Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ 4/5 Stars
MNTRA Pyramids runs on the free MNDALA 2 Player supporting all the common plug‑in formats. The premise is a touch New Age‑ish as the sounds come from crystalline quartz instruments fashioned in the outline shape of pyramids, rather like three‑dimensional orchestral triangles. Their ratios were inspired by those of the Great Pyramids of Egypt. How much that affects the sound I don’t know but to my ears the resulting structures sound somewhat like crystal bells when struck or like a crystal bowl when bowed. The samples used in this instrument total 5.2GB and include round robins to prevent repeated strikes sounding identical. All manner of tricks were used when creating the samples, including spinning the pyramids in front of the microphones. The samples were recorded at a sample rate of 384kHz at a 32‑bit resolution.
While few of the sounds are obvious fits for pop music, there’s a lot here that works well in a more cinematic context, with obvious applications in relaxation and ambient music. MNDALA 2 includes sequencers, envelope generators and onboard effects to push the sampled sounds beyond their natural limits, allowing for the creation of shifting drones and pads as well as crystalline bell sounds.
Some of the sample sets are quite large so take a while to load. The presets are categorised as Atelier (a posh word for studio or workshop), Elements and Steffen Ki. Each of these has further sub‑categories. One of the hallmarks of the MNDALA 2 engine is that it offers three MIDI control of parameters designated X, Y and Z. These are set to control different aspects of the sound depending on which preset is chosen. Sometimes the designations are a little vague — Bio Resonance, Plasma Charge and Inertia (relating to the Negentropics preset) — but in reality they tend to control various effects parameters, with one of the functions being mapped to the mod wheel. There’s a Learn function to assign any convenient CCs to the three modulators, and these parameters can also be adjusted and therefore automated within the DAW by dragging on the graphics (an equals sign, a triangle and a round puck) in MNDALA 2’s Perform view.
If you make cinematic music you will almost certainly like Pyramids, but if your focus is more on relaxation and ambient music, you’ll absolutely love it.
Sonically there’s more variety than you might expect, from tuneful hits and harmonically rich bows and drones to jangly dissonance and evolving atmospheric textures. There are shifting bell swarms and deep resonances as well as distant tinklings that make perfect ear candy to drop into the background of ambient music. Some of the sounds exhibit very strong overtones, but that characteristic is an intrinsic part of the character of bell‑like structures. If you make cinematic music you will almost certainly like Pyramids, but if your focus is more on relaxation and ambient music, you’ll absolutely love it.
$49
$49