I listened to this in headphones and got a very nice circular effect with the pan (are you using a binaural panner?). The larger shape of the piece works great, the process of transformation is so gradual we barely hear it (I might be inclined to make this piece even longer in a performance).

Trains are a hugely important motif to electronic music. The earliest experiments with "sampling", Pierre Schaeffer and Pierre Henry doing musique contrete in the late 40's, used train sounds as source material. Schaeffer's very first piece "Étude aux chemins de fer" ("Study with Trains", sometimes called simply "Railroad Study") and later "Étude aux casseroles" ("Study with Baking Pans") contain train sounds as musical objects.

Great work, I'm looking forward to the performance.

== Digital Music Faculty

wow. I found the opening pretty powerful in and of itself--the panning had a visceral dizzying effect which left me feeling pretty exposed as a listener. I had no idea what was coming up, conceptually, and as it sped up enough for the train idea to come across I almost laughed out loud. trains are such a powerful motif in modernity and all its surrounding debates. I found the fact that the panning continued (seemingly regularly) in the faster sections a bit cloying, but with the sort of wheel effect where a secondary tone emerged (is that side frequency or something like that) was very cool. I look forward to the next version. btw, if you are interested in some acoustic meditations on trains you might want to check out "stimela" by hugh masekela (S.A. trumpeter) and Different Trains by steve reich (who's a cornell alum).