Garritan Personal Orchestra & Keyswitches?

Hello,

 I just began using Garritan Personal Orchestra with Sonar X1 and I'm wondering (hoping), from those of you who are familiar with key switches, is it possible to activate a KS without inputting extra notes? is there no way to do so using the parameters in the event list, like a patch change?

 I'm wondering how other programs, such as Finale or Sibelius, allow you to without inputting notes by using articulations. This doesn't seem to be possible either in Sonar. I've been searching for a solution to this problem, yet haven't found any. Perhaps I'm not looking correctly.

Thanks in advance!

I use Legion's approach for Vienna, RealGuitar, and EastWest.  Particularly in the case of RealGuitar where strumming notes are very low and require an 8va bass clef, it's easier to keep the KSs separate.  This also gives you more flexibility and speed in copy/paste operations without having to worry about filtering certain note ranges.

Correct. I sometimes put a KS at the beginning of each phrase (like 5 ticks early) just to ensure everything plays back right wherever I start.  I make the KS velocity=1 and duration=5 and just copy it wherever I need it.

PS I also do this with pedal off marks when using Ivory II as it has a tendency to start with the sustain pedal down for some reason.

notious


Hello,

I just began using Garritan Personal Orchestra with Sonar X1 and I'm wondering (hoping), from those of you who are familiar with key switches, is it possible to activate a KS without inputting extra notes? is there no way to do so using the parameters in the event list, like a patch change?

I'm wondering how other programs, such as Finale or Sibelius, allow you to without inputting notes by using articulations...

Hi, Notious - You've actually gotten your answers, but I'm seeing the thread and wanted to add/reiterate:

--Possible to activate a KS without the extra notes?  No - It's a switch of instrument layering directly triggered by the low out-of-range note, hence "keyswitch."

--Do it with parameters in the Event List?-- That would make it much more of a hassle.  Use the PRV, insert the notes by hand if you want, I often do, and I use Garritan Libraries all the time.

In notation programs, symbols used in the staves trigger whatever has to happen for a given instrument to produce the articulation needed - i.e. you write "pizz" and you'll get pizzicato strings.  There's really nothing analogous to that in Sonar.

I've used Garritan for so long, it had faded from my mind that using keyswitches can be a bit clumsy for someone at first.

Randy B.

Personally I use the system Legion and others posted here use,  but a very good composer I know has a different way of handling articulations that gets great results for him.   He creates 2 tracks for an instrument,  one staccatto and one sustain (legato).  He will play the part into the track that works best for a phrase, then if need be, copies or replays on the other track.  He has his mod wheel prgrammed to brighten the sound,  so after he has the notes the way he likes,  he does a pass with the mod wheel.  The results are great and he like to point out--he never has to worry if a keyswitch has been forgotten.  Sometimes you forget to input a keyswitch into your sequence and the wrong articulation will end up in the mix.    

HunaMan


Can someone help?

I am using X1.  I recently bought and downloaded Garritan Personal Orchestra, as part of a deal offered by Cakewalk.

Unfortunately, because it's a download from the Garritan site, there's nothing about using GPO4 from within Dimension Pro, which is how I want to use it.   Or have I missed some instructions about how to invoke GPO4 from inside Dim Pro?

Since you guys are all clearly fluent in this, can anyone give me a clue?

I don't even know whether the approach should be via VST or via Dim Pro "Programs".

btw I installed all the Garritan stuff into the default directories it prompted me with. Perhaps that was a mistake.

I am running Windows 7.  All I want to do is call GPO4 instruments from inside Dimension Pro. I've found out a bit about sfz filoes and the sample files they call, but I'm not sure that's the way to go, or even if it's possible.


Any help much appreciated.

DocH

Hi HunaMan - I'm a long time Garritan user, so hopefully I can help.

You need to let go of the idea to use GPO from Dim Pro - You would be losing most of GPO's functionality.  It's the Aria Player which you load into a project in order to then start loading up to 16 GPO instruments in one instance of Aria - Even though you would be able to get the SFZ files for GPO to be read and opened by Dim Pro - you would only have one instrument at a time, instead of 16.  And in Aria, there's a detailed control page for each instrument - the Stereo Stage, and all the particular MIDI controllers necessary for each instrument, like breaths for winds, Auto Legato etc.  Those you wouldn't be able to access through Dim.

Try that - I think you'll see there are a lot more possibilities compared to the way you were trying to get GPO set up.

Randy B.

HunaMan


Hey Randy B, thanks for your prompt reply.

I take your point about losing functionality if I try to do everything via Dim Pro. So I can let that go.

You say "It's the Aria Player which you load into a project"

->Can I treat Aria like a virtual synthesizer, like Dim Pro, and pull it into a midi track in project in a similar way to the way you use Dim Pro as a virtual synth? Presumably I need to somehow let X1 know that it's available.

Or is it very different from this?

Sorry if my grasp of this stuff seems very tenuous!

Thanks,

DocH

Hello again Doc - I understand what you were doing - You were trying to grasp the best way to use GPO, and so considered the Dim Pro approach.  And I understand it's all new to you, so there are things to find out, NP.

Aria is a sample player in exactly the same way Dim Pro is.  Like any sampler/synth, once it's been installed on your machine, you run Sonar's plug-in manager in order to register it in the list of available devices.  Aria shows up, and you load it into a project.  You don't drag it into a MIDI track - it will be in the browser tab where your open synths are listed, the window with the synth icon. 

Once Aria is open, then you start clicking in the available slots to load the orchestral instruments you need in your project.

As your Garritan collection grows, all of the libraries will be accessed through Aria - Jazz and Big Band, Concert and Marching Band, The Authorized Steinway, and World.

There's quite a bit more that you'll be needing to figure out, this is a very brief sketch - But look in the Sonar Help file and absorb the tutorial on using software instruments - that will explain much of what you still need to know.

Randy B.

HunaMan


Hey that's great,

I've now got 'ARIA player multi VST _x64' and 3 other ARIA players in the 'plugins' -> Instruments -> 'VST' panel, and I've copied one into a midi track in one of my pieces, copied some midi notes from another track to the ARIA track, and have got ARIA to play those notes, so I'm on my way. Time to start reading the tutorials, I guess, especially re sending several midi tracks to a single instance of ARIA...

Thanks for your help. A final question: what's the difference between the 'ARIA player Multi VST _x64' and the 'ARIA player VST _x64'  ?   They both seem to have 16 channels in them.

Thanks Randy B, you've unstuck me!

DocH

Howdy - That's great that you're starting to get it happening with Aria and GPO.  You don't actually copy Aria into a track - not sure you mean it literally, how you described it.  Aria, like all samplers and synths, sits in the synth browser, and tracks are linked to it.

When you first ask for Aria to open up in your project, there's a dialogue - You should choose for all audio outputs to be inserted in the track.  Only one MIDI track is inserted for you, so you just add more as you need.  But it helps to have all those tracks automatically set up for you, since they're hooked up to Aria.  You can look at the info in the track headers to see how that was done.

I can't get to my music computer right now, so can't double check things - but I know it is a bit confusing how there are several different Arias.  The two you mention are both capable of having 16 discrete MIDI channels, but one is tweaked for use in Notation - I think it has one stereo out, but the one you want has 16 stereo audio channels available.

Here's a You Tube video that will help.  I did the demos for the Garritan World Library, and this is a tutorial showing how I put together the bagpipes demo.  A lot of it won't apply to what you're doing, but you'll see Aria being set up, and then in action.  It's a very fast paced video with lots of info, use that pause and re-wind - I think you'll get a better idea of how things work:

Aria tutorial

Randy B.