Brand New Garritan Instrument -- Instant Orchestra

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Okay, here might be precisely what we all need.

Garritan has released Instant Orchestra. New instrument, not a replacement or upgrade for GPO. It deals in orchestral sections -- basically doing the hardest work of arranging for you. In other words, playing the orchestra itself as an instrument, rather than the individual instruments (which is why it's a companion, not a replacement, for GPO, which is solo-centric). $149.95 download.

Peter, what would be the chance of building some classical styles using this puppy?

I have been wanting some nice sounding strings. The strings in a lot of the styles do not sound so good even with my SD2. However, I have never tried any of the Garritan products. I'm not sure how they work into a song. Would you have to have notation available for each section? I would assume that you would need chords as a minimum. If you could direct me to somewhere that explains this Garritan, I would appreciate it. Thanks.

Stan

Well, up until now Garritan's products have been primarily about {a} solo instruments and {b} building ensembles. They're just like any other MIDI VSTi plugins you may have, e.g., Coyote Forte, in that you assign instrument patches to MIDI channels, send MIDI signals to those channels, and the instruments play. And, yeah, you need a lot of notes, and possibly layered recordings, as most string VSTs simply aren't up to the task of pretending to be a whole string section.

GIO, on the other hand, has entire ensembles doing different things, rather than simply instrument patches. In other words, each patch represents a particular series of actions by a section of the orchestra -- e.g., the preset combo "Grand Cathedral" is defined as "Small orchestra and choir crossfading to full orchestra and a grand choir when the mod wheel is used." "Instant Gratification" is listed as "Full unison orchestra with more aggressive attacks." "Delicate Orchestra - Ethereal MW" is, literally, the sound of a delicate orchestra, with which ethereal (presumably pseudo-ambient) sounds are blended when the mod wheel is used. And so on.

Thus, the tedious ensemble-building part is already taken care of. Rather than try to figure out how to build what instruments up to the sound you want, you pick a patch and start playing. Layering presets in this case doesn't add instruments, it adds whole new orchestra sections with every note.

This thread at their online forum tells you where to get the complete list of patches and FX -- twenty-two pages of screenshots from the manual.

Here's a nine-minute YouTube video that touches on some of what you can do. and in the Recommended column on that page you'll see a couple of short vids (less than 40 seconds each) by RobertDannyDavis showing off some instant play -- just picking a preset and going with it, no sequencing necessary.

The idea here is to make overall arranging much easier, and I can't wait to scratch up the cash for this. It's intended to supplement GPO (or any other solo-based orchestra VSTi), not replace it. And I can't help but think that, in a situation with this beastie as the default VST, PG or we or both can come up with some orchestra styles that will blow the world away. We won't even need to do anything really different -- just set the right patch, and it's already geared to handle the tricky parts.

The other great thing is that it's reasonably priced. There are other programs, such as Albion and Symphobia, which do much the same thing... but they range from about $500-550 to $1200. GIO is $149.98.

I hope I made sense here!

Can't help it, I'm just really excited by the existence of this.

Thanks so much for your explanation, Tom. I'm somewhat of a rookie when it comes to sound stuff, but I think I got the gist of what you said. I can certainly see some possible uses for Garritan. I'm on my way to watch that vid.

I'm looking to buy it after the new year (done spent too much Christmas money already). I like the idea of the various sections. The instrument/sections list on the Garritan web site looks really nice. Marry it with solo instruments from the other Garritan libraries, and you've got a nice orchestra/band/ensemble there.

My only gripe about the Garritan libraries is how they implemented vibrato. To get vibrato, you have to have aftertouch on your keyboard (which doesn't help if the keyboard doesn't, which mine doesn't, as well as how to effect it in existing midi files). Everything else seems pretty straightforward.

There's a vibrato control knob (CC17) under the control section of the Aria player.
If you adjust that you should be able to control the vibrato.

And, if you want to program it right into the MIDI file, a quick Google gets us several useful information sources, as well as a well-regarded VST effect.

the crossfade sounds are very good to my ears

I've been a big fan of Garritan for some time. I notice in their downloads that there is a download for the Aria Player version 1.28 that says its for Instant Orchestra only. I wonder if that version will also work for my other Garritan products: Personal Orchetra and Jazz / Big Band? I'll post a message there and let you know.

Just got a response back....seems the new Aria engine will work seemlessly will all Garritan products.

Quote:

There's a vibrato control knob (CC17) under the control section of the Aria player.
If you adjust that you should be able to control the vibrato. [/quote

Unfortunately, the vibrato control knob only specified the amount of the vibrato; the after touch is what actually triggers the vibrato. You need both to make it work.

Quote:

And, if you want to program it right into the MIDI file, a quick Google gets us several useful information sources, as well as a well-regarded VST effect.

Thanks, Tom - I'll check those out.

There was a discussion on the Garritan forum about the vibrato controls for the Aria player that might be helpful.

I've also read that it is possible to substitute CC131 for aftertouch if a keyboard doesn't have aftertouch sensitivity built in.

Hope this helps.

http://www.northernsounds.com/forum/show...ghlight=vibrato

Well... I'll be getting my 3rd Garritan product shortly I suppose. Sounds really great from the vids I watched.

Will this work in Band in a box like our coyote forte?

If it does the arranging for you, I wonder if it could work like BIAB--you choose your ensemble and style, chord progression, perhaps a melody, and it creates the orchestration for you?

If not, if one has to enter all the notes it will play, then I don't see how it is doing the orchestrating for you?

If it doesn't do that, it would be nice if there was a product that did---like BIAB for a full symphony orchestra, or a section of one.

Not that that would replace orchestrations done by humans, as BIAB does not replace human musicians.

But it could be a useful tool/

Quote:

If not, if one has to enter all the notes it will play, then I don't see how it is doing the orchestrating for you?

By "orchestrating", they're referring to assigning instruments to pitches. Think of it as akin to "Multi" synth patches, only layered with digital samples, with the ability to crossfade sounds on a patch.

So if you wanted a particular "sound" - say, a mix of horns and strings - you could find it in IO. But you still have to supply all the notes.

Imho, none of this has anything to do with Biab. Biab is a midi generating program. We have no way to have a style include the controllers necessary to get Garritan to do it's thing. This orchestral stuff btw is one reason why I bought my Kurzweil PC3. It has the exact same thing in it with all these different versions of orchestra sections that can be controlled in real time by a player manipulating any one of 8 sliders, four switches, the mod wheel plus key aftertouch. It has 32 layers per program with each layer able to be set up independently using all the controllers.

A player controlling all that in real time is what makes it sound so good. Biab won't control the crossfading, changing vibrato, things like that. It's simply sending out midi note information telling a synth what notes to play. This new Garritan package will sound like any other synth with Biab. All those very cool subtleties will not be there.

Using midi files in Real Band or any other DAW is the way to use this. You would have to record all those midi events from a controller that are used to control the orchestra. One of the orchestras in my PC3 for example has a solo string playing a single line as part of the patch. You control that with a slider so I can, in real time, fade in and out a solo violin, viola or cello using one of my 8 sliders. It sounds very cool. Then because it's midi I get to go back and fine tune it with edits. If I want to actually control the notes the solo instrument is playing and still fade it in and out then that becomes it's own layer and I have to play the notes myself and assign a slider to it for later mixing. It looks like Garritan is doing a similar thing here without providing a keyboard already set up to control it like my PC3 does.

I'm only explaining all this to point out to some who don't have a good understanding about this kind of thing that this is very advanced stuff we're talking about here. This sounds like a very useful software package but you don't just plug this into Biab and think you're going to get some killer orchestra to back up your vocals by simply picking a style with strings in it.

Bob

Will this Garritan product work with out having to buy any of the other Garritan products?
Man if this will work with BIAB then I for sure am gonna get it.
The sound is amazing.

Tim

Hi, Tim -

Instant Orchestra is one of several sound libraries offered by Garritan. You do not need any of the other libraries to use it. All Garritan libraries, however, are implemented using the Aria Player, which is a VSTi. The Aria Player recognizes all the Garritan Libraries you have on your computer.

Basically in BIAB, you ignore the instrument patch on the BIAB screen. You go to the mixer and select the track for which you want to use a Garritan Instant Orchestra sound and in the first slot select the Aria Player as your VSTi. This will open the Aria Player. In the Aria Player, you'll see 16 slots, which by default correspond to the 16 MIDI channels. To keep it easy select the channel the BIAB track uses:

Bass - channel 02
Piano - channel 03
Drums - channel 10
Guitar - channel 06
Strings - channel 07
Melody - channel 04
Soloist - channel 08
Thru - channel 05

Select the Garritan instrument you want on the channel you want. If you have multiple Garritan libraries, you'll be able to select which library to use, then which category of sound to use, and keep drilling down until you get to the instrument you want to use.

Then hit play and listen.

There's more to it than that and you should read the Garritan manual that comes with Instant Orchestra for more information.

Good luck.

Two little things -- both technical, both extremely important.

Tim, John is exactly correct, although he didn't mention that you have to make ARIA the default VSTi. Then, just as with Coyote Forte, all the MIDI tracks are routed to ARIA unless you insert another VSTi in the mixer.

Bob, we can use all of GIO's power in BIAB. Between the fact that a style can put in MIDI CC commands, and that we can edit frozen MIDI tracks ourselves, we can do all of it. I just did it myself to confirm it: played a MIDI song, froze the guitar track, went to the Piano Roll, drew a new Pitch Bend for it, and played it again. Pitch bent.

All we have to do to use a lot of the stuff in GIO is add CC#1 Mod Wheel controls in the right places. Seems like a very very good use of A-B-C-D styles, e.g., Beethoven Crescendo instrument. -- A builds to a 1-bar crescendo (basically a swell), B to a 2-bar, C to a 4-bar, D to an 8-bar.

(I'd written "Beethoven Crescendo style" up there, but realized that having different instruments in a style combining to create the full orchestral effect might actually be easier. Don't need the Beethoven Horns? Mute 'em. Want double the high strings? Assign an open instrument to double it up.

(I like the potential here.)

That's cool Tom, but wouldn't Real Band still be the best for this? 48 audio/midi tracks, ability to create way more than just 4 Biab style parts, everything is displayed right in front of you, much more editing power, etc, etc. Without having it to test like you do I still think you'll get way more out of GIO in Real Band or another DAW like Reaper or Sonar than you can in Biab. Still, if Biab does what you want with it great.

Bob

Well, Bob, I'm certainly planning to go wild in Reaper when I get GIO.

I just think that this could help a lot with all the classical styles we've been asking for. I'd like a little less emphasis on jazz, bossa nova, and salsa -- I think those are very well covered by both MIDI and RealTracks.