Garritan Personal Orchestra
Contents
1. Ambience s parameter set seems to map most closely to Waves Renaissance Reverb though the parameters aren t identical between the two The resulting sounds were anywhere from subtly different to vastly different and what is better if there is such a thing will largely be a matter of taste What I can say though is that with Ambience the original sound from the dry signal seemed to come through a bit more clearly than with most of the other reverbs I tested Also listening to the signal through Ambience typically made me feel a bit more like I was sitting in the audience of the sort of venue being modeled listening to real orchestral instruments than did most of the other reverbs This isn t an Ambience review but before moving on I should also note that GPO s version of Ambience comes with a baker s dozen presets geared toward emulating environments that are commonly used for orchestral or chamber music For example there are a couple of concert halls a couple of ballrooms a church a cathedral etc Add these ready to go environments to the pre positioned ensemble building instruments in GPO and you get a fair bit of instant gratification with respect to the challenge of emulating the layout of a real orchestra and putting it in its native environment SONAR users probably won t care much about it but the entry level Cubasis VST 4 OEM DAW is also included in the GPO package This may be useful for GPO users who don t already have2. format some MP3 demos made using only GPO sounds and a demo of GPO instrument sounds Just When You Thought It Was Over There is plenty that comes inside the GPO package but the goodies don t stop there Garritan has one of the more extensive support sites I ve seen It provides not only product updates but also additional information on product use and interaction with other products e g DAWs such as SONAR pointers to third party add ons that may make GPO more useful or help tailor it to your environment active user forums and much more For SONAR users the GPO Sonar Page consolidates a number of SONAR specific tips techniques and even samples of user authored SONAR projects using GPO Speaking of GPO users who use SONAR a recent survey taken on the GPO forum indicated approximately 42 of the survey respondents use SONAR as their primary DAW with the next most popular DAW for GPO users being Cubase SX at 24 of respondents To paraphrase an old Goobers commercial two great products that work great together While I won t go into detail on contents of either support page anyone who would like to check them out can click on the links in the paragraph above and get a firsthand impression I did want to mention one specific category of resources available In particular Garritan provides links to a number of MFX MIDI FX plug ins which provide functionality that may be useful to users of DAWs such as SONAR that support
3. In Overture though it is a simple matter to clean the first measure up with very minor effort yielding the following That s better and you ll just have to trust me that it is much quicker and easier to get this result starting from the original part I had in SONAR using Overture to make the changes than it is to use SONAR s Staff View Or try it yourself if you d like to give yourself a challenge As nice as this revised notation looks though it still isn t what I d be inclined to give a wind instrument player If I want consistent results from multiple wind players or even virtual wind players i e using GPO s articulation capabilities as described above playing this part I ll need to tell them where I intend their tonguing and slurring to occur Adding slur marks is a simple matter in Overture Try doing that in SONAR Hint It can t be done MIDI doesn t support the notion of slurs ties and other print oriented music markings Of course there is lots more that can be done on the notation side too if it is needed for example to print out scores for real musicians or even just to help you remember what you want to play back into SONAR overdub style once your orchestrations are finished Okay so having a reasonably capable notation program is a good thing when dealing with orchestrations but maybe you ve already got one of those perhaps even a name brand variety like Finale or Sibelius Remember odds are good your notat
4. MFX For example my primary controller keyboard is a Roland Rhodes MK 80 and it has one of those combination pitch bender mod levers rather than a separate pitch bender and mod wheel Given GPO s use of the mod wheel for velocity this combined controller is decidedly non optimal It s not optimal for lots of other applications too but we re only addressing GPO here While I do have another controller keyboard with separate pitch and mod wheels I tend to prefer the more piano like feel of the MK 80 s keyboard to the relatively squishy synth action feel of my other keyboard The MK 80 has four sliders that send MIDI continuous controller CC information and one of the third party MFX plug ins supplied on the GPO support site will translate among other things one continuous Originally published on CakewalkNet com July 7 2004 Page 10 controller to another Using that MFX plug in in SONAR with GPO I was able to map one of the sliders on my MK 80 which happened to send CC 13 values to mod wheel CC 1 values thus using that slider as my volume fader for GPO No more squishy synth keyboard for me Other MFX plug ins available include one that translates pitch wheel to mod wheel i e in case you have a pitch wheel but not a mod wheel one that translates a range of keys into mod wheel i e in case you have neither a mod wheel pitch wheel or other continuous controllers to map one that translates a specific key on the keyboard to s
5. a greater degree than had been possible when overdubbing each of them from scratch Originally published on CakewalkNet com July 7 2004 Page 12 Replacing the sustain pedal parts was dead easy in SONAR s Piano Roll View since all that was needed was a pedal on event just after the start of a phrase and a pedal off event at or near the end of the phrase The only question was where I wanted to put those phrases since I hadn t written them into my notated parts but I still made quick work of it For the mod wheel parts I didn t relish the idea of manually writing in a bunch of controller events because it felt like that would likely achieve decidedly non musical results Instead I decided I d use SONAR s automation recording capabilities to assign a controller in SONAR 3 s track view properties to the mod wheel then record automation of that and manipulate it in real time with the mouse This recorded envelopes in SONAR s Track View and I could edit those later to fix any minor issues Not only was it faster than drawing controller values or envelopes from scratch it was much more musical since I was basically playing the fader for the controller Four passes through the song and a bit of envelope editing later I was ready to mix The first thing I noted in getting ready to mix was the pan positions of the solo GPO instruments were more suited for a fuller orchestral setting than they were for a string quartet Thus I panned those slightl
6. go down the latter route reading the SONAR authored MIDI file into Overture to start things off Conversion of what I had was about as clean as you could expect given that all the parts other than the melody had been composed and played in one shot apiece Saving the file in Overture format it was time to hook up GPO Studio to play the parts Backing up a little bit prior to my decision to go with Overture for this project I did a little experimentation with the Overture to GPO Studio link trying to see how the templates on each side of the fence worked together I found however that GPO Studio s KONTAKT Player instances couldn t find the appropriate samples They did have an option to search for those samples but it took forever on my roughly 200GB of hard disk space and after finding the first sampled instrument it wanted to start the process all over looking for the next one This turns out to be due to a limitation of the current KONTAKT Player release where the paths to samples are hard coded based on the Originally published on CakewalkNet com July 7 2004 Page 11 machine on which the templates were created Since I organize my samples differently and didn t have space to put them on my system drive anyway it didn t find the samples where it expected to find them on my system Garritan indicated this limitation should be removed in a future update to the KONTAKT Player In light of that earlier experimentation I decided I d
7. isn t so much the ending or in this case the conclusion itself Rather it is all the details including surprise twists and turns along the way that lead to that conclusion So grab your popcorn just don t get butter on the keyboard and get comfortable We re off Background Garritan Personal Orchestra GPO is among the relatively new breed of products that blur the line between a software based sample player and a enone ee eo am agam 3 sample library In fact GPO includes a Native Instruments KONTAKT Player Ssessee clea ALIMAMA Originally published on CakewalkNet com July 7 2004 Page 1 library but KONTAKT users can also load the samples directly if desired Garritan s providing the KONTAKT Player is thus a convenience which ensures that even users who don t have KONTAKT can play the samples back in their optimal form without needing any sample format conversions which could potentially lose information However as we ll see later in this review there are some benefits to Garritan s providing the KONTAKT Player even for existing KONTAKT users GPO s sample library programmed by Tom Hopkins includes all the basic instrumental groups you d expect to find in an orchestral collection For example all common types of strings including harps brass woodwinds and orchestral percussion are included where applicable in both solo and ensemble forms more on that distinction below There are al
8. least is the keyboards and harps category This category includes a 9 Steinway concert grand piano along with a celeste pipe organ harpsichord celeste and two harps We re not just talking gratuitously included instruments here either For example the main piano sample comes in at 244 MB when loaded into the KONTAKT Player a lite version at 165 MB is also available in case memory is tight There are also two duo pianos available that do not share samples in common to allow for using them together for duet purposes The harpsichord includes three key switched stops settings and the pipe organ includes a number of different stops settings as well as pedals coverage Each of the harps have sample sets for harmonics white key only sample sets geared toward glissandos along with a standard chromatic sample set We ll get into special controls and playing techniques below To wind up our overview of the sample library s contents though my best summary would be that GPO provides the breadth of instrumentation needed to simulate anything from solo violin to a string or brass quartet to a full orchestra including most common special configurations It does this by providing high quality instruments and sufficient variations of each instrument to build ensembles that go beyond what can be done playing section sounds or by cloning a limited number of individual instruments The Director You Okay so GPO has a full orchestra s worth of high qu
9. part rather than doubling other instruments I elected to use the relevant solo strings parts picking two violin samples plus viola and cello samples and loading them into the first four slots in the KONTAKT Player After assigning four corresponding MIDI tracks I got down to tracking each part one at a time overdub style arranging my parts on the fly Or at least that is what I started out trying to do Through no fault of GPO s I found that between the melody of the song the piano part and four interweaving string parts the arrangement was just getting too complex Initially I thought I d just go to SONAR s Staff View and make minor corrections there After going with that idea for a little while though I decided it was time to haul out the big guns a notation program and scrap most of what I had for the string arrangements and start fresh I did however like what I had for the introduction to the song and I also wanted to have some guide tracks to help me look at the arrangement as I was working on it Thus I added a French horn sample in GPO recorded a melody track and then exported the entire SONAR project to standard MIDI file format in anticipation of using that to get me going in a notation program The next question was whether I should go with my current notation program Finale Allegro 2002 or go for broke and try out the GPO provided Overture SE In the spirit of trying out more of the overall GPO package I decided to
10. properties of the strings themselves finger positions of the player the pressure of the player s fingers on the strings whether the note is played at the start of a bow stroke or later on and how much later on the direction of the bow etc Vary any element e g the angle of the bow and what comes out may change slightly or even significantly Keep in mind more than one element can be varied at a time For example when switching notes the player will be moving his or her fingers at the same time the bow is moving across the strings and the actual angle of the fingers and the bow with respect to their respective parts of the strings will change slightly Also unlike most keyboard instruments where the key struck dictates the pitch that will come out of the instrument and that pitch selection is perfectly repeatable violin players select pitches through continuously variable finger positions on the strings To gain accuracy in pitch selection they use a combination of their ears and memorized hand and finger positions Neither is perfect and there will be slight variations in pitch between instances of the same note This is especially true in fast passages where fingers and pitch decisions must be made rapidly and there isn t time to let the ear make corrections to an evolving pitch as there might be in a slower passage Originally published on CakewalkNet com July 7 2004 Page 4 To put it another way the sounds we hear come from the
11. the fourth CD of the distribution set Installing those programs was also largely uneventful though I was disappointed that the Cubase VST 4 0 installation commandeered the MID MIDI file type association on my system without giving me the option to have it not do that Given CakewalkNet is primarily aimed at SONAR users readers may wish to forego the installation of Cubase VST altogether It also turns out GPO Studio has default installation path dependencies built into its templates as a result of limitations of the current version of the KONTAKT Player more on this below GPO currently carries an introductory price of 249 and all the retail prices I ve seen for it are very close to that point Note though that the Garritan web site suggests a price increase will be coming It does not suggest what the new price will be or when it is coming Originally published on CakewalkNet com July 7 2004 Page 2 Except as specifically noted otherwise below the hands on product testing conducted for this review was carried out in SONAR 3 1 1 Producer Edition The DXi2 version of GPO was used within SONAR The Cast I won t bore you with the entire instrument list if you want that you can check it out on the Garritan site Let s get a flavor though Starting with the strings you will find not only section and solo sounds for each instrument but also individual instrument sounds geared toward building ensembles The ensemble buil
12. there in this price range Musicians though know what it means to have an instrument respond to your moves including all the elements you combine to create dynamic expression be they subtle or grandiose Non musicians may not appreciate that aspect as much but any musician who has ever played a less than responsive instrument will appreciate how the GPO instruments respond If you re a musician who has been frustrated by past attempts to realistically and musically emulate orchestral instruments using sample players and or synthesizers GPO may just be what you ve been searching for Okay you programmers will probably like it too since there is plenty of control capability but the musicians get to play and that s always more fun than programming Rick Paul is a songwriter living in Southern California You can contact him at http www RickPaul info Originally published on CakewalkNet com July 7 2004 Page 14
13. would also need to do that for the next instrument and the next and the next and Not fun Garritan indicates that a future update to KONTAKT Player should address this issue In the meantime it is also easy enough to create your own instrument setup templates in GPO Studio to match those available in Overture and you can save those so you won t have to do it more than once for each setup needed Originally published on CakewalkNet com July 7 2004 Page 8 Overture also allows dynamic markings to be mapped to controller values thus making it relatively simple to map dynamic changes in your notation to mod wheel values being sent to GPO Studio based instruments Overture also supports mapping of various notational expressions to MIDI values of various types For example the GPO manual gives the example of a pizz for pizzicato marking s getting mapped to a key switching value for an instrument where key switching is used to switch between normal and pizzicato samples In other notation programs you might be forced to put in special MIDI operations separate from the notational markings you will be adding thus forcing you to choose between accepting less accurate playback of your work in progress or doing a bit more work to achieve accurate playback My general feeling here is that if you are heavy duty notation user you will want to stick with your preferred program However if you only use notation occasionally you may find GPO s integr
14. ONAR A simple reason is that SONAR and most sequencer s notation capabilities when those capabilities aren t specifically designed for creating printed notation does not allow entering rests so you have to carefully position the mouse and or use grid changes to simulate this Even then the notation may not look as musical as if you d entered it with a print oriented notation program There is also the matter of how easy the notation is to read and whether it can reflect what you need to know to accurately and repeatedly play that notation when overdubbing your simulated orchestral instruments via GPO and SONAR Allow me to demonstrate using an extremely simple case I recorded a very quick MIDI track of the start of Mary Had A Little Lamb into SONAR Here is the notation SONAR s Staff View generated Pretty ugly eh Granted my playing may not have been the most accurate but I was expecting it to read my mind a little better than this In fact if I export the MIDI track to a standard MIDI file import that same MIDI file into Overture SE i e so SONAR and Overture will have been reading the same exact MIDI notes and timings I get the following Originally published on CakewalkNet com July 7 2004 Page 7 fe CICS Se O E Se ee The first measure still isn t terribly pretty and emphasizes my playing inaccuracies but the second measure looks pretty darn good Overture seems to be a bit better at reading minds than SONAR I guess
15. TAS for Macintosh OSX and a standalone version of GPO that uses ASIO MME or DirectSound drivers on Windows or CoreAudio drivers on the Mac The fourth CD provides a number of goodies Among these are a multi instance GPO player GPO Studio which allows GPO to appear as MIDI ports to arbitrary MIDI programs such as notation programs the Ambience reverb plug in the GenieSoft Overture SE notation program Cubase VST 4 0 OEM and a few other utility programs The general gist of the extras is to allow users to have everything they need to create and realize orchestrations no matter what software they may have had prior to acquiring GPO A 60 page paper user manual is provided About two thirds of that covers GPO itself while the remainder covers the extra included programs and how to integrate them with GPO On line PDF and or on line help format manuals are also provided to go into more detail on the extra programs Installation of GPO itself which includes the KONTAKT Player was straightforward and uneventful Activation via Native Instruments on line registration and activation facility or equivalent manual processes is required I used the automated facility and it went quickly and without a hitch It is also recommended to update to the latest version of the KONTAKT Player which is V1 0 2 008 as of this writing That is the version used for this review The extra programs each have their own installation routines which are located on
16. a VSTi capable DAW application to host GPO SONAR users may choose to install the package anyway because there actually are a few cool plug ins included such as Karlette an analog tape delay simulator and Grungelizer which can be used to dirty up your recordings such as for simulating vinyl records There are even a few basic VST instruments such as the LM 9 drum box plug in This may not be earth shattering stuff but I figure since it s in there anyway it can t hurt anything to install it and maybe some uses will pop up eventually Nuff said Originally published on CakewalkNet com July 7 2004 Page 9 MIDI File Translator takes standard MIDI files authored to use note on velocity for volume control and creates the mod wheel events needed to optimize that file for playback in GPO This may be a time saver for users who have projects initially created for playback on other softsynths or softsamplers who now want to upgrade to sounds from GPO Or it could just be used for entertainment and education for use with MIDI files acquired on the Internet or elsewhere Beware though that it requires you to have Java installed on your computer I initially did not and got an error message telling me to visit Java com for a free download of Java Downloading and installing Java was pretty uneventful and the MIDI File Translator worked just fine after that However for security purposes I m not really sure I want to keep Java running on my PC Anot
17. ality samples Couldn t that be said about other orchestral sample sets as well Perhaps so especially if you disregard price point but just having a set of well recorded samples does not a believable orchestral simulation make Real instrumentalists coax a lot more than notes out of their instruments Sure the notes are part of what good players produce but notes alone while music aren t necessarily musical A musical performance i e one that invokes an emotional response in the listener also includes dynamic changes tonal variations articulation differences to suit phrasing and even subtle human imperfections such as variations in pitch and tone that technically arise from mistakes or a player s limitations How does a set of sampled acoustic instrument sounds provide for these sorts of nuances To get more concrete here let s look simply at the violin If you ve played synthesized or sampled violin sounds from a keyboard before you have no doubt had the experience that what you are playing sounds sort of like a violin but wouldn t fool your tin eared tone deaf Uncle Ernie no less a more discriminating listener Why is that The sound you hear emanating from a violin is the product of many elements coming together For example there is the acoustical design of the violin itself the material the bow is made of the pressure of the bow on the strings the speed with which the player moves the bow across the strings the acoustical
18. ation with Overture makes it worth using Overture when you need notation with GPO since Overture is a pretty quick program to learn and relatively fast to use While it may not compete heavily with the likes of Finale for high end print publication work it seems plenty adequate for use in creating quick arrangements for the virtual orchestra Of course for those who don t already have a notation program especially those who are budget strapped getting Overture SE thrown in with the bundle is a nice benefit to get you up and running in this area Another extra included with GPO is the Ambience reverb from Magnus Jonsson a member of a loosely organized collective of shareware freeware and donationware developers who go by the name Smartelectronix Ambience is a VST plug in so can be used in any VST or by virtue of Cakewalk s VST Adapter DirectX capable application It is also configured inside GPO Studio to provide overall well ambience I am not exactly a golden ears type so I won t even attempt to try and compare the detailed sound characteristics of Ambience to that of other reverbs in my arsenal I did do a bit of comparative listening pitting Ambience up against a half a dozen other reverb plug ins some of which have been reviewed here in the past In doing so I did my best to try and use similar settings despite some of the reverbs having extremely different parameter sets It might be worth noting that of the reverbs I tried
19. bells xylophone etc for sustain with piano and a few other instrument specific techniques Portamento VARI and VAR2 are used as noted above for most strings and winds This isn t a comprehensive list of playing controls but it should give you the general idea The bottom line here is that the combination of GPO s sample sets and the KONTAKT programming that Garritan has done to allow the musician to manipulate those sounds in real time goes beyond being superb It is downright musical As a musician I very much appreciate that because it is much more like playing a real instrument Originally published on CakewalkNet com July 7 2004 Page 5 including giving me the ability to incorporate many of the nuances I might be able to incorporate were I able to better play the original acoustic instruments in question This aspect did however make me wonder what the reaction of someone who might be more of a composer programmer as opposed to a composer musician might have to the expressivity options GPO has Thinking about it a bit though my feeling is that even if you did not choose to take advantage of any of those extra control options you would be no worse off with GPO than you would with most other sets of orchestral samples If you wanted increased control though it would be pretty easy to program that control by simply drawing the applicable controller events or MIDI envelopes in your sequencer Recording automation to overdub
20. ding stringed instruments do not share samples with one another and so do not exhibit the phasing and other artifacts you might get if trying to build ensembles with multiple copies of the same sampled instrument They are also each panned slightly differently and with volume settings to position them slightly differently in the mix to emulate the positioning of players in a real orchestra This makes for quick and easy ensemble building To give an idea of the kind of variety that exists within the GPO samples there are 3 solo violins and 9 violins intended for building ensembles Each of the ensemble instruments is based on a different actual violin Not just any violins either We are talking high end often vintage instruments such as 18th century violins by the likes of Stradivarius Guarneri and Gagliano Garritan indicates that the original stringed instruments alone are collectively valued at upwards of ten million dollars While there aren t as many violas cellos and double basses as there are violins just as is the case in a real orchestra there are multiple instruments of each type aimed at building ensembles There are also solo instruments of each type three of those in the case of cellos What you won t find in most of the individual string instruments is lots of different instruments for different articulations The one exception on that count is pizzicato articulations for the solo instruments By and large though the mult
21. dubbing virtual band you may be used to just making parts up on the fly I know I do that most of the time even though I ve read music pretty much all my life and can write in notation pretty readily The thing is once you start getting more complex in your orchestrations if you are like me you may find that it gets harder and harder to E O E fete EAE avoid parts stepping on other parts if you re just composing those parts on the fly Perhaps more significantly if you take the ensemble building approach outlined above to get the greatest realism in GPO you will want each part you are overdubbing that is supposed to play the same part to actually be playing the same part While you could clone an on the fly played part and offset its notes a bit for each additional part maybe even scale or offset the mod wheel values to tweak the dynamics somewhat greater realism will be obtained if you are getting human rather than machine generated timing and dynamic differences Thus it helps to have a notated part to tell you what you should be playing or what you played the first time if you composed the part on the fly Okay but wait a minute you say doesn t SONAR have built in notation Yes it does but unless you have a high threshold for pain and or the parts you need to create are extremely simple you may find it frustrating to do serious notation based arranging and orchestration in S
22. eesanal Qolsa SSR Se ra ae fk ts Review Garritan Personal Orchestra by Rick Paul 7th July 2004 Would you mind very much if I skip ahead to the verdict right here I know it s customary to save conclusions for the end so as not to ruin any surprises I suppose there is the risk some of you won t read any further because you don t much care about details and were just planning to skip to the end anyway and now that I m giving you a shortcut you might not even accidentally notice any of the details I ll take my chances though Here goes Garritan Personal Orchestra raises the bar for affordable realistic playable and just plain fun orchestral simulations There I ve done it Those of you who were just waiting for that part are no longer reading this Hmm if I say that last sentence in a forest and Oh never mind For the rest of you though there s a method to my madness In particular it took me all of a few minutes of playing around with GPO to come to that basic conclusion so I thought it would be appropriate to share that right up front in this review That initial reaction however while reflecting the spirit of what is coming in the remainder of this review barely scratches the surface of GPO It s like one of those movies where you get told the ending at the start of the movie then most everything else is a flashback perhaps up to the very ending where you might get a few added twists What s interesting
23. er friendliness for note input and minor editing What was really nice though was being able to hear GPO s high quality sounds playing my arrangement rather than the cheesy onboard soundcard sounds I ve generally heard in the past when using my notation program Since GPO Studio can also hook up to Allegro I definitely intend for that to be a thing of the past Yeah I did have one other minor issue working with GPO Studio via Overture The piano sound was glitching periodically I had all kind of theories as to what might be making that happen from wondering if I was short on RAM I have 1GB so I didn t really think so and if disk streaming might help loading the GPO samples directly in KONTAKT under SONAR still showed the glitching thus proving it wouldn t have helped to the possibility the samples had gotten corrupted on installation After ruling out most other possibilities I determined the samples had indeed gotten corrupted on installation It turned out I d had a hardware error on my CD ROM drive during the GPO installation but if there was an error message I don t recall seeing it I determined it had happened through review of the Windows XP system event logs At that point it was a simple matter of reading the sample files back onto my hard disk from the CD verifying there were no hardware errors during the process and checking that the glitching had magically disappeared A few days later okay I admit I m not a speedy s
24. her special inclusion in the GPO package is called Harp Packets This is a MIDI file with lots of small MIDI clips one per track with tracks labeled according to scales The clip for each scale sends some control information to GPO that is intended to simulate various harp pedal positions when used with one of the Glissando Harps in GPO These simulated pedal positions determine what strings on the virtual harp are open and stopped This in turn governs what notes you get when you play a glissando by running your fingers up and down the white keys on the keyboard For example say you want a B major glissando in a song you re working on and you ve configured the Glissando Harp 1 for use with the relevant MIDI track You would copy the MIDI clip from the Harp Packets MIDI file to your project putting it on either the track you plan to use or another track feeding the same GPO instance and MIDI channel then just record your keyboard glissandos to get the right notes If you need to change notes for another glissando later in the song you d have to place another of the Harp Packets somewhere after you re done doing B major glissandos but before you need to do another one say an F sharp major glissando The result is a much more playable harp glissando simulation than you d likely be able to achieve by simply playing very fast arpeggios using one of the chromatic harp sample sets The extras CD also includes the GPO manual chapters in PDF Adobe Acrobat
25. interaction of instrument design the player s interpretation of the notes on the page the player s skill and technique and good old human error The sounds we hear will vary over time with some of that variation based on deliberate decisions made by the player and some based on relatively random factors such as human error and the player s physical and technical limitations Truly skilled acoustic musicians marshal all these factors to yield a more emotional performance but what is the poor keyboard player to do when trying to simulate a complex acoustic instrument based on synthesized or sampled sounds Most sampled violin sounds use keyboard velocity for volume and possibly timbre Some might add support for legato via sustain pedal perhaps vibrato from a mod wheel and maybe a bit more obscure things here and there To get different articulations though such as you might achieve from bow pressure you will by and large need to change sample sets This can make it truly hard to just play the instrument in a musical way to achieve effects similar to what a real violin player might achieve While GPO won t turn you into a virtuoso violinist likely to fool orchestral audiophiles GPO s violin sample programming combined with the control possibilities available through the KONTAKT Player do provide more expressive more musically useful control than typical violin samples For example note velocity affects attack strength while mod wheel is used t
26. ion program will work with GPO Studio with the only question being if it supports enough MIDI ports to allow playing all the parts you need Finale and Sibelius do Encore will only give you up to 16 parts due to only supporting two MIDI outputs and the KONTAKT Player s limitation of 8 parts per MIDI input port Does Overture SE still provide some value in that case Odds are if you are very familiar with your notation program it will be faster for you to work in that program than to work with Overture especially on the front end since you d have to learn different ways of doing things in Overture However Garritan s version of Overture SE does provide some nice hooks that make Overture integrate a little better with GPO Studio than just any application would For example there are Sound Sets in Overture which are basically GPO instrument templates that correspond to similarly named templates available in GPO Studio which should in theory allow very quickly setting up both Overture and GPO Studio to reflect the same sounds I say in theory because there is currently a limitation in KONTAKT Player whereby the sample locations in GPO Studio s templates are hard coded to the default paths which were evidently what was used in Garritan s own environment Thus if you have loaded the GPO samples in another location the KONTAKT Player will not find them and will invite you to let it search your hard disk which could take a very long time Then it
27. iple articulations needed for playing realistic string parts are achieved through playing techniques more on that below This may mean a bit more of a front end learning curve for getting comfortable with playing the samples but should pay off nicely in improved efficiency later on When you compare just playing the parts on a single sampled instrument per individual instrument part to having to switch sample sets frequently depending on which articulations are used the productivity improvements of the former approach should be obvious Besides the solo and ensemble building stringed instruments there are also string sections If you re in a hurry and don t have time to track multiple individual instruments the section strings will get you on your way more quickly For best realism though building up your ensembles from individual instruments is the way to go Or augment several ensemble building instruments with section strings to get larger groups more quickly Unlike the individual stringed instruments the section strings do provide sample sets geared toward various articulations such as short bows tremolo pizzicato sordino with mutes and trills Moving on to woodwinds reveals the full range of instruments from piccolo down to contrabassoon including somewhat rarer instrument types such as alto and bass flutes and E flat bass and contrabass clarinets Of course the more standard fare i e flutes B flat clarinets oboe English horn a
28. just create my own string quartet template from scratch on the GPO Studio side In fact it turns out that even had the templates worked with my non standard sample library path I might have had to do this because I had the extra melody and piano tracks not just the string quartet tracks So even if I started out with the GPO template for a string quartet I would have had to add my extra tracks At any rate with only the four instruments in the string quartet plus an instrument to hold down the melody line and the piano setting things up in GPO Studio only took a few minutes I saved that configuration as a template in case I ever have a similar configuration in the future The net of all this was that within a few minutes I had my SONAR MIDI tracks up in Overture playing through GPO Studio talking to my MOTU 2048 mkII audio interface via ASIO I also use the ASIO drivers in SONAR What s more the notation was actually pretty readable Too bad I d be scrapping all except for a few measures of the four string parts I had not read the Overture documentation other than on linking it up with GPO Studio prior to this point However I had played with a demo version of Overture in the past Its user interface is not all that unlike various other programs I had tried or used in the past so I was up and running pretty quickly albeit with a few minor hiccups when I had to find how to do a new operation This is a testament to Overture s relative us
29. l violin samples after minimal ramp up time learning to use the mod wheel keyboard and sustain pedal together with GPO Then you can take things even further with a bit of extra attention to detail on the sequencing side or even using some very low constant values for VARI and VAR2 Remember though that for the most part you won t be playing isolated solo instruments Rather you ll be building small or large ensembles from individual instruments each of which you can play expressively when tracking the MIDI parts Add all those together and the level of realism you can expect from your GPO based ensembles goes up significantly compared to less expressive sample collections Of course the orchestra isn t made up solely of violins but all the instruments in GPO take advantage of the control possibilities the KONTAKT Player offers to optimize the range of techniques and expression you can achieve in emulating each orchestral instrument For example the mod wheel controls volume in all strings except harps and winds as well as with the pipe organ Note velocity is generally used for accents and attacks with strings and winds but for volume with percussion and keyboard instruments other than organ Sustain pedal is used for legato with strings and for slurred parts with winds i e keep the pedal up to tongue a note keep it down to slur subsequent notes It is also used to dampen certain sounds that would otherwise ring out e g harp tubular
30. lly built for Windows 3 1 and last used actively by me on Windows ME and here it was working nicely with GPO Studio Personal Orchestra Studio Besides the up to 8 instances of GPO hosted by GPO Studio which provides a maximum of 64 individual instruments assuming sufficient memory capacity on your computer of course GPO Studio also provides a single instance of the Ambience reverb see below Thus you can even hear your in progress arrangements in a concert hall ballroom or other suitable environment Next up is GenieSoft s Overture SE notation program version 3 5 1 was reviewed though a version 3 6 0 patch arrived late in the review process Longtime Cakewalk users may recognize the Overture name from when Cakewalk was developing and marketing the product This is not an Overture review so we won t get down and dirty with Overture SE It is however worth mentioning a few highlights that make its inclusion in GPO a nice addition for GPO users SONAR users who don t already own a notation program and perhaps even SONAR users who already do own a notation program other than Overture Originally published on CakewalkNet com July 7 2004 Page 6 Now some of you may be SE Personal Orchestra Edition Score Air For The G String thinking notation I don t need no stinking notation If you are primarily using SONAR to record rock pop country or similar musical styles be it ina band situation or as a one person over
31. nd bassoon is there The more common instruments have both solo and ensemble building variations while the rarer ones may only have one or two solo instruments Most articulations are covered by playing techniques but flutes and piccolos do get some extra samples to cover flutter tonguing and vibrato The brass section includes the usual range of suspects trumpets tenor trombones French horns and tubas plus piccolo trumpet bass trombones and contra tuba Select solo and ensemble building instruments come in muted varieties in addition to the standard unmuted versions Garritan also provides overlay samples intended to be layered along with other instruments for creating a fuller section sound Here again most articulations are handled via playing techniques The percussion category finds a wide variety of pitched and unpitched orchestral percussion instruments and even a wind machine Pitched percussion includes timpani glockenspiel marimba xylophone vibraphone crotales Originally published on CakewalkNet com July 7 2004 Page 3 tubular bells and glass harmonica Unpitched percussion include various drums cymbals including gongs and percussive toys e g shakers tambourine claves etc In addition to individual instrument samples there are assorted grouped samples such as for various types of cymbals a grouping of the most common orchestral percussion instruments and one of percussion toys Last but certainly not
32. o control volume where many violin samples would have velocity control both This allows making a crescendo or decrescendo while a note is sustaining for greater expressivity Meanwhile sustain pedal is used to determine whether the string is sustained for legato playing or whether a new bow stroke is needed The key here is that these controls in addition to the notes are all relatively easily playable with your two hands one on the keyboard one on the mod wheel and one of your feet on the sustain pedal Together they provide a degree of expressivity that goes beyond what is easily achievable with many other sample libraries If you add in the extra hands that a sequencer like SONAR can provide or a sweep type pedal and your extra foot there is more For monophonic parts Portamento time can be tweaked to control the glide time between notes think of a finger sliding between two notes on the same string There are also two Automatic Variability controls VARI adds a degree of random variations to intonation while VAR2 adds a degree of random timbre variations Together and changing the values slightly over time such as increasing VAR1 when playing fast passages they can make a part sound much more human than the typical relatively static sampled string sound Okay so you may not get Itzhak Perlman or Joshua Bell out of your keyboard DAW and GPO You will however have the potential to be much more expressive than with more typica
33. p of the way I enjoyed playing the GPO instruments and was uniformly impressed by how realistic they could sound even in the hands of a relative GPO newbie Closing Notes Here we are at the end of this review and you ve already heard my conclusion so what more is there to say I mean the quality is there the value is superb Garritan s support for the product seems first class so what more could you ask for There is one more thing I would like to add though in case it has not come across as obvious from all you ve read above Here goes GPO provides instruments that are a pleasure for musicians to play That probably doesn t sound like much but there s a fair amount of meaning packed into that relatively short sentence For example I said instruments not samples It is the combination of the samples the sample player and the programming plus how they interact with your MIDI controller of course which does add at least one variable element that you are playing That is mainly a testament to sample programmers who must obviously be musicians themselves and who thus know how they want an instrument to respond Originally published on CakewalkNet com July 7 2004 Page 13 I also said musicians rather than the more generic people or programmers Non musicians who program their sounds or play them and edit them may enjoy GPO too after all the samples are at least as high quality as anything else that is out
34. so some less expected but certainly nice to have instruments primarily from the keyboard category such as a pipe organ harpsichord celeste and even a Steinway grand piano We ll explore the sample collection in more depth below but the short summary is that GPO covers all the expected bases and then some and does so in high quality fashion What I ve described thus far may have some of you yawning yeah so another orchestral sample collection with built in player so what Where GPO distinguishes itself isn t so much in the breadth of its sample collection which is certainly more than solid Rather it is in the depth of programming of each individual instrument the consistency in that programming across related instrument types and how these relate to the playability realism and expressiveness of the instruments We ll get to more specifics below but the general idea is to give the musician using a keyboard based MIDI controller the ability to manipulate the sampled instrument in ways that cover as much of what the instrument can do as possible Further the instruments must do this while still making the keyboard based playing techniques relatively natural and significantly without having to switch sample sets to get to those capabilities GPO s four CD distribution package comes in DVD style packaging The first three CDs include the sample library a variety of plug in formats DX12 VST2 and RTAS for Windows and AudioUnits and R
35. the control events on the notes is another option Thus I expect even non musicians will benefit from the extra control capabilities GPO provides for enhancing the realism of your simulated orchestras Ancillary Characters If the GPO package only provided GPO s high quality samples and the KONTAKT Player it would be well worth the price of admission There are a number of other components that come with the overall GPO package though all of which are found on the fourth installation CD x Perhaps the most useful of the extra components is GPO Studio version reviewed was V1 11 GPO Studio is based on VST hosting Samma technology and allows using up to 8 instances of the GPO KONTAKT Player as system level MIDI ports If you re reading between the lines here you may have correctly guessed that this means you can use multiple instances of GPO inside applications that support MIDI but which don t support softsampler technology such as DXi2 or VSTi This can be used for example to use GPO for playing scores composed and or arranged in your favorite notation program No more cheesy soundcard General MIDI sounds I even tried hooking GPO Studio up to my long abandoned Passport MasterTracks Pro sequencer I d switched from that directly to Cakewalk Pro Audio 9 so longtime Cakewalk users will have some idea of how long it s been since I ve actively used that program and it worked perfectly We re talking a sequencer that was origina
36. tring arranger I had a completed string quartet arrangement The arrangement spanned quite a number of pages in the master score format but all I wanted was individual parts to play into SONAR I told Overture to extract parts answered a few questions on what to extract and how I wanted things formatted and it did a remarkably clean job of formatting the four string parts which I then printed out Back to SONAR I tracked the individual parts using both the sustain pedal and mod wheel for phrasing and volume respectively in real time then did a rough mix and provided that to several colleagues to try and get some feedback I d tell you they were in awe of my awesome playing and fantabulous string arranging capabilities but some of them might be reading this article so I d better stick with the actual facts I d been in a real rush on that first tracking and rough mixing session but it actually had come out better than I d expected and feedback was generally positive However I was curious about just how realistic I could make the string parts I knew that in my newness to GPO and my rush to get the parts down my placement of sustain and mod wheel events was non optimal perhaps close enough to survive casual listening but I was going for better than that Thus I decided I d totally replace the sustain and mod wheel events to get the phrasing just how I wanted it and to get the volume riding to take the other parts into consideration to
37. ustain pedal one that translates MIDI velocity to mod wheel data and many more The general gist of these user provided extras tends to be helping you customize how GPO behaves in your environment to suit limitations in your environment or even just your personal preferences Several of these extras are specifically geared toward use with SONAR GPO is still a relatively new product as of this writing having been on the market less than a year However it already has a broad enthusiastic user community Spending even a few minutes skimming through messages on Garritan s user forums is a testament to a user base that is very excited about this product and to the level of support Garritan provides its users You Had to Be There As I generally do when I receive a new product to review the first thing I did after installing GPO and familiarizing myself with it was to find a real life project on which I could put it to work In this case the project was an original song recording that has started out as just a piano vocal demo but which I felt adding a string quartet could take to another level I d long ago tracked and rendered the piano part the GigaPiano sample converted for use in KOMPAKT to audio and was happy with it so GPO s role was going to be limited to the string quartet parts Bringing up the GPO DXi in SONAR I decided to go for simplicity using GPO s master output for all parts Since each instrument would be holding down its own
38. y differently in the GPO KONTAKT Player interface itself since I saw no reason to break out the individual outputs I also decided to experiment a bit with the VARI and VAR2 controls to randomize pitch and timbre variations and decided on setting a small percentage for each parameter and just leaving it constant If I d been in the mood to automate that I probably would have used larger variations in the pitch area in faster passages but even adding the slight across the board percentage of random variation helped add to the realism somewhat so I left it at that I also set a very slight value on the portamento control again so it would add a bit of the effect but not so much that I would need to tweak it during the course of the song Next up was to figure out where I wanted to put the string quartet in space and I just sent the GPO Player s DXi track to an send bus in SONAR put Ambience on that bus and played around with presets I think I ended up going with one of the ballroom presets and that was that I mixed did a pre mastering job in another SONAR session and was done with it If you re interested in hearing the result the song is Can t Give Up the Love and you can hear a streaming MP3 version of it at www soundclick com bands 4 rickpaulmusic htm Separately I played around with various sounds for makeshift rough arrangements just to try out various instruments check out the ensemble building capabilities and so on Each ste
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