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 | | | | Dec31 Written by:Bruce Richardson
Tuesday, December 31, 2002 6:00 PM  I open the package. A beautiful black binder. I open the binder. Lovely cover page, inscribed, "The Maestro's Manual, presented to Maestro Bruce Richardson." OK, I'm impressed.
Garritan Orchestral Strings is the second GigaStudio library produced by harpist, composer, and producer Gary Garritan. His previous library, the GigaHarp, was among the first proof-of-concept libraries which thrust Nemesys (now owned by hardware giant Tascam. hmmm...TascSys? NemeScam?) and its "streaming sampler" into the limelight. Garritan Orchestral Strings is a much larger effort; a collection of just about every sound you can make with a string section. You get a hefty manual that's almost an orchestration text, elegant and detailed mapping guides, and the aforementioned personal fluffing. Maestro indeed. Who doesn't feel good about that?
Down to the Nitty-GrittySpread out over eighteen CDs, you'll find the main instrument classes broken into many individual GigaStudio-native GIG files--with separate long and short bowings, additional techniques, and keyswitch/lite instruments (respectively supersets, designed for maximum flexibility or subsets designed to conserve memory and MIDI channels). Within these there are sometimes over a dozen individual instrument mappings. There are even some full-range "strings" patches designed to get you playing quickly across the full keyboard, with all the basic bowings represented within them. These are like the strings patches on your favorite "do everything" synth module. Only way better. A person could start with just these and be happy.
But the real stars of this library are the ultra-detailed individual instrument sections. There are bowings galore, and not just the usual suspects. GOS covers it all, from romantic sustains to scroinks, boinks, and scratches. You don't just get one variety of sustains, but many subtle bowing variations. You don't just get staccato, you get its cousins and their cousins. There is enough there, in fact, that you can become downright unproductive as you explore one instrument, then the next, then the next...and all are recorded in a nicely consistent space, meaning that you can mix and match articulations liberally without your stereo image going to shreds.
The sound of each section is full, resonant and alive. I appreciate the wide variety of bowings, because they're all musically interesting and each has distinct character. The straight sustains are nicely slick and present at low velocities and insistent towards the top. The more expressive bowings get a little grittier and evolve with more personality, and the players are definitely not holding anything back. There is a touch of ambient content in the samples themselves, but not a lot. Just a bit of bounce and decay from the space, which sounds nice. In a somewhat dry mix, this may be all the ambience you need in a track. For a larger orchestral footprint, it's not too much bounce to interfere with additional reverb and reflective content.
One significant feature of Garritan Orchestral Strings is a companion MIDI application, called Maestro Tools (authored by MIDI-ace Jeff Hurchalla). Maestro Tools sits, loopback-style, between your MIDI input and GigaStudio, and enables a whole host of playability and sequencing features of the library. There's a legato mode. There are alternation modes, which alternate samples on a given note to combat the dreaded machine-gun effect. It's an idea that harks back to the original GigaHarp, which used common MIDI controllers to "double" notes realistically within glissandos by key (one of the telltale "it's a sequence" giveaways with virtual harp parts). In fact, this aspect of GOS seems to have caught on, with Michiel Post's Grandioso pianos sporting a similar feature to enhance pedaling techniques.
There are additional "variability" modes that provide even more sample substitutions, detunings, etc., to keep things constantly changing. There are some velocity crossfading methods that can yield great crescendos and decrescendos in realtime. There are layered articulations and wheel-selected bowings. Yet despite all this seeming complexity, the use of the library and accompanying tools is easy and straightforward, and I had no trouble at all learning to use each GOS feature.
I amused myself for hours on end, in fact. What I needed was a good string project to get me moving. In the usual, "careful what you wish for..." scenario, I was suddenly overwhelmed with projects. Luckily, GOS gets down to business as pleasantly as it distracts. Here's the poop on a few of them. Pop StringsAn old friend approaches me with a project. A new pop group he's producing has synth strings all over their tunes. He wants me to ditz them up and do some revoicing to make them a bit less synthy. Little does he know...
When I got the tunes, it became apparent that I'd need to use a couple of different approaches. A few spots called more for solo strings (GOS is ensemble-only), so I used Dan Dean Solo strings for these. But overall, most of the lines wanted to be large and soaring, and the GOS legato patches filled the bill perfectly. I used the "EXP" versions, a great variant on the typical multi-velocity sample. EXP patches in GOS crossfade between velocity layers using the modulation wheel, so that you can play crescendos and decrescendos in realtime. With these patches, I was able to program the kinds of sweeping dynamic quality you only get with live sections (or hours of excruciating envelope-drawing in your DAW).
I also found that the EXP patches were easily modified to breath control (simply changing the attenuating controller in the GigaStudio Editor), and that this was just about the ideal way to use them. Using a Yamaha WX-5 as the controller, I found this to be far superior to the mod-wheel implementation. I was now physically coupled to the expression in a more direct way, and the resulting parts were more musical than my keyboard entered parts. I am not a killer saxophonist by a long shot, so I concentrated on getting the expression nailed at the expense of a few clams. These are easy enough to clean up in the sequencer. In fact, several complex passages were easiest to perform with one hand on the keyboard playing the line while I played a "dummy note" on the wind controller (later, I deleted this string of "dummy notes" leaving the melody behind).
GOS's LEG or legato patches proved really helpful. These patches must be used with the Maestro Tools utility. It works a MIDI-magic trick, tracking incoming note-offs to trigger hidden "bridge" samples between legato notes. Anyone who has done sampled string work knows the dreaded "slurp, slurp, slurp" sound of mushy legato attacks. With GOS's legato bridge samples being triggered by each release, the air between notes gets filled up, and the notes connect to each other much more naturally. Combined with the EXP crossfades, you can knock out gorgeous and shapely lines that will have even the biggest skeptic wondering how you managed to afford a full string section.
Needless to say, the string parts for the project were a huge hit. The tunes took on that nice depth and size that says "expensive," and everybody was happy. GOS gets an A+ here. Soundtrack: Exploring SocietyNext on the plate, I scored 22 episodes of a sociology telecourse, using all manner of orchestral instruments and styles. I made GOS the workhorse library for strings.
I really used the pizzicato strings on this project, coming back to them again and again. The GOS pizz samples have a nice buzzy-woody quality about them, and come in two main flavors: loose and tight. The tight samples are VERY tight, with dead-on ensemble accuracy. The loose pizz samples, on the other hand, are quite loose and spread on the attack. There are various "switching" patches between these and one other pizz articulation, the so-called Bartok pizz, which is a snap against the fingerboard for an extremely aggressive, percussive tone. These are mapped to the highest velocities, and really do give the impression of a full section digging into the accents. I edited some of these patches to pop out the "Bartoks" even more...in the Basses, they were actually not quite as aggressive as the rounder varieties, and I found they'd actually leave something of a sonic hole rather than a super aggressive feeling. No biggie, it was easy to do and this is a personal taste thing, anyway.
Another nice articulation I used often--the various tremolo patches. Here again, the EXP versions of these allow continuous crescendos and decrescendos over individual notes or lines, and allow very realistic performances to be entered in realtime. Tremolos come in a couple of varieties, one full-bodied and warm, the other (sul ponticello) played closer to the bridge for a scratchier, eerier tone quality. There are multiple velocities of each. As you might imagine, one can switch between the two varieties in a number of ways. Tremolos are used to convey agitation and emotional sweep, and like their live acoustic counterparts, the tremolo patches in GOS get the job done. You can stir up a lot of energy with them.
A note to the adventurous: The Tremolos don't come with release triggers right out of the box, but I found that the release triggers from the legato instruments contained in the latest update were perfect for this. Just copy them from the legato instruments to the Tremolos, study and emulate the mapping from the sustain instruments, and enjoy.
I also found myself using the short bows quite a bit, mainly to mix it up with the pizz articulations when "grooving" with the string section. Here, the ALT articulations come into play with the Maestro Tools utility. Pressing a keyswitch tells Maestro Tools to alternate up-bow and down-bow samples every other note. Whether you are playing a repeated note, or a line, this feature helps combat the machine-gun curse, and gives you much more realistic parts. It's helpful to use your sequencer's note-length editing capabilities to tweak your lines. Once you've found exactly the right note length for a given line at a given tempo, you can easily visualize a section of players burning through the part. Here, too, you can use the variability instruments to give even more variety...or not. What you'll find is that the advanced features are somewhat scaleable...you don't have to use them in the tracking stages in order to take advantage of them as you work towards mixing and completing your piece. Sometimes, it's far better to forge ahead while the muses still think you're cute. Soundtrack: Henry IVLast on my set of evaluation projects was a score for Shakespeare's Henry IV, parts one and two. This was an original adaptation, premiered at Shakespeare Festival of Dallas, which reduced the two three-hour plays into one. The style of the production was a rather mixed bag. We started out flirting with constructivism, and retained some of that flavor in the end. However, our Falstaff chewed scenery mightily (and well), so in the end we had a constructivist-farce on our hands. Which is a little weird. Needless to say, I made a few stylistic changes through the process.
I mostly scored transitions, trying to foreshadow upcoming scenes and keep the audience with us as we blazed through the tale. One of the challenges of outdoor Shakespeare is the fight against ambient noise. As it turned out, I didn't get to score many of the scenes I'd have liked, simply because getting the actors heard over the sound of traffic is no mean feat. But I got many complements on the overall score just the same. People are genuinely curious about how I get orchestral sounds like these. It's a real complement that even casual listeners notice the sound of the score itself. The actors notice and appreciate it as well...they get subjected to some pretty cheesy sounds sometimes, and still have to keep a straight face and tough it out over the top. Once again, the tremolos were golden--I was able to go from subtle agitation to heights of tension using the EXP patches. Another nice juxtaposition was using extreme ranges of all the legato instruments in their quietest velocities, allowing the nice long samples to provide motion to otherwise static lines. Unlike the constant hiding, nipping, and tucking you must do to disguise shortcomings with lesser libraries, these samples beg to be held out their full length. The more you expose, the more they sell. Support and UpgradesA significant and somewhat unique aspect of Garritan Orchestral Strings is a free upgrade policy. And so far a very generous upgrade policy. Since beginning work on this review, a whopping 1.5 gigabytes of new samples, instruments, patches, and software enhancements have been added to the basic library...with much more to come very soon, according to Gary. That's more than the total size of some libraries, and nice support however you look at it. Some of the coolest enhancements are user contributions. GOS has gathered quite a following of people who have contributed back some nice new ways of using the material. Also included in the last upgrade were some reverb impulses by music tech ace Ernest Cholakis. These are usable in so-called convolver programs like Acoustic Mirror and Altiverb, and are among the very best I have ever heard. Another resource is a helpful user forum on Northernsounds.com. All in all, the customer service for GOS is exemplary, and is a notable feature of the library. Some ConclusionsI work every day with sampled instruments, and my livelihood more or less depends on these products. I consider myself a pretty good judge of what works, and Garritan Orchestral Strings has worked out very well for me. It can be layered up into a lush thicket of orchestral madness, and can serve just as well in a sparse pop setting.
You'd be hard pressed to come up with musical situations it wouldn't cover. No library has the number of articulations this one boasts. It wrings every drop of functionality from GigaStudio's significant toolbox, and adds new tools to boot.
All in all, I give GOS my warmest and heartiest recommendation to anyone seeking a great sounding string library. It is definitely an investment quality resource, which will not lose value as other products emerge. No matter what your musical genre, GOS covers your string needs. You’ll be able to churn out hours of great music with it. Professionals will find the pricetag very appealing, and easily recouped. In fact, every high-profile GigaStudio user I know counts this one as a must-have...so I'll defer to the larger group and let you draw your conclusions from that.
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