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Personal Orchestra 4 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.
Create lush symphonic music with this collection of software instruments. There are over 150 software orchestral instruments - delicious strings, intimate woodwinds, joyous brass, powerful percussion, a Steinway virtual piano, a glorious concert organ, heavenly harps and more.
A Complete Orchestra at your Fingertips
Includes all the major instruments of the orchestra - strings, brass, woodwinds, percussion and keyboards. An entire orchestra can be loaded on a single PC, Mac or laptop.
Highest Quality Orchestral Instruments at an Affordable Price
GPO4 has the highest quality collection of orchestral instruments at an affordable price. The instruments recorded were made by fine instrument makers such as Steinway®, Stradivari, Guarneri, Haynes and others.
Easy-to-Use
Create great sounding orchestral music quickly and easily. Just load your instruments and play. Standardized controls allow you to become familiar with the library quickly and master all the instruments easily.
Orchestrate in the Fast Lane - Real-time Playable Instruments
Designed to be played in real-time. No tedious piecing together of samples. Play your instruments with their nuances quickly and in real-time for expressive human-sounding performances.
ARIA Instrument Engine Included - No Sampler Required
GPO integrates the ARIA high-performance instrument engine. This instrument engine, developed in collaboration with Plogue Art et Technologie Inc., goes beyond typical samplers. ARIA's specially tailored programming is designed to emulate the performances of real orchestral instruments. The reliable ARIA engine is in use in Microsoft Songsmith, SONY Acid Pro, AKAI EWI USB and Finale 2009/10.
Ensemble Making - Creating Your Own 'Personal' Orchestra
GPO provides individual instruments from which you build your own ensembles and sections. Construct solos, duos, trios, quartets, chamber groups, ensembles, sections or a full symphony orchestra - the way you want.
Notation Integration: Play from the Score - Finale and Sibelius Optimized.
GPO is designed specifically to work with notation programs in addition to sequencers. Play your orchestrations directly from the score of supported notation programs. GPO4 automatically interprets performance indications such as articulation marks, slurs, playing techniques, dynamics, etc. to provide an life-like performance from the score. GPO4 has unique integration with Finale and Sibelius.
Universal Format
Supports all popular formats, Mac and PC, as a standalone program or as a plug-in (VST, RTAS, and OSX Audio Units), works with supported notation programs and works in 64-bit operating systems.
Suited for Everybody
Professional film composers can use this collection for quick orchestral sketches and capturing creative ideas. Hobbyists can use it for adding orchestrations to their tracks. Educators and students can use it for scoring projects or studying orchestration. Imagine orchestrating at the beach, or on a plane, or anywhere. Personal Orchestra is for every musician.
The best-selling orchestral sample collection is now even better!
ARIA Advanced Instrument Engine
ARIA is our new, highly-optimized instrument engine that goes beyond ordinary samplers. It is easy to use, efficient, loads instruments quickly, and has low CPU-demands.
Additional Sounds,
Project SAM Brass & Ensemble Presets
GPO4 includes select brass samples from Project SAM that strengthen Personal Orchestra's brass section to add punch and excitement to your musical compositions. GPO4 also includes choir sounds, extended ranges for select instruments as well as Ensemble Presets.
Auto Legato
GPO4's new Auto Legato intelligently detects when you are playing a smooth line with overlapping notes and automatically applies correct legato transitions between notes. Creating realistic phrasing has never been easier. Auto Legato also makes playable trills extremely easy.
Integrated Ambience & Stereo Stage
GPO4 now integrates the high quality Ambience reverb with the ARIA Player and has individual mixing sends for each instrument. Stereo Stage imparts spacious stereo imagery for the GPO4 instruments.
MIDI Playback and Recording Features
The Standalone ARIA Player allows you to load and playback MIDI files. You can also produce audio recordings of the MIDI file or record yourself playing live!
Tunings and Scala File Support
Put GPO4 exactly in tune with your ideas. The ARIA Instrument Engine supports control over individual instrument tuning, the frequency serving as the overall pitch standard, and Scala definition files, a standardized format for scale degree tunings.
Graceful & Easy Authorization
ARIA authorization employs a personalized digital keycard. Simply drag and drop the personalized graphic card onto the ARIA Instrument Engine to authorize it and get playing in seconds.
Personal Orchestra Instrument List
All of the major instruments of an entire Symphony Orchestra are included in PERSONAL ORCHESTRA. Some of the very finest instruments were sampled in Garritan Personal Orchestra: Stradivarius, Guarneri, Gagliano, Montagnana, Haynes, Steinway: these are instruments of extraordinary tone and beauty.
Woodwinds
•Piccolo
•Solo Flute
•3 Flutes for Ensembles
•Alto Flute
•Bass Flute
•Oboe (Two Soloists)
•3 Oboes for Ensembles
•English Horn (Two Soloists)
•Solo Bb Clarinet
•3 Clarinets for Ensembles
•Eb Clarinet
•Bass Clarinet
•3 Bass Clarinets for Ensembles
•Contrabass Clarinet
•Solo Bassoon (Two Soloists)
•3 Bassoons for Ensembles
•Contrabassoon (Two Soloists)
Brass
•Solo Trumpet (Three Soloists)
including one from Project SAM
•9 Trumpets for Ensembles
including 3 from Project SAM
•Trumpets with Straight Mutes
•Trumpet forte Overlay
•2 Solo Piccolo Trumpets
•Trumpet Section from Project SAM
•Solo French Horns (Three Soloists)
including one from Project SAM
•9 Horns for Ensembles
•French Horns with Mutes
•Horn forte & fortissimo Overlays
•French Horn Section from Project SAM
•Solo Tenor Trombone (Two Soloists)
including one from Project SAM
•6 Trombones for Ensembles
•Trombone f Overlay
•Solo Bass Trombones (Three Soloists)
including one from Project SAM
•Trombone Section from Project SAM
•Tubas (Three Soloists)
including one from Project SAM
•Tuba forte Overlay
•Solo Contrabass Tuba
Percussion
•Timpani
•Wind Machine
•Grand Symphonic Marimba
•Vibraphone
•Glockenspiel
•Xylophone
•Tubular Bells
•Bass Drum (adjustable fundamental)
•Snare Drum
•Orchestral Cymbals
•Gong & Tam-Tam
•Crotales
•Triangles
•Mark Tree
•Cowbells
•Hand Bells
•Assorted Percussion Toys
Keyboards and Harps
•Steinway Concert Grand Piano
•Duo 1 & Duo 2 Pianos
•Concert Pipe Organ (11 Stops / Pedals)
•Harpsichord (3 Stops)
•Celeste
•Harp 1 (Venus)
•Harp 2 (Wurlitzer)
•Glissando Harp Package
Choir
•Full Choir Lite
Strings
•Solo Stradivari Violin
•Solo Gagliano Violin
•Solo Guarneri Violin
•9 Violins for Ensembles
•1st Violin Section (12 Players)
•2nd Violin Section (10 Players)
•Solo Viola
•3 Violas for Ensembles
•Viola Section (10 Players)
•Solo Gofriller Cello
•Solo Montagnana Cello
•Solo Pierray Cello
•9 Cellos for Ensembles
•Cello Section (8 Players)
•Solo Double Bass
•3 Double Basses for Sections
•Double Bass Section (7 Players)
String Section Instruments
22 Violins (12 First Violins& 10 Second Violins)
•Stradivari, circa 1719
•Stradivari, circa 1716
•Guarneri, circa 1735
•Vuillaume, circa 1840
•Gagliano, circa 1750
•Gagliano, circa 1772
•Gagliano, circa 1786
•Testore, circa 1758
•Pierray, circa 1714
•Pagani, circa 1882
•Vaillant, circa 1741
•Pagez, unknown vintage
•Klotz, circa early 1700's
•Unknown French Violin, circa 1825
•Gemunder, circa 1805
•Antoniazzi, circa 1910
•Unknown Hungarian Gypsy violin
•Unknown German violin, circa 1800
•Unkown Hungarian Violin, late 1800's
•Homelka, circa 1856
•Farvolo, modern
•Gatano Gearta, circa 1921
•Perisson, modern
8 Celli
•Montangana, circa 1735
•Montagnana, circa 1752
•Deconet, circa 1765
•Dodd, unknown vintage
•Betts, circa 1751
•VanLeuwen, circa 1908
•Pierray, 1720
•Unknown Italian, circa 1800's
10 Violas
•Pietro Pallotta , circa 1790
•Sgarobotto, circa 1907
•Ovington, modern Monnig, circa 1947
•Newtorn, modern
•Lee, modern
•Frirsz, circa 1961
•Cavani, circa 1959
•Tulchinsky, modern
•Baldoni, modern
•Unknown Italian
7 Contrabasses
•Testore/Montavani, circa mid 1700's
•Jaquet, circa 1856
•Jaquet, circa 1850
•Tyrolean, circa 1860
•Krutz, modern
•German Flatback, unknown, circa 1900
•Pollman, circa 1950
Ensemble Building
Garritan Personal Orchestra 4.0 lets you Build sections and ensembles any way you want from individual expressive instruments.
Create Ensembles of Varying Sizes with Individual Instruments
•Make solos, duos, trios, quartets, chamber groups, small-medium-large size orchestras, or any combination of your choosing.
•Play divisi and separate lines for each instrument.
•Be free from fixed-size section samples.
•Each instrument has its own individual character and nuance, they each are expressive, and can interact with each other just like genuine players.
Personal Orchestra is the first library to offer this. Most other sample libraries offer predetermined sections with the instruments playing in unison where the size and sound of each section is fixed. And every time you play a section you get all instruments in that section starting and stopping exactly the same way each time you play a particular note. This may be acceptable for those rare moments requiring a full tutti with that particular number of instruments playing in unison. But if your music requires one instrument per part or divisi parts, as is common in the vast majority of orchestral music, GPO4 is ideal!
With the Garritan Personal Orchestra, the library is designed so you can create numerous combinations with these instruments, each capable of playing a separate part. You are no longer limited to sections of a pre-determined section size (although GPO does offer the option of section strings and ProjectSAM section brass too). GPO4 offers you the utmost flexibility.
The sum is much more than its parts. When you have individual Personal Orchestra instruments playing together, and each phrase and each line is musical and expressive, the combined result can be breathtaking.
The Instrument Controls of Personal Orchestra
The Garritan Libraries provide the right tools to transform high-quality orchestral instrument sounds into stunningly realistic performances.
The Basic Control System
•Use your right hand to control the attack and accentuation of each note,
•the mod wheel to control dynamics and expression,
•the sustain pedal to connect the notes, and
•other controls to fine tune your performance.
Easy as 1, 2, 3
The controls for one family of instruments will generally carry over to others so that once you learn how to use any given instrument you basically know how to use most other instruments in the entire library. This makes the library very easy to learn.
Intelligent but Simple
Personal Orchestra utilizes an intelligent yet simple instrument control system so that most articulations can be played expressively in real-time with standard keyboard controllers. You s imply use the keyboard controllers to 'shape' the articulations like a genuine player would. No need to tweak samples or change articulations in midstream. This intuitive and standardized approach allows for quick composing and makes playing familiar and natural.
Create the articulations you want on the fly. You can instantaneously perform a variety of staccatos, tremolos, trills, sustains, legatos, portatos, a range of gentle to accented attacks, crescendos, portamentos, alternating bow strokes, tongued and slurred articulations for winds; and you can change between them on the fly.
Play your articulations and hear the musical results while you're doing it.
Expression Control - Creating Truly Expressive Performances
What makes an orchestra great is the complete dynamic contrasts it produces. Every phrase and even notes themselves have unwritten dynamics that are interpreted by the player. Without dynamics, music would be very monotonous, boring and lifeless. Indeed, it is the soul of music. The orchestra is unique because of the expressiveness of the instruments that can be produced. Garritan Personal Orchestra enables you to control the breadth of expression common to great orchestral performances. The Mod Wheel controls volume and provides dynamic and expressive control in Personal Orchestra. It simultaneously controls both Volume (ppp to fff) and Timbre (Brightness or EQ).
As shown above, EXP Control allows you to simulate a surging crescendo that is virtually indistinguishable from a real one. In fact, recordings of real crescendos were used as a calibration tool to provide realistic dynamic ranges within the EXP patches. Below is a depiction of a real crescendo:
By using the Expressive control, you will discover that using the Mod Wheel Control adds a new dimension of feeling and expression to your performances, making them all the more believable.
Legato Control - Playing Smoothly and Evenly
Music needs to flow and if it is choppy and broken, it won't sound right. A beautifully smooth, lyrical and effortless legato passage is one of the hallmarks of musical mastery. "Legato" literally means connected (or tied together) and directs a player to conceal potential breaks between tones. All instruments in Personal Orchestra that play legato notes (string sustains, woodwinds and brass) use the sustain pedal to activate the legato mode.
In Personal Orchestra 4.0 there is a new feature called Auto Legato that automatically imparts legato.
This is what a real legato phrase looks like - notice how the notes are smoothly connected and you cannot tell one note from the next.
This is how the same phrase looks like played on a typical sampler.
Whenever the sustain pedal is depressed, the attack portion of the next sample is removed to create much smoother transitions between notes.
The combined effect produces a phrase that is smoothly connected. Using the sustain pedal feature will make notes blend into an unbroken musical phrase, and sound connected and seamless as possible. This is very natural in working with orchestral instruments. With woodwinds and brass it can allow the user to choose between tongued and simulated slur notes. In the case of strings, this control will emulate the bowing of several notes with a single bow stroke in order to achieve legato phrasing.
Automatic Variability Control - Adding Variety, Humanness, and Randomization
The conspicuous recurrence of the same sampled note has long been considered a major shortcoming of sample libraries. Moreover, a revealing clue that a recording is of sampled instruments rather than of live players is hearing the same sample repeated for a given tone. Personal Orchestra provides an elegant and economical way of mitigating the repeated-sample syndrome. Inventive programming provides automatic variations to repeated tones with random variations in intonation and timbre. The user can also control the amount of random intonation and brightness using MIDI controllers. The change of character on the repeated notes makes a substantial difference and imparts one more level of realism.
Real players rarely, if ever, play two notes of the identical pitch, timbre and attack in exactly the same way. Whenever they play the same note, they produce small variations in tuning, attack, volume, brightness, and timbre. In short, no two instances of the same note will ever be identical. This variation of tone is essential to any musical performance, but it is difficult to emulate in a MIDI performance if a sample library is limited to only one sample per note. So imagine that whenever you play a particular note, a different variation would sound. For example, the sample will have a slightly different pitch, or a different timbre, a different character, or perhaps a different sample. This would make for an incredibly realistic performance, and is what you can accomplish with the Variability Instruments. This feature provides an almost unlimited number of variations to help conceal the fact that you are using samples.
Keyswitching - Rapid Changes in Articulation
Key Switching allows you to easily change articulations quickly in real time. With a simple touch of a key located on the keyboard below normal range of the instruments, you can rapidly switch between different articulation patches on the fly without having to load multiple Personal Orchestra instruments.
When you press a key in the Key Switch area, Personal Orchestra will load the desired articulation into the playing area of the keyboard. Here is an example of the GPO Harpsichord keyswitching:
Other Controls
In addition to these three basic controls, Personal Orchestra has Automatic Variability, Mono Mode, Length and Portamento controls.
•ATTACK & ACCENTUATION CONTROL
- You can actually play softer or louder samples depending on the differing force you apply to the keys. If you wish to play a note softly, simply press the corresponding key gently, which will in turn trigger a piano (p) sample. To play the same note at a medium dynamic level, press the key slightly harder; this will trigger a mezzo piano (mp) or mezzo forte (mf) sample. And if you want a forte (f) sample strike the key even harder. Applying proper accentuation brings clarity and emphasis to the notes being played. The degree of force you apply to the keys will vary depending on the instrument selected and the musical context. With brass and woodwinds, accents are made by "tonguing" to emphasize certain notes. With strings notes are emphasized by how hard the player digs the bow into the string. Whenever you feel that a note should be accented, you do it by striking the key harder.
•THE LENGTH CONTROL
- Adjusting the Length of the Instrument notes. The length parameters of many of the instruments in the upcoming updates are controllable. The default setting is the natural length of the sample and the length of the sample can be shortened.
•PORTAMENTOS AND SLIDES
- Players often slide up or down to a note for expressive purposes. Personal Orchestra allows you to emulate this technique, known as portamento. Portamento Control can be assigned to an external MIDI fader or controlled in a sequencer. You can also add varying amounts of portamento for smooth portamento effects (play two notes in a row and one will glide into the other). The Pitch Bend Wheel can also be used to bend the pitch of a note at its start (especially useful for strings and trombone).
•MONO MODE FOR SOLO INSTRUMENTS
- Many solo orchestral instruments by their nature are monophonic instruments. In real life, most solo wind instruments are physically incapable of playing more than one note at a time. In Personal Orchestra, mono mode is activated by default and automatically limits the polyphony to one note at a time. Limiting the polyphony to a single voice makes the creation of convincing solo parts much easier, as it eliminates the possibility of accidental note overlaps. This also makes trills and other effects easier to perform. With solo instruments accented notes (tongued or detache) are accomplished with the sustain pedal up and connected notes (slurred or legato) with the pedal depressed. If you wish to play a solo instrument polyphonically, you can disable this feature by setting the polyphony assignment higher in the instrument header next to the channel assignment box.
Instrument-Specific Controls
Garritan Personal Orchestra includes special controls for specific instruments that will lend realism to your performance.
•ALTERNATING BOWSTROKES - SOLO STRINGS
- For solo string instruments, pedal switching is used to simulate alternating up and down bow strokes. Pedal up is one bow stroke, pedal down is the other bow stroke.
•BRASS INSTRUMENTS
- Overlays: The brass instruments have "Overlay" instruments, sampled at the f or ff level that can be layered with the solo and ensemble instruments to achieve a fuller, more massive section sound.
•GLISSANDO HARP PEDALINGS
- MIDI Data Packets: The Glissando Harp instrument maps notes to the white keys of the keyboard and uses MIDI data packets to emulate the pedal positions of a harp. The white keys of the keyboard can be "strummed" to achieve realistic glissandi.
•BASS DRUM
- Adjustable Fundamental: Although the bass drum is an instrument of indefinite pitch, its tone is very deep and booming and capable of being adjusted. The bass drum in Personal Orchestra has an adjustable fundamental that is controlled by a knob designated "BDFund" in the controller section of the Kontakt Player. This control can add a great deal of energy to extremely low frequencies.
•TROMBONE SLIDES
: The Pitch Wheel also provides a way of bending the notes and can be useful for "scoops" or "drops" into the beginning of notes or slide-like pitch changes within the sustain portion of a note for trombone.
•HARPSICHORD
: The harpsichord uses keyswitching to select between the 8'stops, the 8'+4' stops, and the buff stops. Pressing the appropriate keys above the range of the instrument will switch the sound banks. If you press the A5 key, you'll hear the 8' stop. If you press C6, the keyboard is switched to the buff stop or muted sound of the harpsichord.
•PITCHED PERCUSSION INSTRUMENTS DAMPENING
- Glockenspiel, Timpani, Tubular Bells, Marimba, Xylophone, Grand Symphonic Marimba: These instruments and a few others (Chromatic & Harmonic Harps, Celesta, and Triangle) use the sustain pedal for introducing damping to the decay of the sound. The sustain pedal switches between notes that ring for the full decay of the sound and a damped version where the notes end abruptly at the release. The default position (pedal up) gives the full decay. The pedal down position is damped.
•VIBRAPHONE TREMOL
The vibraphone sounds unique as a result of the its electric resonators which produce a distinctive tremolo or throbbing effect. The sustain pedal simulates this tremolo effect.
•MANY MORE CONTROLS...
There are many more instrument controls, too numerous to list here, that are available for Peronal Orchestra 4.0.
USING MULTIPLE CONTROLLERS - The advanced programming of Garritan Personal Orchestra allows you to operate multiple performance controllers simultaneously to make the music expressive. Phrases with grace notes, runs, scales, pickups, arpeggios and other ornaments can be played with individual notes - no pitch-shifting played passages are necessary. With Garritan Personal Orchestra, you can actually play many of these patterns in real time, as a real players would.
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PC
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Mac
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1.8 Ghz Core 2 Duo MacIntel or better; 2.8 Ghz CPU Pentium 4 or better (single core CPU). Users report G5 PPC Macs work, but no guarantee as you will not get optimal performance.
2 GB RAM Recommended
3.5 GB of free hard drive space
Hard drive speed of at least 7200 RPM
DVD ROM drive
Monitor with 1,024 x 768 resolution or better
A sound card compatible with ASIO, DirectSound, or MME
MIDI: A MIDI or USB interface may be required if you are using a n electronic keyboard (88-key full-sized MIDI keyboard recommended). A keyboard with Mod Wheel is highly recommended.
High quality speakers and amplifier, or high quality headphones
Internet connection for updates and online registration
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1.8 Ghz Core 2 Duo MacIntel or better; 2.8 Ghz CPU Pentium 4 or better (single core CPU). Users report G5 PPC Macs work, but no guarantee as you will not get optimal performance.
2 GB RAM Recommended
3.5 GB of free hard drive space
Hard drive speed of at least 7200 RPM
DVD ROM drive
Monitor with 1,024 x 768 resolution or better
A sound card compatible with ASIO, DirectSound, or MME
MIDI: A MIDI or USB interface may be required if you are using a n electronic keyboard (88-key full-sized MIDI keyboard recommended). A keyboard with Mod Wheel is highly recommended.
High quality speakers and amplifier, or high quality headphones
Internet connection for updates and online registration
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