creative energy arrives. 

6-Distillation 
When as much as is possible of the old harmful musical essence has been removed through separation and conjunction- then out of that comes fermentation in the coming forth of a new kind of music. The distillation process then, is taking that new musical life that has come forth, and purifying it still further into a “musical vapor” which consists, hopefully, of the very essence of the creative musical spirit which is behind it. 

7-Coagulation 
This is one of the final rungs on the ladder of musical transformation. Musical coagulation is the audible manifestation of the new musical essence created during conjunction, born during fermentation, and then purified in distillation. 

These are the same steps which the ancient alchemists used to attempt to turn base metals into gold. This process can also be likened to the seven notes of a musical scale, which bring us to a new Octave. Both, are symbolic of course, and are used as illustrations to help you understand the processes which the music is put through. 

Is this then, to say that this music is perfect, or that it is musical gold? Hopefully, but not necessarily. It is an attempt. This is only the beginning of a process that may have to be constantly refined for thousands of years.