Native Instruments Mysteria harnesses the power of the human voice
Create mind-boggling textures with a simplistic interface
“Beautiful to dark, melancholic to aggressive, dreamy to desperate, intimate to epic, or sacral to nightmarish”; Uli Baronowsky, one of the main developers of Mysteria, articulates the eerie vocal textures as an XY pad transitions between the Moods of the virtual instrument.
Native Instruments worked in collaboration with Galaxy Instruments and Baronowsky, recording four different ensemble choirs to create the one-of-a-kind sampler instrument. Not only were the choir’s singing vocals recorded for Mysteria, but also voice and body noises, like whispering and floor stomping. The resulting textures can seemingly sound chilling and magnificent.
The XY pad is Mysteria’s core, with X morphing between sound sources, and the Y-axis modulating the emotional intensity of the sound you’re using. This allows intuitive creation of “evolving sounds, quick bursts of energy, intimate vocal shifts and epic, building walls of sound”, NI says.
Mysteria boasts 350 presets to quickly create atmospheres, plus the ability to create custom layers from over 800 individual sound sources. The instrument’s cluster designer provides granular control over voices, altering the way sounds build, melodically shift and evolve. Cluster designer also lets you build chords and musical groupings, and build your own patches from scratch with up to eight voices that can be individually tuned and panned. Perform with three playing modes: Glide, Add-on and Parallel,
Native Instruments, Uli Baronowsky and Galaxy Instruments recorded vocals for over 45 hours to give Mysteria’s its impressive edge. NI said of the recording process that “Sessions included a large symphonic choir for epic and intense clusters, which was also divided into male and female choirs. A chamber choir produces more transparent sounds, and a New Music vocal quartet lends an intimate, human proximity to some of Mysteria’s more subtle sounds”.
Mysteria is available for use with Kontakt Player and is included in Native Instrument’s Komplete Instrument collection. You can purchase it from the Native Instruments store for £269.
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