Garritan Instrument Setup

Setting Up Garritan Instruments for Playback in New Documents 

Do the following if you intend to use Garritan instruments - Garritan Personal Orchestra, Garritan Personal Orchestra Finale Edition, and/or Garritan Jazz and Big Band - in a new score.

• If Finale is currently running, quit the application.
• Full Garritan users and JABB users: if you have not previously done so, download and install the latest update(s) for your instrument library.

Windows and Mac: http://www.garritan.com/support.html. When installing the Full Garritan update, be sure to install the optional "Notation Set for Finale."

• Full Garritan users and JABB users: download and install the appropriate instrument.txt files for your Garritan instrument library. These files allow you to select your Garritan instruments in Finale's Setup Wizard.

You may need to select "Save As" in your web browser to download these files.

Put these files inside the "FinaleVST" folder in your "Finale 2011" folder.

• Use Finale’s Setup Wizard to create your score. On Page 2 of the Setup Wizard, from the Instrument Set menu, select Garritan Personal Orchestra Finale 2011 Edition, Garritan Personal Orchestra, or Garritan Jazz and Big Band. Instruments that include multiple sounds (for example, pizz. and arco for strings) are marked with "KS" in their name - short for "Keyswitch." Choose the KS version of these instruments in order to take advantage of all available sounds.
• Once your score is set up, if you want to hear the Garritan instruments when inputting music using a MIDI keyboard, from the MIDI/Audio menu, choose MIDI Thru, and select Smart. Turn up the modulation wheel on your MIDI keyboard to ensure Garritan instruments are audible.
• The expressions marked "use w/HP off FinGPO KS" are incompatible with Human Playback, and should be avoided if you intend to use Human Playback. Human Playback automatically interprets expressions like "pizz." and "arco" without requiring you to set up a playback definition.
• Before you play back your file for the first time, click the triangle at the left of the Playback Controls (Mac) or the speaker at the right (Windows) to reveal Finale's Playback Settings. Click the Human Playback menu and select the appropriate Human Playback Style for your score.

Setting Up Garritan Instruments for Playback in Existing Scores

Do the following if you intend to use Garritan instruments in a score that was previously configured for another instrument set (for instance, Finale's SoftSynth). If you are using the older Kontakt Player or Kontakt Player 2, see Garritan Instrument Setup in the Finale 2010 User Manual for instructions.

• If Finale is currently running, quit the application.
• Full Garritan users and JABB users: If you have not previously done so, download and install the latest update(s) for your instrument library.

Windows and Mac: http://www.garritan.com/support.html. When installing the Full Garritan update, be sure to install the optional "Notation Set for Finale."

• Full Garritan users and JABB users: download and install the appropriate instrument.txt files for your Garritan instrument library. These files allow you to select your Garritan instruments in Finale's Setup Wizard.

You may need to select "Save As" in your web browser to download these files.

Windows: XP users, put these files inside the Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\MakeMusic\Finale 2011\VST Support folder. Vista and Windows 7 users, C:\ProgramData\MakeMusic\Finale2011\VST Support.

• Open your existing score in Finale 2011.
• From the Window menu, choose Instrument List and make sure each staff is assigned to a different channel in the Instrument List. This means you may need to create new instruments. For specific instructions, see Assigning MIDI Channels and Instruments in Chapter 6 of the Finale Tutorials.
• Assign your top staff to Channel 1, the next staff to Channel 2, etc., until each staff has its own channel.

You may want to reserve Channel 10 for unpitched percussion - although this is not necessary when using Garritan instruments, it can be helpful if you want to preserve the ability to switch back and forth between Garritan instrument playback and SoftSynth or General MIDI playback. For additional information, consult the entry on Percussion.

• You can use a maximum of 128 simultaneous channels and instruments.

Once you have assigned each instrument to the correct channel, you are ready to configure your score for Garritan Playback:

• From the MIDI/Audio menu, choose Instrument Setup >  VST Instruments .

• In the same dialog box, click on the drop-down menu next to Finale Channel 1-16 and choose Aria Player: For more on the Aria Player, see Aria Player.

• Then click the adjacent Edit button:

• This brings up the Aria Player, which you will use to load the Garritan instruments you want to use in your score.

Garritan Aria Player

The Garritan instruments are organized first by section (woodwinds, brass, strings, etc.) and then by instrument family (flutes, clarinets, bassoons, etc.)

Let's assume for the moment that the Instrument List for your score looks like the Instrument List example shown above. In this case, the staff assigned to Finale channel 1 is a Violin I, so that's the first instrument you need to load.

Since this score uses orchestral instruments, we will describe the setup process using the Garritan orchestral libraries - Garritan Instruments for Finale and Full Garritan. However, the steps for JABB users are very similar to the steps for Full Garritan users, since both libraries, except using Kontakt Player 2.

• Click the word "empty" next to slot 1, then, navigate through the submenus to choose the desired instrument. In this case, choose GPO > Notation > Solo Strings > Violin > n-Violin Plr1.

• Full Garritan (Kontakt Player 1): Click and hold on the Load button in the Kontakt Player, and then select Piccolo Solo KS from the Notation folder.

Instruments under the "Notation" submenu have been optimized for use with Finale and Human Playback.

IMPORTANT. If you are using Full Garritan or JABB and you inadvertently load one of the instruments that isn't in the "Notation" folder (doesn't begin with "n-," many Human Playback features won't work correctly.

JABB has a "Notation" folder as well. Garritan Instruments for Finale does not have a "Notation" folder because all of the Garritan Instruments for Finale instruments are Notation instruments. Finale's Setup Wizard always loads instruments from the "Notation" folder, no matter which Garritan instrument library you are using.

You will also notice that in the full version of Garritan, there are many more instruments to choose from compared to Garritan Instruments for Finale - for instance, as you can see in the illustration above, Full Garritan has many different kinds of violin. But no matter which Garritan instrument library you are using, whenever instruments with KS in their name are available - for example, n-Violin 1 SoloKS - you should normally choose those instruments over other versions of the same instrument. For more information, see the entry on Keyswitches.

You should now have successfully loaded your first Garritan instrument to channel 1. The Aria Player should now look like this:

• To load additional instruments: repeat using one of the other slots. Be sure to match the slot number with the channel assigned in the Instrument List. In this case, the second instrument in our score is Violin II, so let's load n-Violin 2 Plr1. This Violin instrument is virtually identical to the n-Violin 1 Plr1, but with enough subtle differences to resemble two real instruments playing together with all the nuance of a live performance.

This instrument is now assigned to Channel 2. The number listed in gray, to the lower right of each slot, is the slot's channel.

The procedure for loading additional instruments is much the same. 16 instruments can be loaded for each instance of the Garritan Aria Player, and these 16 instruments should correspond to the instruments assigned to Channels 1-16 in Finale's Instrument List.

Garritan Aria Player Instruments and Channels

The following is an example of how the Instrument List, Aria Player, and VST Instruments dialog box might look for a large score with over 16 instruments (in this case, 18). Remember, scores over 16 instruments require multiple instances of the Aria Player (up to 8 for the maximum 128 instruments). The 8 banks are listed in the VST Instruments dialog box.

• Before you play back your file for the first time, click the to: reveal Finale's Playback Settings:

• Choose the appropriate Human Playback style for your score:

• In this dialog box, click the HP Preferences button, then click the Default button in the Human Playback Preferences dialog box.

You can find out more about all of these options in the Human Playback Preferences section - but for now, it's easiest to just hit Default, which will select the best HP settings for basic Garritan instruments playback.

• Finally, to get the best stereo image for your instrument setup, from the MIDI/Audio menu, choose Reset Panning.

That's it! Now your Finale document is ready to playback using Garritan instruments!

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