Mark Deutsch's Bazantar

Welcome to Mark Deutsch’s Bazantar. The Bazantar is a custom 5-string acoustic bass, fitted with an additional twenty-nine sympathetic strings and four drone strings. The instrument possesses a melodic range of over five octaves, while its sympathetic range spans four octaves. This results in an interplay between melodic, sympathetic, and drone strings which weaves an unexpected landscape of resonance that is remarkably rich in texture.

The 8DIO Bazantar is a deep-sampled virtual instrument containing over 2.700 samples divided into two main categories: Multi-samples and phrase-samples. The multi-samples consists of both plucked and bowed representations of the instrument. 8Dio recorded traditional plucked bass with eight round robins pr. note, a highly versatile amount of tapped samples at 10 round robins, regular sustains with and without vibrato, several dynamic sustains/swells. In addition, 8Dio phrase-sampled Mark Deutsch playing the bass in a variety of ways from traditional plucked and bowed bass – to solo’s played with backside of the bow (con legno). 8Dio also did deep-sampling of the drone strings, so you have a highly versatile instrument.

In addition the instrument was recorded in a rich church environment with two sets of microphones (close/internal) and (ambient/player), so users can adjust the sound to their liking ranging from recordings from player perspective to more far, hall based microphones. There's also a variety of controls added (ex. pedal volume, release volume, noise reduction, EQ etc) and a visual velocity editor, so you can fully sculpt the piano to your liking. The Bazantar also includes a great selection of convolution reverbs and convolution effects.