8Dio Productions has announced its first annual 8Dio "STAND OUT" Composer Contest, with the main prize being an iPad, and the release of a new instrument for Kontakt entitled "Basstard".

The 8Dio "STAND OUT" Composer Contest is a competition seeking to showcase the exemplary and innovative musical talents of composers from all over the world. All you have to do enter is compose an original piece (highlighting one of the 8Dio software instruments) and tell them about yourself when you submit your composition. Guest judges are Jeremy Soule, Jeff Rona, Trevor Morris and Bill Brown.

Prizes:

1st Place Winner:

• New (2012) Apple iPad.
• $500 in 8Dio Products.

2nd Place Winner: $500 in 8Dio Products.

3rd Place Winner: $250 in 8Dio Products.

Click here for more details on how to join the contest.

8Dio has also announced the release of Basstard, a multi-sampled instrument for Kontakt focused on recording the gradual destruction of an orchestral bass. The library contains four core categories of sounds: "Tonal", "Percussive", "FX" and "Grooves":

1. The tonal category covers more traditional multi-sampled articulations like plucked, staccato, rubber mallet on strings, regular drum stick on strings, fork on strings and other tool that could be used for tonal sampling.
2. The percussive category contains a variety of heavy round-robin based articulations playing the instrument like a drum kit (containing 6-10 round robin articulations).
3. The FX category has a gruesome amount of FX made with anything from bowing bass with baseball bat, using a power drill on the strings and recording sustained notes from it – to actually power-drilling the bass and reconfigure the instrument – separating its neck from its body and essentially reassemble the instrument in horrible ways.
4. The Groove category contains unique tempo-synced BPM-based grooves recorded at several core tempos.

Basstard requires the full retail version of Kontakt 4.2 or later. The instrument is currently available for the introductory sale price of $99 (goes to $129 on July 15th, 2012). Click here for more details.

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Check out www.8dio.com for more information, demos, videos and offers.