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!

Interface

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!