 To celebrate the release of the new AmpleSound woodwind instrument, the Dongxiao, I have a fantastic giveaway for you, where the winners can pick any instrument from the AmpleSound product range. Let's get stuck in. Hi folks, I'm Mike and I hope you're well. As I mentioned in the intro, AmpleSound have just released a new Chinese woodwind instrument called the Dongxiao. It's absolutely wonderful and to celebrate, I have three full licenses to give away for any AmpleSound product. So it doesn't have to be this instrument. It could be any AmpleSound product of your choice if you happen to be one of the three lucky winners. I'll be talking at the end of this video about how you enter for that. Don't skip forward. That's not nice. First of all, let's take a look at this new woodwind instrument. I've put together a quick demo with this instrument and a handful of other AmpleSound instruments as well so you can get a bit of a taste of what can be done with it. Only took me a couple of hours to make it really, really sort of scrappy, quick to put together, but it will give you a good idea of what it's capable of. Then after that, we'll take a look at this instrument in a little bit more detail. And as I say, stick around to the end of the video because then I'm going to tell you how to enter for one of these great prizes. So the Xiao is a type of Chinese woodwind instrument of which there are a few different kinds. The one in this library is called the Dongxiao. Now I'm going to try my best not to pronounce it anymore because I think I'm making a bit of a mess of it. And if you do speak Mandarin, I'm sorry about that. Now this is the second Chinese woodwind instrument that I've reviewed from AmpleSound with the first one being the QD. You can see a link for that review up above here. And they differ slightly in the way they operate compared to most other AmpleSound libraries, which are mostly stringed instruments. Now they differ in the way that you use the key switches. Now, if you don't know, key switches are special keys on your piano keyboard, which are reserved for changing the sound of the instrument rather than actually playing a note. And as I say, these are these are used slightly differently with this woodwind engine than with the guitars, etc. With the AmpleSound range. But before we get into that, let's just have a quick listen to the basic sound, the sustain sound. OK, it sounds like this. Just love that breathy sound. I reckon if you didn't use any articulations, you can get a lot out of that basic sustain sound. But of course, we do want to add some different expressions at time at different times and then be sort of authentic to the sound of the instrument and the different sounds that the players get out of it. Now, the first difference in sound that we can get is just by playing the note really, really hard. This invokes the impulse articulation. Now, if you're listening to this reasonably loud, protect your ears at the moment because it gets a lot louder. The normal sound, as I say, sounds like this. And if we play hard, we get that really aggressive attack to the note. It can be very, very useful at times. Now, in terms of other articulations, if we look on the UI here, we can see at the lower end of the keyboard, we have another number of notes which are colored either in blue or in yellow. We look at the blue ones first. These are the regular key switches, which we get with most other instruments. And normally we sort of use them by playing them at the same time as a note in our melody. So I was using that pentatonic up key switch down there, right down there on that D. Now, in actual fact, technically, you have to play that note ever so slightly before, sorry, the articulation has to be played ever so slightly before the note. OK, if we play the note first and then press the articulation key, there's obviously no change to the sound at all. So we have to make sure we play that first to get that pentatonic up in this case. OK, now, in terms of other articulations in that lower end, we'll just go through a few of them, not all of them. We have our sustained sound, we have grace up, grace down. That pentatonic up, pentatonic down. His ripple sound, long trembling. That impulse again there, scattered up and a few more there. So as I say, the important thing here is that we do make sure that we play the key switch just before we play the note. Now, it gets really interesting with the other keys, with the yellow keys, because with those, we don't actually actually have to play them before the note. We can play them during the note. So if we're playing a long note, we can change the sound of it while we're playing it. OK, this gives some really interesting sort of articulations and opportunities for expression. So so you can see that I just did two or three there. While I was playing one of those really long notes, I was playing with some different articulations and it was changing the sound of that note. So these are really, really useful for especially when you are playing those sustained notes and you just want to create some expression in there. I absolutely love those. That's a very basic overview of those key switches. We also have some sort of special effects and things up here on the on the green keys. Some I think they call these riffs up here. Really cool stuff there. So we get those basic sort of the mix of the sustained notes and then all of the key switches. Then we have the usual sort of fare that we get with ample sound, lots of different options in terms of the mix and the way it sounds. We also have an extra with this woodwind engine where we can change the key. This affects the way some of those key switches actually work with sort of slides and runs and things like that. Then we also have a mixer so that we can blend the sound of sort of the breaths and the wind special effects. That kind of thing. So that's kind of regular thing that we'll get with ample sound. In addition to that, if we move or click on this tab up here, then we also get the usual effects that we get with ample sound. So we do have a built-in compressor here. We also have an equalizer here. We then have this one, which is the echo effect or a delay effect, which is on at the moment. You can just about hear that there. And then also a reverb with different sizes, few different controls there. That's regular for the ample sound instruments. So that is the basic instrument, but you could really get a lot out of this. And as I say, especially if you're writing sort of soundtrack music, that kind of thing. So how do you go about entering for this giveaway? Well, one of the things you don't have to do is like this video. But if you do, it'll give me a nice warm glow inside and it'll cost you absolutely nothing. Another thing you don't have to do is subscribe to this channel. But it may be a great advantage to you because in around about two weeks time or so, I'll be doing a live show where I'll pick and announce the winners. You'll need to make sure you catch that live show to find out if you've won or not. Then you'll need to go ahead and actually claim your prize if you have one. So it's definitely worth subscribing and ringing the bell so that you make sure that you notified about all of my other videos. Another thing I recommend you do is follow the link in the description down below for the ample sound website where you can take a look at their full product range and pick out that prize that you would like to win if you're one of the lucky winners. Now, the only thing you have to do is make sure you let me know in the comments down below which prize from the ample sound product range you would like to win. Also, let me know what you thought about this new woodwind instrument of theirs. I'd love to hear your thoughts on that. Now, for my Patreon members, you don't have to do any of that. You are automatically entered into this competition. Now, if you do want to become a patron member, follow the link for that in the description down below and for as little as one dollar per month, you can help me help you by making more videos like this. And I'll see you in the next video.