Qanun

The Qanun (Kanun) is a plucked string instrument similar to a large Zither/Psaltery with trapezoidal soundboard and is common in traditional Middle Eastern, North African and West Asian music. It is regarded as a classical instrument in most of the Arab world and Turkey. The history of the Qanun is somewhat sparse, but earliest versions of the instrument go back to 10th Century Egypt. The modern versions use Nylon or PVC strings stretched over a single bridge poised on fish-skins and with attached tuning pegs (all elements that we sampled separately for this library).

The Qanun use for this instrument was deeply sampled with a variety of different finger positions, each with a different attack and percussive quality to them, including thumbs, fingertips, picks, picks on bridge and pizzicato style of playing. All the pegged bends were also recorded, both ascending and descending in half and whole notes, which is an unusual but cool technique for the instrument. In addition we tremolo, vibrato made by moving pegs fast, harmonics, fisme on press, fiske on release and an assortment of sound FX were also recorded.

The Qanun was recorded with four microphone positions, including contact mics, close mics, semi-close and room mics. The end-result is a staggering 23,000+ samples and the most comprehensive Qanun ever recorded. 8Dio also added a micro-tuner, so you can get traditional middle-eastern tunings.