The MNP Art Store, AKA the MNP Gallery, AKA Contemporary.MNP has launched. As a result of the better part of a year of networking and planning, we now present to you this labor of love, in its first official section. The Gallery/Store is up and running, featuring original works of art by local and international artists.
Contemporary.MNP is part art gallery, allowing you to view different dope works of art – with detailed high resolution pictures and part art store, providing potential purchasers with custom framing options. There are 8 different artists involved and the number is growing every day. The works are a diverse mix of paintings, dry point etchings, and sculptures. We even have some custom faceplates for DJ mixers!
Ninjas who read from our network every day know that we constantly strive to bring you new things in ways that we never even imagine ourselves to be possible. We switch up forms and formats continuously in an effort to make our blog BETTER, STRONGER, FASTER (um… kinda like what’s his name). So, stop looking so surprised, visit the art store, and expect more curveballs out of the ninja bullpen.
The MNP Art Store can currently be reached at the two following URLs:
http://contemporary.myninjaplease.com
http://www.contemporarymnp.com
Most highest of all Ninja,First of all, let me start by saying that ninjas have to stay sharp—refining awareness through substance abuse is a sacred part of our cultural heritage, behavior that should never be emulated by lesser beings.
That having been said, abusing Absynth 4 grants the “user” various mystical powers, including but not limited to propagating new vibrations into the physical universe. Allow me to explain.
One new feature of this program is the Wave Morphing capability, which allows users to fuse two distinct waveforms together. This provides greater variety in initial sounds generated and provides more depth for the process of sound wave shaping.
The Sync Granular Mode modulator also adds a new dimension to your audio shaping, allowing you to use algorithms that mimic strumming or blowing through tubes to your sounds. Personally, I find its delivery a little too robotic to be considered life-like, but in terms of pure sound creation, this brings yet another palette of organic flavor to your attack and decay possibilities. Another new feature is the Audio Mod oscillator, which allows the use of outside audio signals as the modulation source, letting you use Absynth’s other sound shaping abilities as a brolic effects processor.
Underneath Absynth’s straightforward (if stylized) interface, lies an ocean of possible constructions. Even after getting past the initial, additive synth layer (where the user builds the raw sound wave), effects available on the back-end add yet another level of sonic manipulation to you. The pipe delay, which basically mimics the echo effects you experience in a tunnel, allows you to change the virtual source’s distance, decay, and spatial attributes with ease.
Absynth has true surround sound capability, allowing you to not only alter the position and number of your sound sources (8), but also have them rotate around your auditory self. Your R0b0tninja is tempted to buy some surround sound headphones, just to better enjoy what is already a dizzying experience.
But lets get down to basics, so you get a better understanding of this drug once before you get to drinking. The boxes you see in the picture above each correspond to an oscillator, a modulator, or a filter (top three rows). As you can see, the lines only converge when they reach the last row, which houses another modulator, filter, ending with an independent effects processor (I say independent, because the surround sound, pipe, and other effects come later on in the chain).
Unless you are well-versed with the synthesizer universe, let me suggest that you start by simply going to the instrument browser. The encyclopedic library of patches is effortlessly accessible, broken down into instrument type and sound quality. Take a minute and compare how the different sounds are constructed. Available to you is a vibrant and powerful sonic generator, complete with wave and envelope drawing capabilities. Even the R0b0tninja’s mightiest words can only describe absynth’s effects—until you can see the glowing green ninja-goblins yourself, they will remain encased in your subconscious, leaving you incapable of fully appreciating how vivid this synth’s sounds can become.
yours.truly
R0b0tninja
Ancient and noble ninja warlocks,
Here at the R0b0tninja, sometimes the darts I throw are poison-tipped, and sometimes they are merely diamond coated. Nevertheless, enemies sometimes appear that require more attention than my hydraulic shurikens can deliver, and your friendly yet merciless robotic ninja can be waylaid by sonic potential, and promises of infinite energy.
The people at Native Instruments, long discussed by your humble r0b0t narrator for their instrumental prowess, have unveiled Komplete 4, which is a plug-in based group of multiple synth, sampler and effects programs that, under the control of Kore, combine as one to form a giant R0b0t of musical destruction. Each synth on its own is a powerful weapon, much like the lions of Voltron, only these are easily capable of devouring entire skyscrapers, lengthwise, in their powerful jaws.
Individually, the different plug-ins available are as follows: Absynth, Kontakt, Massive, Battery, FM8, B4, Pro-53, Akoustik and Elektrik piano, Guitar Rig, Vokater, Spectral delay, Kore and Reaktor. Together, these sonic blast-dragons, if you will, threaten to overtake mankind as the pinnacle of evolutionary intelligence, and, as with all of man’s tools, have the power to create as well as to destroy.
This monstrous compilation of audio processing is too deep to be described collectively, and so, your R0b0t ninja has taken it upon himself to report, in detail, on the different qualities presented in each. Some, (like absynth and reaktor), are available as 400 dollar programs alone. By themselves, they are like hand-held universes: fully accessible from our own dimension, yet so intricate and multi-faceted as to defy full definition. Attempting to combine them all and successfully express their true power to the uninitiated would be like explaining the brilliance of Rembrandt to a blind man with no ears. Not completely impossible, but nonetheless, a thoroughly ridiculous task.
Anyway, in the coming weeks, expect to find new updates of this herculean process on the R0b0tninja post, and watch this new audio potential affect change within my dub and hiphop galaxies. I will begin with Absynth (as recent trends would have us follow), and give you a basic walkthrough that, when shown to the beasts of the field, will grant them instant comprehension of the universe and its workings. Unfortunately, all others will gain only a topical understanding of modern synthesis and sampling techniques.
So it goes
That’s right my ninjas – we here at MNP are giving away a subscription to dwell [I believe that's 10 issues over 12 months] to one of our readers. How do you get in on this, you ask? It’s simple – every visitor who leaves a comment [a content-related comment, not just 'first!' or something foolish] on ANY MNP SITE, along with their email address will be entered. The ninjas will then select a commenter at random, and name the winner on Novermber 26th. Every individual comment counts [the more you comment, the more likely you are to win] so visit all of our sites and let your voice be heard.
myninjaplease.com
architecture.mnp
green.mnp
music.mnp
politricks.mnp
arquitectura.mnp
robotninja.mnp
the pimp’s corner [warning: may be too hood for the white belt]
Too lazy to post a comment? Well, we won’t give you anything for free – but you can follow this link to pay for your own [discounted - 2 bucks is 2 bucks] subscription to dwell. There are only a few publications we’ll point you to off-line, and this is one; don’t sleep!
[helpful hint: look in the 'Talk of the Dojo' section of the sidebar to read comments made by other MNP readers]
Robots and Ninjamen,
My audio bredren De la Mancha, programmer of synthesizers and digital music/art, has released a Commodore 64 inspired synthesizer for use with your VST compatible frame (pro tools, live, logic) though, unfortunately, DLM’s plugins only work on Windows machines. From the site:
basic64 is inspired by the 8 bit sounds of the classic Commodore 64.
It’s not a straight emulation, but is based around the SID chip with some extras for that 8-bit retro game sound, lofi gritty noises or just plain oddness
features
- 16, 8 or 6 bit sound quality
- 3 oscs, each with their own ADSR envelope
- oscillators can be sync’d and ring modulated by each other
- pitch envelope modulation
- pitch wobble option, for subtle instability
- 2 tempo-sync LFO’s to modulate pitch, cut-off and pulse width
- LFO’s have attack/release curves
- tempo-sync arpegiator
- flexible routing to state variable filter (LP, HP & BP)
- envelopes can be reset or continuous at retrigger
- monophonic or polyphonic option
- midi learn / midi CC support
- 128 presets by sinkmusic & WhiskeyPriest
Like all true R0b0tninja, I respectfully acknowledge the works of supreme instrument creators such as De La Mancha. Some use Reaktor, some take this more direct approach, but all must inevitably answer to the Supreme Ninja-master in the sky. R0b0tninja blasters set to annihilate.
Most esteemed space-ninjas and robots
As you may know, one of the many advantages of being a robotic ninja, is that travelling through deep space poses no real threat to our livelihood. While your flesh-and-blood ninja has to rely on various ninja-magics and/or ninja-spacecraft, we robotninjas can survive even the raw vacuum of outer space, giving us the freedoms to explore vast reaches of the solar system and beyond. At a colleague’s post at NASA, please find several examples of the field recordings I made while in orbit around Saturn. On a routine expedition to Jupiter, investigating an orbiting artifact placed there millions of years ago by advanced, god-like superbeings (turns out it was full of stars), I happened to pick up some interesting sounds on my various antennae while passing by Saturn. Intrigued, I beamed the samples back to earth, and my good friends at the National Astronomical Super Atomics have posted them for the world to experience. End ninja-transmission—-dictated but not read.
