Though benefiting from the inclusion of true first and second violin sections, the absence of real brass ensembles was a chink in the library's armour. GPO4 rectifies this by incorporating trumpet, trombone and horn sections created by Project SAM, a European company renowned for the quality of their orchestral brass. The new sections add considerable grandeur, and though (like the rest of the library) they have been whittled down to only one dynamic layer, they sit nicely alongside Garritan's brass and blend very well with the other instruments. A selection of SAM solo brass (trumpet, piccolo trumpet, French horn, tenor and bass trombones and tuba) is also included. Maintaining the GPO house style, they incorporate 'ensemble building' patches that allow you to build duos and trios without fear of sample duplication.
Garritan Personal Orchestra 4 Fu
Gary Garritan has always supported composers who rely on notation programs to play back their scores, and the latest version of his orchestra maintains the tradition by supplying a complete set of alternative 'notation' instruments for use with Finale and Sibelius. Aria can also play back MIDI files, and even make audio recordings of its own output. The small but vocal group of users who need custom tunings for their orchestral instruments will be pleased to see that GPO4 can import Scala tuning files, 16 of which are provided with the library. These tunings can't be customised, so users who need ethnic variants like Indonesian pelog or Arabic scales will have to search for them at the Scala web site.
Garritan Personal Orchestra gives you a complete orchestra---strings, brass, woodwinds, percussion and keywords---with over 150 instrument choices, along with the techniques and control to hear your music with breathtaking realism. It is designed so you can create numerous combinations of instruments, each capable of playing a separate part.
GPO4 includes about 2GB of samples and patches, with over 150 presets organised in orchestral fashion (woodwind, choir, brass, strings, string sections, percussion, keyboards and harps). It offers both solo and ensemble patches and, for the strings, additional full orchestral sections. All standard orchestral instruments are included, with some nice extras, including concert grand piano and pipe organ.
Garritan Personal Orchestra 5 is a compact and budget-friendly orchestral library, but a lot more complete and flexible than many much larger and more expensive libraries. It's an excellent orchestra for the bedroom producer who doesn't want to spend a lot of money and disk space on orchestra samples.
DetailsProduct Garritan Personal Orchestra 5Publisher Garritan, MakeMusicPrice 99Contact Time+Space +44 (0)1837 55200Web www.garritan.com
AlternativesMiroslav Philharmonik 2 from IK Multimedia is a good alternative to GPO5. It, too, contains a full symphony orchestra including solo strings, and has a straightforward user interface.
As the workhorses of the orchestra, the strings play almost constantly throughout a piece, providing melody, rhythm and accompaniment. So to reproduce authentic-sounding symphonic strings with samples, you need as many options as possible. GPO5 goes a long way towards achieving this.
Basically, as the dynamic range of an instrument increases, so does its timbre in a smooth and continuous fashion, without any noticeable transitions. It works well on brass and woodwind, particularly with the French horns, and improves the playing experience of solo sustained instruments considerably. Other instrument libraries have a similar feature but, to our knowledge, no other full orchestral library does.
Personal Orchestra is state-of-the-art software that reproduces the sounds of the musical instruments in a symphony orchestra, right from your computer. This award-winning collection has set the standard for orchestral sample libraries. 2ff7e9595c
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