Plectra Series
Kazakh Dombra
An ancient fretted lute from Kazakhstan with a bright, percussive tone and meticulously detailed sampling.
$29
Hear Plectra Series 3: Kazakh Dombra In Action
- Mirage Andrew Aversa 1:01
- Sepia Dmitry Selipanov 3:27
- Kazakh Train Heist Matt Bowdler 2:19
- Sandstone (Dressed) Blake Ewing 2:03
- Sandstone (Naked) Blake Ewing 2:03
Reviews
Simon Franglen
Titanic, Skyfall, Spectre, Avatar, Avatar: The Way of Water
Impact Soundworks make detailed, emotive instruments. I’ve happily bought over two dozen of their libraries which should say everything. They get used every day.
Mark Portmann
Ariana Grande, Luis Fonsi, Celine Dion, Quincy Jones
"[ISW]'s instruments consistently deliver the sound, feel, and reliability I need to do my best work. Thank you for raising the bar and making tools that inspire."
Neal Acree
World of WarCraft, Diablo III, StarCraft II, Overwatch
"Impact Soundworks has some of the most creative and innovative libraries out there. From world instruments to the insanely deep sampled Shreddage guitar series the Impact catalog is full of must-haves and unexpected and inspiring surprises. Highly recommended!
Stewart Winter
Co-founder, VideoHelper
"I'm a keyboard player -- I can't even make a REAL guitar sound convincing. But Telos and Rosette are my go-to guitars because they sound incredible, sit well in a mix and are so easy to configure to my personal playing habits. I'm constantly discovering new ways to play them and they've saved my ass more times than I can count. And the pedal Steel is still my favorite library of its kind for Country, Folk and organic layering behind synths."
Brian Pickett
PAW Patrol, Lucas the Spider, Daniel Tiger
"I never would have thought that sampled guitars could sound as good as ISW's do. The fact that I can use them to lay down a realistic solo is unprecedented. They’ve pushed the boundaries of realism."
Rosette Mandolin – Sound on Sound
Rosette Mandolin review
"The sound of the library is very pleasing...the more I used the library the more I felt I was learning how to write idiomatically for the instrument." "Rosette Mandolin provides a good sound that could have many applications, with versatile input options that cater to writing realistic mandolin lines, impossible 5+ note chords and everything in between." Thomas Field, September 2024
Richard Jacques
Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy, Mass Effect, Overwatch 2, James Bond 007: Blood Stone
"I'm a huge fan of the Ventus Winds series. They feature rare instruments deep-sampled to an incredibly high level of detail. It's so liberating to have such a wide range of articulations & phrases that perfectly capture the nuances and performance style of these instruments... from beautiful to haunting, celebratory to sorrowful. Each is expertly recorded and the sound quality is superb, sitting in the mix with ease. If you want to add authentic world winds to your palette, then look no further."
Kevin Manthei
Angry Birds Mystery Island, Marvel’s Spider-Man, Villainous, Neverwinter, Star Trek Online
"ISW creates some of the most inspiring & realistic guitar sample libraries. I had to write a bunch of really gritty, angry heavy metal & sports action rock cues. I used Shreddage 3 Serpent for leads and was blown away by its onboard processing, programming, and amazing live-sounding leads. I also created a signature sound based on the lead guitar in David Lynch's Twin Peaks series, originally played on baritone guitar. [Serpent] built a convincing replica of that sound just using on-board FX. It was so fun and easy to do!"
Audio Demos
- Mirage Andrew Aversa 1:01
- Sepia Dmitry Selipanov 3:27
- Kazakh Train Heist Matt Bowdler 2:19
- Sandstone (Dressed) Blake Ewing 2:03
- Sandstone (Naked) Blake Ewing 2:03
Overview
An ancient fretted lute from Kazakhstan with a bright, percussive tone and meticulously detailed sampling. Chromatically sampled with up to 16x RR per note!
Product Info
Deep-sampled two-stringed lute
Up to 16x RR per note (8x up/8x down)
Intimate close-miced sound
Wide range of articulations
- Sustains
- Trills
- Mordents
- Tremolo
- Mutes
- Hammer-ons
- Slides
Features
Scripted interface for easy tone control
Custom velocity/keyswitch mapping
Full chokes, strums & repetition triggers
Requirements
600MB of disk space
7200 RPM hard drive or solid state drive recommended.
Kontakt 5.3.1+ Full Version
This library is NOT compatible with the free Kontakt Player.
Kontakt Requirements - Mac OSX
Intel Macs (i5 or higher): macOS 10.14, 10.15, 11 or 12 (latest update).
Apple Silicon Macs (via Rosetta 2 & natively on ARM in Standalone or in hosts that support it): macOS 11 or 12 (latest update)
Kontakt Requirements - Windows
Windows 7, Windows 8, or Windows 10 (latest Service Pack, 32/64-bit). Intel Core i5 or equivalent CPU. Graphics hardware support for OpenGL 2.1 or higher. Windows 10 strongly recommended.
Featured Artists & Composers
Matthew Carl Earl
Overwatch 2, Rainbow Six Siege, Call of Duty Mobile, PUBG Mobile, Arknights
“Impact Soundworks creates easy-to-use, great-sounding virtual instruments right out of the box. Highland Harps, Emotional Mallets, and Shreddage 3 are in my daily toolkit.”
Mike Gonsolin
(Snoop Dogg, T-Pain, Playboi Carti, Migos)
“Impact Soundworks’ libraries are truly in a league of their own. I’ve been a long time user for as long as I can remember and it would take me a whole other producing lifetime to build the depths of these libraries on my own. As a Kontakt enthusiast who owns just about every library out there I can confidently say that Impact Soundworks’ libraries stand in the top 1%, and that’s saying something! No snake oil here. Just meticulously assembled libraries that are overflowing with creative sound design options and inspiration igniting presets.”
Mike Gonsolin (Mike G)
Lena Raine
Celeste, Chicory, Minecraft, Guild Wars 2, Deltarune
Instruments from ISW are a staple of my soundtrack work for games. Vocalisa has been a mainstay vocal aesthetic of nearly every game I’ve worked on including Celeste & Chicory: A Colorful Tale. Shreddage 3 has also given me the confidence to write some really fun guitar riffs & solos despite not being able to play a real one. I’ve started incorporating Tokyo Scoring Strings into the acoustic side of my scoring work, and can’t wait to try out more from ISW in the future!
Welcome to the third entry in our Plectra Series of deep-sampled plucked, picked, and strummed instruments from around the globe! The Kazakh Dombra is an ancient fretted lute with two strings and an integral part of traditional music from Kazakhstan. It is playable as a solo instrument, as part of an ensemble, or to accompany epic songs and poetry. To truly capture the authentic playing style of the dombra, our instrument was performed by Asset Abdrakhmanov in Almaty, Kazakhstan and recorded by Sergei Smorgov.
Articulations in Plectra Series 3 include multiple types of pitch bend articulations that help reproduce the colorful range of timbres the dombra is capable of. These include mordents (single up-and-down bends), major and minor trills (repeating between two notes), and full neck slides from each note on each string. Standard sustains and muted playing are of course also available, along with true legato hammer-on and pull-off playing for authentic transitions between notes.
This library is a fantastic tool for those looking to add an authentic East European / Russian sound to their arsenal. From chase scenes to underscore, virtuosic solo parts, or layering with other sounds of the region, we think you will find the textures of this instrument to be very musical and inspiring!
The dombra has a bright, percussive tone with a quick decay, making it ideal for very quick playing; to facilitate this, we sampled the instrument with up to 16x RR (8x up/8x down) per chromatic note on both strings. Along with useful features like an octave of unpitched quick strums and ‘repetition triggers’ that allow for extremely fast live parts, this is our first library to feature flexible velocity mapping AND keyswitching. You can easily enable or disable any articulation, change their velocity range, or assign custom notes to toggle them on or off!
Reviews
Plectra Series 3: Kazakh Dombra – Voxcaliber
“There’s even more to [Kazakh Dombra] that we’ve skipped over, like reverb, the cool legato hammer-ons, and more keyswitch instruments. The programming is very well done on this instrument, even more impressive for the price. For $29, it’s a no-brainer for composers and anyone looking for unique ethnic flair in his or her sample library.”
Neptune (Voxcaliber)