Opinions on Garritan Personal Orchestra

[thomas_kresge]

I use Garritan Personal Orchestra (GPO) for all my music that I write and arrange obviously because it sounds so much better than MIDI.

A recent score of mine got rejected and one of the reasons was apparently due to sound quality. Garritan sounds really good, and it's even listed as one of the orchestra sound libraries on the "Need a sample, synth, or effect?" thread. I'm wondering if

1.) GPO really isn't good enough for OCRemixes quality standards and if there are really better sound libraries out than GPO or

2.) I'm not using GPO correctly to its potential and somehow or another I could manipulate it to sound better.

I'm using GPO Sibelius edition, so it's integrated directly into Sibelius 5. Does anybody have any opinions on GPO?

[Knives]

Let's put it this way, there have been orchestral remixes accepted at this site that used Reason's orkester samples bank, and if you can make those things sound good, then you can definitely make Garritan sound even better, because the samples are better to begin with. I think you're just not using Garritan to it's potential.

[The Pezman]

Now that Sibelius 5 accepts VSTs, does Sibelius edition of GPO even need to exist anymore?

[Sil]

I don't use GPO so I don't know its capabilities, however...

It is up to the user to know what his or her sample library is capable of. Like all orchestral libraries, GPO has its strengths and weaknesses, and it is up to the composer using them to compose towards its strengths and avoid its weaknesses. I've often called this "catering" to your samples, and I do it all the time.

If you have good winds and strings, you write mainly for winds and strings. Why? Because if your brass is no good then when you write for it you aren't getting the full effect of the music. It doesn't matter if you're the best melodist in the world, or the best part-writer, or arranger - if it can't sound good, there's very little point.

Also, it might interest you to know that it is easier and more efficient to write for orchestral samples using a piano roll instead of staff notation, so if you aren't doing this yet, you might want to try it out. What programs such as Finale or Sibelius interpret as midi data is far less controlled/detailed than other programs out there (like Sonar.)

[zircon]

I use Garritan Personal Orchestra (GPO) for all my music that I write and arrange obviously because it sounds so much better than MIDI.

A recent score of mine got rejected and one of the reasons was apparently due to sound quality. Garritan sounds really good, and it's even listed as one of the orchestra sound libraries on the "Need a sample, synth, or effect?" thread. I'm wondering if

1.) GPO really isn't good enough for OCRemixes quality standards and if there are really better sound libraries out than GPO or

2.) I'm not using GPO correctly to its potential and somehow or another I could manipulate it to sound better.

I'm using GPO Sibelius edition, so it's integrated directly into Sibelius 5. Does anybody have any opinions on GPO?

There have been mixes posted on OCR using GPO, I'm fairly sure. I have heard plenty of people outside of OCR get AMAZING results with it too. It's just a matter of using it properly, which may involve very detailed sequencing + processing.

[Moseph]

Let's put it this way, there have been orchestral remixes accepted at this site that used Reason's orkester samples bank, and if you can make those things sound good, then you can definitely make Garritan sound even better, because the samples are better to begin with. I think you're just not using Garritan to it's potential.

Just out of curiosity, does anyone know what specifically are the ReMixes that use the Orkester soundbank? I'm trying to scrape together the money for VSL SE, but I'm stuck with the Reason samples right now and I'm kind of interested in hearing what others have done with them.

[tgfoo]

I'm guessing that the mix you submitted was an audio captue directly from Sibelius, right? If so, then that has a lot to do with the problem. Playback from the notation programs are good for hearing what you've entered into them while you're composing, however, they aren't up to par for producing pieces for listening. Your best bet would be to invest in a sequencer. You can still compose in Sibelius and then import the midi into your sequencer, load up the necessary samples and then tweak your piece to get it to sound more realistic.

Also, like Sil said, each library has it's strengths and weaknesses. Things that may sound good in a real orchestra might like horrible using certain sample libraries. So learn the libraries strengths and (more importantly) it's weaknesses and write accordingly. If you find this hard to do, one thing that can help is to get scores for pieces that you are familiar with and try to recreate them with your samples. Not only will this help you get more comfortable with your samples and help with your realism, but score study is also a very good way to learn composition, instrumentation, and orchestration.

[The Pezman]

Now that Sibelius 5 accepts VSTs, does Sibelius edition of GPO even need to exist anymore?

I'd be very interested to get an answer on this.

[dannthr]

I'd be very interested to get an answer on this.

Do you mean the GPO version of Sibelius? Some people will want to have Sibelius activate GPO samples--in those cases it's still important.

Your question sounded rhetorical.

What do YOU think?

Do you think we should wipe the GPO edition of Sibelius from the planet? Do you think it should exist anymore?

What does it matter if it exists? It does, you can't take that away unless you build a time-machine.

To the OP:

A musical composition and a musical performance are two different things. When you start treating GPO as an orchestra, you will find the results more satisfying.

Sequencers will give you more control over the performance of your sample libraries than a notation program.

For me, I can spend half an hour writing a piece and composing it and planning it, and then I can spend 20 hours rendering a performance using my samples.

Making samples sound good is in and of itself an art.

[thomas_kresge]

I'd be very interested to get an answer on this.

Yes, Sibelius 5 can use an virtual instrument set, basically rendering GPO Sib. edition useless. And it also requires extra work to get it to work since GPOSE was made for Sib. 4. However, Sib. 4 pretty much needs the Sibelius edition to work, and there's a lot of people who still only use Sib. 4.

Back on topic, I do export straight from Sibelius, but it does it in such a way that it plays back correctly as written regardless of your computer's strenght. But I'm sure I'm also being ignorant. How do sequencers work and how do they end up producing better sounds. I guess I'm hearing good things but I'm really confused on how to really capitalize on GPO's potential.

Here is a link to the song that I submitted that got rejected. However, I would have to say that I didn't use a whole lot of variety for the most part throughout the piece. I'm just wondering what exactly could be done to make it sound more acceptable, i.e. what instruments sound poor, or things like that. I've started another song here that I'm going to try to get up. It's another orchestral and I'd like to know so far how well it's going quality-wise. The beginning will probably sound a little bit boring but I'm still working all that out. I'm just curious if the actual sounds passable.

Also, what exactly does processing mean on the context of remixing?

EDIT: I found this remix and I really want to no what orchestral sound set that is. That is about the best synthesis of an orchestra I have ever heard. The woodwinds and strings sound almost completely real, and the brass, for being synthesized, is VERY impressive.

[dannthr]

No, no, no! It's not about your computer's power, bro, it's about TREATING your virtual instruments like performers.

Let me give you an example.

I'm working on an original romantic piece.

Work in Progress

In this work, when the solo flute first enters it's WAY ahead of the rest of the orchestra. The reason is because the conductor is waiting for the flute to enter before he cues everyone else. The entire sequence is very sappy and the conductor is basically moving the orchestra around but also following the solo flute.

Of course, there isn't a REAL conductor, there isn't a REAL floutist--it's all my imagination and how I'm sequencing the performance of the piece.

The sequencer lets me place notes ahead or behind or too long or too short to basically tweak the performance to be more human, and it also lets me control parts of the performance very specifically like velocity, modulation, expression, even drawing in the conductor track to simulate a more emotive conductor.

When you TREAT GPO like an ORCHESTRA it will sound more like one.

[The Pezman]

Do you think we should wipe the GPO edition of Sibelius from the planet?

Eventually it will happen. The VST addition is, thus far, the best thing I've seen.

[Kanthos]

The problem is in the phrase "plays back as written, regardless of your computer's strength". Unless you use a sequencer *AS* a VST plugin, which might get complicated to set up, you have no way of controlling most of the human aspects of playing. Sibelius will try to apply some kind of "humanizing" logic to your music; given a musical style that you tell it, it tries to make things sound like real people playing real instruments were playing your music, but the artificial intelligence to pull that off well just isn't there yet.

A sequencer doesn't explicitly let you create better music (and if you have no way to get your samples into a sequencer, you might even sound worse). What it lets you do is let you adjust a whole set of parameters for each note manually. There's velocity, attack/delay/sustain/release, and a bunch of other parameters that Sibelius will try and control for you but you can control yourself in a decent sequencer. Not to mention that whatever processing Sibelius does isn't that complex; after all, it can do all that on the fly on a reasonable computer.

So basically, it's a limitation of Sibelius, not GPO. Sibelius and Finale are still a long way off, from what I've heard, of getting realistic playback. They're great for writing notation and giving you some way to approximate what it will sound like when real people play it, but to get audio worth listening to, you'll either have to find real people to play it or use a sequencer. Yes, you can export a MIDI from Sibelius and tweak it in a sequencer, but unless you're exceptionally fast with notation, you'd probably find it easier to do things directly in a sequencer.

[dannthr]

Exactly, this is how people who use sequencers see music:

[Knives]

Just out of curiosity, does anyone know what specifically are the ReMixes that use the Orkester soundbank? I'm trying to scrape together the money for VSL SE, but I'm stuck with the Reason samples right now and I'm kind of interested in hearing what others have done with them.

http://www.ocremix.org/remix/OCR01169/

All the orchestral sounds in this one are from Reason's orkester sample bank, the percussion is from a mircolabs refill though, I believe.

[thomas_kresge]

When I mentioned the thing about exporting being able to do it regardless of one's computers' power, I was more saying that to explain the thing, not to explain in any way how that might effect the realism of my music.

So can anyone point me to a decent sequencer? Preferably one that isn't TOO expensive but can get me where I need to get to make my music sound like a real performance.

And once again I'm going to ask if anyone knows what sound set was used for this song, because it sounds very, very good. And nobodies actually said anything pertaining to this arrangement yet.

[Lunahorum]

Very good Very good. I like orchestral. Be pretty sweet to have a live orchestra that I could send midi to. hehe.

[dannthr]

First of all, G, if you buy a sequencer, buy it from http://www.academicsuperstore.com/ which sells almost any software that does academic licensing. In the case of sequencers, you could probably save hundreds of dollars.

The sounds on that remix have that sort of... thin VSL sound you'd find in their earlier sample sets--maybe Opus?

It doesn't sound "very, very good" to me, but that's just me. To each ear its own, I suppose.

The other thing that should be mentioned, which is where I think the remix you like stands out, is the actual arrangement. If you write well for an orchestra, the sound rendered by orchestral samples will be all the more real because it's simply good writing. There are a lot of good arrangement choices in the Dragon Warrior remix which outshine the samples.

Your remix is pretty fair, it has a very nice comic quality but it isn't clear as to what its goals are. It starts off comical and then ends up with some kind of adventure thing--the Dragon Warrior mix isn't confused about what it's trying to be.

The sample quality in your mix isn't anything special but what's worse is that everything is played too straight. I have long fortisimo brass sustains that don't have any performance quality--they're just annoying to listen to.

Do you play an instrument? Which one if you do?

Do you play a single volume level when you sustain?

I hope not.

Additionally, your mix suffers from just plain bad mixing. There's no space. This enhances the electronic feel of your piece, unfortunately. You need to give it some damned production value. This isn't a purely compositional site--it's a re"MIX" site which means that production is expected. You haven't done anything to this production wise. It's not about samples, man, you've written the piece, now it's time to PRODUCE the piece.

That means creating a performance, that means mixing sounds spatially, that means post fx, etc, etc, etc.

To Max97230, you can, it's quite expensive, but for about $2000/hr you can have the Czech Philharmonic perform your music:

http://www.orchestra.net/

Cheers,

[thomas_kresge]

Oh geeze... I don't know what to think. Thank you for the lengthy input, though, I appreciate knowing what I'm doing right, and more importantly, what I'm doing poorly. My problem then would appear to be my lack of knowledge on how to actually mix music... time to go look at the thread on that.

[zircon]

That Dragon Warrior mix is Miroslav or Advanced Orchestra, I believe. VSL sounds better.

[Lunahorum]

saaaaweeeeettttt!!!

http://www.orchestra.net/Brady.mov

Anyone know of a good soundfont or something that is good for church bells?

I love church bells in songs. Down n dirty guitar riff with double bass drums and church bells ooohh yeaaah. Something like rhapsody of fire which is a sweet orchestral/metal band or dark moor which uses a lot of bells.

[Sole Signal]

I'm working on an original romantic piece.

Work in Progress

Cool track, man. Sounds great.

[Lunahorum]

very good danther. Sounds like something out of harry potter to me. Awesome textures.

WHOA AUDIX POSTED ABOVE ME. THE SILVERLINE STUDIO GUY. and all this time I thought you were going by a different alias. Loved your n64 cradle song!

hey you use fl studio right?

[Sole Signal]

sorry double post

Anyone know of a good soundfont or something that is good for church bells?

I was actually wondering the same thing. I'm in need of a good strong bell sound for a project I'm doing now.

[Lunahorum]

hey audix. How do you make the overtones of a note pan around? I was listening to your pirates song and the note is staying in the same spot but its overtones are going from left to right. Just wondering thanks!

edit: I figured out how to do it but I want to know if this is how you did it. Open formula controller and route the button to a band pass filter and a notch filter of the same Q. Then pan the overtones by twisting the formula controller knob.