Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ 4/5 Stars
Built for MNTRA’s free MNDALA 2 platform and weighing in at just 1.41GB, Nagual is a polyphonic instrument comprised of what MNTRA describe as rare pre‑Hispanic Mexican ceremonial sources. The recordings were captured in collaboration with Ramiro Ramírez, an expert in performing with these historic instruments, to encompass clay flutes, conch trumpets, wooden drums, ocarinas and ritual whistles. However, this library doesn’t only offer straight recreations of these ancient sounds but also includes processed, morphed timbres in which monophonic instruments become polyphonic, touch‑sensitive patches, often moving far away from the original voice. XYZ faders allow the user to interact with the patches, either directly from the plug‑in window (either as faders or by dragging shapes) or by MIDI control and recorded as automation.
The instrument offers 134 presets categorised as Elements (Wind and Percussion), a range of Atelier categories and CNDSD (Ambiental Experimental, Percussion and Sequence). The patches respond to velocity but to my ears there’s no apparent velocity switching. Apparently the original instruments were used for “shifting consciousness through ceremony”, and Ramírez’s expertise with these instruments (which he has played on the scores of some very high‑profile movies) has provided MNTRA with authentic performances from which to forge their sound sculptures. The original recordings were made in Panoram Studio’s live room in Mexico City using MNTRA’s own wide‑bandwidth multi‑miking arrays with Eigenmike Ambisonics processing. Sample start modulation is used to add natural‑sounding variations to note attacks.
So what are these ancient instruments? Here we’re treated to warbling clay water flutes, conch shell trumpets, huehuetl and teponaztli drums, ocarinas and more. It seems these ancient people gravitated towards blown instruments and percussion. The original sounds are recorded with numerous articulations that include different note lengths, pitch slurs, trills and flutter tonguing. The use of microphones able to capture frequencies outside the human hearing range has allowed some normally inaudible frequencies to be exploited when pitch‑shifting the samples; indeed the useful range of these samples is very impressive. Some of the shorter articulations, in particular the percussive sounds, make excellent musical punctuations while the wind instruments have an endearingly haunting quality.
Nagual clearly has applications in cinematic composition but it also has plenty to offer the ambient or relaxation music composer too.
The more processed sounds still capture the organic feel of the original sources but offer more malleable alternatives, in some cases manifesting as evolving pads, often incorporating breathy sounds, and the way the sound shifts and morphs as you adjust those three real‑time controllers is impressive. A few sequenced rhythms and ensembles are also available, again varying in timbre as the real‑time controls are manipulated. Nagual clearly has applications in cinematic composition but it also has plenty to offer the ambient or relaxation music composer too. An impressive library for an affordable price.