Baglamas – Greek Mini Bouzouki
This mini bouzouki I brought home from a trip to Athens and it's also my very first sampled instrument. It has a quite aggressive plucked dry sound. Apply splosh and tune to taste!
BySpielfilmklang
The story
Back in 2019 I did a three week long Interrail trip (traveling by train) from Germany through the Balkans, all the way down to Greece. In Athens I found a shop selling Bouzoukis (https://www.thebouzoukishop.com/).
As I travelled with only a backpack and I wanted to bring a souvenir home, I bought a Baglamas, which is a small version of a Bouzouki, and it fit perfectly into my luggage. Back home I played it a few times, but I always wanted to try sampling an instrument myself, so I went for the Baglamas for my first sampled instrument. It has a quite high and aggressive sound, even when played softly, because of the small size and resonance room. I hope people enjoy playing it, the sound reminds me always of my travels in Greece. Feel free to mangle it to your taste! 😉
The samples were recorded chromatically with a plectrum in two velocity layers (although there is no huge difference in sound between the two layers) with two RR per note and layer. Denoise was applied.
The controls are pretty straight forward, despite the names: From left to right you have controls over reverb („Tsatsiki“), Low Pass Filter („Sirtaki“) and ADSR (“α,δ,σ,ρ”).
Enjoy!
Interface
Reviews
Mediterranean flavour
A wonderful opportunity to get to play an instrument I would not otherwise come in contact with! I use it to add a mediterranean flavour to tracks that I am working on.
Thanks to Alex for teaching us all how to pronounce tzatziki, I have apparently been saying it wrong all my life! :)
Picky Greek guy approves!
Baglamas has a special place in my heart because it was my first instrument! And I have to say, this is a very nicely sampled one, and it has retained the nice unique character to it. It also has this "weird" rattling noise in some notes, which is honestly very impressive and realistic.
It comes in its full 2.5 octaves (it's a VERY small instrument), and "correctly" includes the lower double notes after the lower A (the top string constist of two strings, which is a combination of one thin and one thick strings).
The GUI is a custom ultra-stereotypical greek one, and it comes with full ADSR settings, a filter and a reverb. I'm not quite sure why the effects are Tzatziki and Sirtaki, since the one is a food and the other one is a type of dance, but it's funny and it rhymes.
Also, it's tzatziki, not tsatsiki, which for the curious, tz is pronounced with a J sound! :P
Sounds great
I once saw someone play a bouzouki at a place and i have been dreaming of getting one someday. This library really hot the sweet spot with the instrument. Greatly sampled. Good at have the Adsr control over. This definitely fulfilled my needs for the instrument. Stellar job