Virtual Instruments

At the 2009 Winter NAMM Show, Garritan announced the Garritan World Instrument, which features a comprehensive collection of instruments from around the world:

• The Garritan World Instrument collection offers a large variety of flutes — Native American flutes, bamboo flues, Irish flutes, Chinese and Japanese flutes, Indian flutes, clay flutes, pan flutes, nose flutes and many other exotic winds from around the globe.
• Also included is an array of pitched and un-pitched percussion instruments — Taiko drums, Gamelan ensemble, Log drums, tablas, ewe drums, balaphon, Udu drum, talking drum, steel drums, an array of Latin percussion, and more.
• There are also numerous types of plucked and bowed strings, including: Indian Sitars, Japanese koto and shamisen, African kora, Middle Eastern oud and santoor, and erhu.
• Other instruments include didgeridoo, Middle Eastern reed instruments, accordions, Tibetan bowls, and harmonium.

The Garritan World Instruments Library features controls for dynamics, vibrato, tongue/slur techniques, airflow, auto legato, auto-variability, auto-portamento, trills and more — to make these samples musical, realistic and expressive. There is even support for wind controllers (like the Akai EWI).

Garritan World Instruments is expected to be released first quarter 2009. Pricing will be announced upon release. Read more…

At the 2009 NAMM Show, Garritan announced a new edition of its Garritan Personal Orchestra. The 4th Edition of Garritan Personal Orchestra now contains the Garritan ARIA sample engine and adds new features, new instrument sounds, updated programming and a lower price.

Garritan Personal Orchestra 4th Edition includes all the major instruments of the orchestra – strings, brass, woodwinds, percussion and keyboards plus quality instruments such as a Steinway grand piano, Stradivari violin (with new controllable vibrato), select Project SAM solo and section brass samples (new for this version), concert harps, celesta, concert pipe organ, and many other fine instruments. Personal Orchestra allows you to make ensembles of any size from the individual instruments, ranging from groups of a few instruments to a full symphony orchestra.

The collection comes integrated with the ARIA Player, Garritan’s powerful new 64-bit Sampler/Synthesis Engine, developed in collaboration with Plogue Art et Technologie Inc. There is no need to purchase a separate sampler.

Garritan Personal Orchestra is Mac and PC compatible, either as a standalone program or as a plug-in (VSTi, Pro Tools RTAS, and OSX Audio Units). Registered users of previous editions of the Garritan Personal Orchestra will be able to download the new edition for only $49.

Garritan Personal Orchestra 4th Edition is programmed to work with Finale 2009, Sibelius 5, AKAI wind controllers and other popular music applications.

Suggested Retail price is $149.00. There is a $49 downloadable upgrade for existing users.

At the 2009 NAMM Show, Garritan announced Garritan Orchestral Strings 2, the sequel to its popular Garritan Orchestral Strings. The new string library will be powered by the Garritan ARIA sample engine.

The library includes the complete string sections of the orchestra as well as an extended complement of solo strings. The stringed instruments recorded in this collection include Stradivarius, Guarneri, Gagliano, Montagnana, Testore, and many other rare instruments, and were recorded in 24-bit at the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts.

The library includes a rare solo Stradivari violin, a solo Pallotta viola, a solo Gofriller cello, a solo Amati double-Bass, 1st violin section, 2nd violin section, viola section, cello section, double-Bass section, and a full string orchestra.

Each string section and solo instrument allows performance of an array of articulations, bowings, playing techniques and special effects. Special morphing technology enables performance of dynamic morphing between layers and the ability to impart and control expressive vibrato on solo strings (the first full string library with this capability) and section strings.

Details:

The following articulations are included: various sustains, staccato, marcato, spiccato, martelle’, pizzicato, sautille, portamento, ricochet, col legno, tremolo, trills (at various interval), and harmonics. Additionally, many of these articulations may be played altra corda (on an adjoining string) or con sordino (muted).

There are avant-garde effects such as harmonic glissandi (Penderecki effects) and below-the-bridge effects included. Bow position control (sul tasto and sul ponticelli), up and down bowing, realistic legato and portamento, body/sympathetic resonance behavior modeling, adjustable noise (bow, pluck and snap noise) and controllable loose/tight articulations are also included. Extraordinary levels of realism, expressiveness and virtuoso performances are now possible.

The collection comes integrated with the ARIA Player, Garritan’s powerful new 64-bit Sampler/Synthesis Engine, developed in collaboration with Plogue Art et Technologie Inc, the widely acclaimed audio software developer. The ARIA engine and Garritan sounds have been rigorously industry tested and are widely used in products by Microsoft, SONY, AKAI, MakeMusic (Finale) and other industry leaders.

Garritan Orchestral Strings 2 is expected to be released 1st quarter of 2009. Pricing is to be announced.

NAMM Show Update: EASTWEST introduced PLAY 2.0, which adds professional editing capabilities.

The editor featured in PLAY 2.0 is the same software that the company uses to program its PLAY-powered virtual instrument collections.

“When we originally designed PLAY, it was intended to offer a powerful but easy-to-use interface for users to playback the included sounds,” says EASTWEST Founder and Producer Doug Rogers. “Now with PLAY 2.0, musicians who like to customize our virtual instruments will have the same software tools we use when we create the virtual instruments.”

At the 2009 NAMM Show, Eastwest/Quantum Leap introduced Quantum Leap SILK – a virtual (software) instrument that features a collection of historic and unique string and woodwind instruments from China, Persia and India.

I was able to check SILK out at NAMM, and it’s an awesome-sounding sound library that’s likely to see a lot of work on soundtracks.

The instruments featured in SILK are multi-sampled and feature extensive articulations, interval sampling (where appropriate), round robin (alternate samples) and phrases to give the feeling of smooth effortless performance. Read more…