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Hi,

Was wondering if anyone had any experience of this piece of software?

From the sound demonstrations, it sounds absolutely magnificent! I'm looking to compose piano music with realistic sounding orchestration as well. The price is reasonable as well.

Any recommendations?

Hi Euan,

The price is more than reasonable, it's astounding. I haven't used it myself, but I've heard only good things from lots of people. There is one caveat, the Kompakt player is limited to just 2 instances of a 8 midi channels each. 16 midi channels isn't enough to really emulate an orchestra. Your option is to upgrade to Kontakt if you need more channels. By all means get GPO, but be prepared to upgrade if you need more capability.

I have GPO and use it all the time. I can vouch for it but I'm not all that tech literate and haven't really used any other programs, but from what I know GPO is the best there is for the price.

As for what Steve said, unless I read it wrong, I think he is mistaken in that the kontakt player that comes with my GPO allows you to open 8 instances not 2, and each of those 8 instances allows you to load 8 different instruments or instrument groups thus making for a total of 64.
On the GPO forums located at northernsounds.com I believe I've heard of people cloning more instances but I forget how they did it, but for me personally I've constructed large orchestral segments and have NEVER required more than 3 instances and I cannot fathom how anyone else could require that many..


As for the sound, after I got it they upgraded some of the instruments to make it even more realistic. A lot of people were disappointed at first, myself included, because the cellos and basses lacked a hard bassy, scratchy "attack" sound but a revamped sound was included in free updates where they now have a much nicer realistic attack although it's still not as realistic as VSL (Vienna Symphonic Library) but VSL is like $3,000 and GPO is ALMOST just as good so you're getting quite a bargain...

Only other thing I can tell you to watch out for is make sure you have good system specs. You won't be able to load much of all if you have a slow comp. I personally am using a 2.0 ghz laptop with 500 mb ram and it's impossible to play full orchestra without 150% cpu usage spikes that causes the music to crash and stutter all over the place. I hear 1000-2000 ram is recommended but it works fine for smaller ensembles and light orchestras.

Greetings from a new member ... I am writing more orchestral pieces these days, and am intrigued by GPO. I compose with a keyboard "workstation" that has its own 16-track sequencer, and although I'm computer literate I have not used a computer for my music in the past. So, I'm quite familiar with working within the constraints of 16 MIDI channels (effectively 32 if I choose to isolate the signals directed to an external device). However, I am unsure what is meant by the GPO term "instance" -- could somebody give me a quick explanation? I have not used notation programs to compose (I play the notes directly into the keyboard workstation, to the sequencer, and then "cheat" using microscope edit to fix timing and velocity). It seems that it would be easy to keep a large number of different instruments and instrument groups organized on separate staves in a notation software program, but does anybody have wisdom to share regarding working with GPO using an external hardware sequencer?

I've been using GPO since it was released and also reviewed it in the nordic Musicians Magazine MM http://www.garritan.com/reviews.html
I think it's a phenomenal piece of software for the price and I would recommend it to anyone either getting started with composing, or in the need of a creative tool that doesn't put the computer to it's knees.
The sound is geared towards classical rather than heavier filmscore (for that I would advice taking a look at East West Symphonic Orchestra Silver Edition). The strength of the GPO library is when you put it all together, all the instruments really work well together. On the weak side it sometimes sounds a bit too thin and lacks dynamic and longer sample loops for smaller arrangements, where details are crucial.

The creator Gary Garritan is also a great guy that supports his software with heart and soul. There's a community here http://www.northernsounds.com/forum/index.php? were users are very friendly and help each other out with GPO compositions.

ncsteff: A GPO "instance" can be seen as a player that in itself holds 8 instruments. These instruments can be either solo instruments, sections or mixes. When you need more than 8 instruments you simply add a second player, a third a so forth, and each adds another 8 instrument slots.

Cheers,
Jack

if anyone wants to hear what GPO sounds like with no tweaking (keep in mind tweaking in a program like cubase etc can make it sound almost like the real orchestra but I don't have the patience for it, I just want something that sounds better than midi) you can see my mozartean concerto I'm working on http://savefile.com/files/5574250. I used all GPO with stock instruments and no tweaking at all

Jack: Thanks, that makes perfect sense.

From listening to the demos at the Garritan website, I thought that at times the sound was slightly thin too -- but I wondered if that might be an artifact of the mp3. I thought that the sounds of the Yamaha Motif sounded thin from the demo material also ... only to be quite pleasantly surprised when I played the actual synthesizer. Any other comments out there on this point?

Seems to me that if I composed using written (or electronic, e.g. Finale) scores rather than a sequencer, the "handshake" between the notation software and GPO would be astonishing. I'm still intrigued by the power to assemble instrument groups in myriad combinations to achieve the "exact" sound I'm looking for ... but it looks as though I might need to change my composing habits to a notation basis. My impression (right or wrong?) is that GPO works well with notation programs but does not necessarily work well driven by an external hardware sequencer such as the onboard facility in my Fantom. That's why I wondered if anybody out there had used GPO with an external sequencer.

Probably a topic for another thread ... but how well does Finale do in capturing notes played in via MIDI and converting them to notation ... essentially quantizing, I suppose ... especially for a player such as myself who does not have the best timing or dynamic control?

Excellent compositions
I'd like to hear some more-energy compositions too among others, that create more interest during listening whole CD. I mean new-age style piano is various thing and you're very skillful and talented - it shouldn't be difficult at all for you to make such a pieces.

I started using GPO for orchestral stuff a bit but didn't really have the patience! The thing is that if you hook it up to a sequencer like Finale, you have a problem of trying to get your String tracks to switch between accent/staccato/legato/pizzicato/tremolo at will (as GPO has a different set of samples for each of these). Having said that I do realise that GPO does the "KeySwitch" feature but I haven't managed to get it to work

By tweaking, do you mean without adjusting any MIDI parameters whatsoever? I find that a fair few of parameters need adjusting regularly (attack and release spring up to mind among others) for GPO to make a decent sound.

And I can't get the Flute Solo to play legato

Any advice??

Tar

GPO is one of the cheapest sample libraries around. AT $199 along with Kontakt player (soon to go into ARIA, the Garritan own player), it's a steal.

The sound is very good, for that price. IT's usually considered an entry level sample library, since it's small (around 4-5 GB), and too low priced!

If you leave it alone, it can sound rather synthy at times, but if you do tweak it, through Cubase/Sonar/Logic/etc, or even through Finale, which is optimised for usage with GPO, atually shiping with half (or more) of the GPO sounds, it can be great.

You don't have "realistic" legato, since no library can do that actually. VSL (vienna symphonic library), has recorded ALL intervals, to ALL pitches in 2-3 different speeds (portamento, and legato), but this is so cubersome that the whole library is HUGE (but sounds excellent). Other attempts, at solo instruments have been made: Garritan solo strings, no discontinued, the Samplemodelling take of the trumpet and the sax (both sound astonishing), etc.

On that Garritan website, or the garritan forums (www.northernsounds.com), you'll get more than 1000 mp3s from USERS, not high profile pros, using Garritan insturments mainly. This is more of a proof than anyone can ask really. Just go and have a listen.