Finale 2011 comes bundled with a diverse collection of high-quality VST/AU instrument samples created by Garritan Libraries. In addition to instruments from their flagship Garritan Personal Orchestra, Finale also includes instruments from other Garritan libraries including Jazz and Big Band, Concert and Marching Band, Authorized Steinway, and more.
Because the Garritan sounds included with Finale are so comprehensive, providing a full orchestra and more, it’s unclear to some Finale users what would be gained from the additional purchase of the full Garritan Personal Orchestra, or any of the other Garritan libraries. Each individual Garritan library offers expanded instrument choices and techniques. In this post, we’ll highlight some of the expanded features offered in the latest version of Garritan Personal Orchestra, or GPO 4.
GPO 4 is a collection of instruments commonly used in a symphony orchestra. While Finale contains a sample subset of these instruments, the full GPO 4 offers expanded woodwind, brass, solo string, section strings, percussion, keyboards and harps, and choir samples. GPO 4 also includes a number of brass samples from Project SAM, another collection of extremely high-quality orchestral sounds, used in many film-scoring and commercial projects. A full listing of the instruments contained in GPO 4 can be viewed here.
GPO 4 also includes full support of Finale’s Setup Wizard, which means that all of GPO 4’s instruments will appear in your Setup Wizard, and these instrument sounds will be automatically configured when you create a score with the Wizard: Just as when using Finale’s built-in Garritan library, no manual loading of sounds is needed!
In addition to a wider range of instruments, GPO 4 offers expanded control for key switches and continuous controller effects. GPO 4 allows you to tailor the sound of your orchestra to your liking, right in Finale 2011. Finale 2011’s Human Playback® feature contains optimized playback effects for GPO 4, so simple markings such as pizzicato and tremolo will automatically trigger the proper sounds with no extra setup needed. You can hear some samples of GPO in action here.
GPO 4 is available for $149.00, directly from the finalemusic.com.
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