Onde

In 1928, French cellist and inventor Maurice Martenot unveiled the Ondes Martenot—an instrument that breathed electricity into human gesture, merging touch with tone in ways the world had never experienced. Almost a century later, Onde carries that spirit forward, preserving its expressive soul while expanding its sonic possibilities through acoustic resonance and ultrasonic sampling.

Onde was created through a partnership between Bigano, MNTRA Instruments, and performer Daniel Áñez. Vincent Gagnon and Fabien Noel of Bigano—multi-award winning video game sound designers with decades of experience in interactive audio—bring their understanding of non-linear, responsive sound design into every aspect of Onde. Using MNDALA’s interactive architecture, they crafted an instrument that responds organically to performance, where every touch becomes a conversation between player and sound.

Recorded at La Hacienda Creative’s 24-foot ceiling soundstage deep in Southern Quebec’s woods, the ultra-low noise floor and pristine acoustics allowed every nuance to be captured in extraordinary detail. Recording sessions were engineered at 32-bit 384kHz ultrasonic resolution with multiple mic arrays—preserving tone, spatial information, and harmonic content that exists beyond normal hearing range. When performances are played through resonating metallic gongs and custom amps, then captured at these ultrasonic frequencies, each single performance becomes a full-range polyphonic instrument revealing textures and dimensions hidden in conventional recordings.

Onde pushes the physical synthesis approach into uncharted territory—exploring how far acoustic transformation can go when gongs resonate into the ultrasonic range, reaching 60-70 kHz and beyond. SSM (Sample Start Modulation) and non-linear reactivity is woven into every preset, transforming how you interact with the captured performances and creating a natural dialogue between your touch and the sound. You’re playing the recordings themselves as living sound sources, accessing sonic territory that conventional synthesis simply cannot reach.

Onde is not a recreation—it’s a transmutation. The SSM built into each preset means every note accesses different moments of the recorded performance—morphing texture, timbre, and space based on your touch. Vincent and Fabien recorded knowing how each performance would translate through MNDALA’s architecture, creating an instrument that breathes and transforms under your hands.

Inside Onde lies a carefully curated collection of expressive presets ranging from intimate whispers to cosmic expanses. Cinematic drones that unfold like landscapes, glissandi that shimmer and cry, resonant gongs, ethereal chords, and textured noise that blurs the line between acoustic and synthetic—each preset responds to your playing, evolving with every touch. Whether you’re scoring the subtle tension of a film scene, crafting avant-garde composition, building immersive ambient textures, or adding expressive motion to experimental electronic music, Onde invites you to explore the frontier between electronic and acoustic, vintage and modern, human and machine.

“Play softly, and it whispers. Push harder, and it sings.”