The Qanun (Kanun) is a plucked string instrument. It is a type of large Zither/Psaltery with trapezoidal soundboard and 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 (kanun). The history of the Qanun is somewhat sparse, but earliest versions of the instrument go back to 10th Century Egypt. The modern versions are using Nylon or PVC strings stretched over a single bridge poised on fish-skins and with attached tuning pegs (all elements that we sampled separately).

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

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 sampled. We also added our new micro-tuner, so you can get traditional middle-eastern tunings for Qanun.

Our CHAOS engine has also been added to multiply the textures and possibilities this library has to offer. We hope you enjoy using this library as much as we enjoyed making for you.

5 Finger Styles
The 8Dio Qanun offers you five different playing/finger styles. We deep-sampled the Qanun with both Thumbs, Fingertips, Picks, Picks on Bridge, and traditional plucked Pizzicato. The different playing/finger styles each bring out a different character in the instrument, from the soft and warm thumbs to the more trebly sound of fingertips and the more pointy sound of guitar picks. The idea is to give you a wealth of options, so depending on what type of attack and sustain your music requires – you have all the sound options available.

Assorted Articulations
The 8Dio Qanun contains a rich section of assorted articulations, including tremolo, harmonics, vibrato generated by moving the pegs in rapid fashion, fiske on press and release and additional FX. We also added four types of bending pegs. We sampled each note in both ascending and descending fashion and both half- and whole tone. So imagine you play the instrument, but want to bend the note. You would essentially detune the instrument by moving the peg in real-time.

Micro-tunings & Options
The 8Dio Qanun offers a variety of ethnic micro-tunings, which transforms the instrument in several ways. We added the most common microtunings for Qanun, which includes: Rast, Saba, Bayati, Hijaz, Huzam, Sikah and Suznak. In addition we also created an Ensemble function, so you can have up to three Qanuns playing at the same time. We also added our new Flow-Note system, so you can have the program play repeated notes for fast performances.