Create a new Garritan subforum please!

Garritan Personal Orchestra is a great new invention for Finale users, and we all thank Gary for his astoundingly useful brainchild, but it has its limitations, especially in the percussion section, and making things sound like a real orchestra often involve more than just plunking in the raw notes.

I propose a new subforum at YC for those who want to discuss various methods of creating various playback effects using the GPO. We'll no doubt see such things as:

+ Making the strings attack properly with other instruments

+ Convincing timpani and snare drum rolls

+ Switching GPO patches, such as to switch a trumpet line to the forte trumpet overlay

+ Replicating the sounds generated in a score with such markings as 'a2', 'solo', 'con sordino', and the like

+ Other percussion effects such as bass drum, crash cymbal, bowed vibraphone, trinkets

+ Regulating Finale's tremolo speed

What do you think? This is partly a reaction to the lack of a readily available, comprehensive guide to the GPO's capabilities.

Good idea but doing this will make this site seem really bais towards Finale.

I think this is a great idea. I don't have Finale2006 and the GPO but I find this topic very interested. Furthermore, many composers on this site are working with it, or similar programs. I vote for having a topic about this!

-mike

I feel this is a little too specific to warrant the creation of an individual forum. What's to say we shouldn't create a forum for Kontakt player as well, or other soft synths and sound libraries? If you want to discuss anything related with Garritan, just post it in the Finale and Sibelius Help Desk forum.

Not to mention, there are much better solutions out there besides Garritan and Kontakt. I wouldn't want to limit the knowledge base of this forum by only promoting something that is "barely satisfactory". The only reason we have Finale and Sibelius help desk is because the two pieces of software together are pretty much a monopoly concerning music notation. There is no indication that Kontakt or Garritan are even close to being monopolies regarding recording.

I've been holding off getting Finale 2006 with Garritan because something told me it might be a whole new set of disappointing problems. Johann's post somewhat confirms my fears.

Has anyone ever heard of Reason? I have heard that it is a good program for recording with excellent sounds, but I have never actually used it. It's just the word I hear on the streets here in Boston. I am amazed by some of the orchestral renditions I've heard online. How do you bring a score in Finale to that point? I would love for someone experienced to explain that. Sure you can't just put in a few "raw" notes, but what is actually involved in transforming the file into something artistic and enjoyable?

Reason is actually a multi-track sequencer more crafted towards the analog electronic musician, but its sample library do contain some decent orchestral stuff. I wouldn't say it's on par with Garritan or Kontakt Player (which I assume takes samples from VSL or EWQLSL), but given the right amount of care, you can make some good sounds with it. It probably sounds better than Finale renditions because sequencers like Reason allows the user has more control in producing the sound, but completely lacks notation capabilities (piano-roll only). Also, since it is a ReWire device, I don't know if you can run it off Finale as a plugin, either.