EastWest Ancient Kingdom

EastWest explore the world of traditional wind instruments with characteristic style in their latest sample library.

For film, TV or video game composers working in fantasy genres or world music styles, a virtual collection of traditional instrument sounds is an important part of their sonic toolkit. EastWest’s latest release — Ancient Kingdom — is aimed squarely at these kinds of use cases, providing a tour of some of the world’s most distinctive traditional wind instruments. EastWest have collaborated with virtuoso wind player and composer Saulis Petreikis and the result is a deeply sampled virtual selection from Saulis’ own collection of instruments. The library uses EastWest’s excellent Opus front end and is available as either a perpetual licence, or as part of the ComposerCloud+ subscription.

Hold Your Breath

From the Armenian duduk through to the Viking war horn, Ancient Kingdom’s instrument collection spans some wonderfully exotic choices. In each case, EastWest’s usual attention to sampling detail is fully present and correct. This does, of course, mean plenty of expression through suitable velocity layers, but it also means Saulis’ playing abilities are represented via the extensive performance articulation options. Within each instrument group, therefore, a range of Opus presets are available focused on specific articulation choices as well as full keyswitch‑based presets. As shown in the screenshot, these go well beyond sustained and staccato options, letting you create performances full of realistic detail.

The underlying sound of each instrument is excellent, capturing plenty of subtle details. With appropriate playing, and suitable articulation choices, Ancient Kingdom will — sonically, at least — put your audience right into that ancient world. I particularly enjoyed the low hulusi, double shepherd flute and various Armenian duduk options, but there are beautiful sounds to be had wherever you look.

Opus Options

The Opus front end lets you make good use of the core sampling to further customise the sounds. This includes options for instrument doubling and control over the amplitude envelope, but the ambience options are particularly impressive. With four microphone positions (close, mid, main and surround) that can be blended, and Opus’ classy reverb (which features a huge selection of reverb types), you can place your sounds into whatever kind of virtual space you might need.

If you want to gently push the instruments away from their purely traditional sound, you also get four predefined effects signal chains that you can blend. These offer various processing combinations, with the original signal chains including the use of guitar amps, Leslie‑style speakers and megaphones, for example. It’s all tastefully done and provides just enough to give the sounds a more modern edge if required. Opus also offers its usual Soft, Classic and Epic ‘Mood’ options. These essentially provide preset configurations of all the sound‑shaping options to get you instantly into a suitable sonic ballpark.

The sounds here are undeniably impressive, and I could easily imagine these virtual instruments being used in any triple‑A film, TV or video game context.

World Of Sound

Conceptually, Ancient Kingdom is fairly straightforward and, of course, there are other sample libraries that cater for similar types of world wind instruments. That said, the sounds here are undeniably impressive, and I could easily imagine these virtual instruments being used in any triple‑A film, TV or video game context; the quality bar is very high.

I’ll leave you to your own debate about perpetual licences versus subscription services but, for busy working composers, Ancient Kingdom is just additional value added to EastWest’s already cost‑effective ComposerCloud+ platform. Indeed, it is an excellent complement to titles such as Fantasy Orchestra that are also included within that subscription and, for anyone working on world music projects, or composing for fantasy‑based soundtracks, the Fantasy Orchestra/Ancient Kingdom combo would provide a versatile core sonic palette. Yes, traditional wind instruments are something of a niche musical tool, but Ancient Kingdom provides a world of beautiful breathy sound in a convenient and deeply sampled virtual format; it’s impressive stuff.