GOS Instrument Pitch Maps

[gugliel]

As far as I know, pitch information is not available anywhere for the GOS library: which notes in which velocity layers are flat, in-tune, sharp, or fluctuating widely.

If anyone else has made similar observations on other instruments, would love to see them, too!

Having spent many hours doing it myself, here are some preliminary results for 'celli. The lowest C on the cello called C3 here. Only the notes that remain or go out of tune more than 5 cents are listed; and I only checked up to about G5:

GOS Cellos Sus V (4 velocity layers: pp, mp, mf, ff)

C#3 ff 5c sharp

D3 ff 2 sinking to 6c flat

F3 ff 5c sharp, fluctuating

F#3 ff 8c flat

G3 ff 8c sharp rising then in tune

Ab3 ff 8c sharp lowering

Eb4 mf rising to 10c sharp

F#4 mf 6c flat
F#4 ff 7c flat

G4 mf 8c sharp
G4 ff 12c sharp lowering

A4 ff 14c sharp fluctuating

Bb4 mf 8c flat
Bb4 ff 7c flat

B4 pp 10c sharp
B4 mf 10c sharp

C#5 mf 8c sharp down to 8c flat
C#5 ff 12c sharp

F5 mf 6c sharp

G5 ff 6c flat

-----------------------------

GOS Cellos SusRich LEG (4 velocity layers: pp mp mf ff)

C3 mp 8c flat rising to 6c sharp
C3 ff 6c sharp

C#3 mp 6c sharp

D3 mf 10c sharp
D3 ff 12c sharp

Eb3 mp fluctuating up to 8c sharp down to 10c flat
Eb3 ff 7c sharp lowering

E3 mp 15c flat rising, lowering
E3 mf 10c flat rising
E3 ff 12c sharp

F3 mf 12c flat rising
F3 ff 8c sharp rising then lowering

F#3 ff 6c flat rising to 10c sharp then tuning

G3 ff 7c sharp fluctuating

Bb3 mp 9c flat
Bb3 mf 8c sharp lowering to 10c flat

B3 mf 8c sharp rising

C4 mp in tune rising to 10c sharp
C4 mf in tune lowering to 10c flat

Eb4 mp 10c sharp to 2c flat
Eb4 ff 7c sharp tuning

F#4 mf 10c sharp
F#4 ff 8c sharp tuning then rising 10c sharp

G4 mf 8c sharp rising to 20c sharp (!)
G4 ff 8c sharp tuning

Ab4 mp 4c sharp rising to 10c

A4 mp 6c flat rising to 10c sharp

Bb4 mp 6c flat tuning
Bb4 ff 8c flat

C#5 ff 10c sharp

D5 ff tuned lowering to 20c flat

Eb5 mf 10c flat
Eb5 ff 6c sharp

E5 ff 10c sharp

G5 mp 10c flat
G5 mf 9c flat
G5 ff 3c flat fluctuating widely

Ab5 mp 10c flat

Bb5 mf 7c flat
Bb5 ff 6c sharp lowering to 5c flat

--------------------
I have more, if there is interest, all done by listening and watching a tuner reading, so they are approximations -- but correcting for these makes an instrument tune much better to other instruments.

Guglielmo

[Haydn]

GOS was tuned and tuned and tuned and retuned multiple times through the updates. Unfortunately, Giga 2.5 (and earlier) had the notorious unity sample bug which had a tendency to screw up tuning. I know that Tom lost quite a few hairs because of this issue!!

[Jeannot Welter]

Guglielmo,

Which software are you using to check the tuning?

JW.

[Garritan]

Gugli

Something is strange here. The GOS library has been on the market for over three years and the instruments were meticulously tuned and tested. Some of the early beta versions needed tuning but the released versions did not have the problems you report (I trust you have a recent version).

We wil double check again to make sure. For some reason, it seems the tuning values in Giga may have been lost when you did your testing. When we did the tuning, it was done at the sample level in Giga 2+. The tuning was not a destructive edit but done within the Giga programming. If you converted these programs to wav or used them in another program, the tuning values may have been lost or compromised. When other software samplers came on the market they did not always convert the tuning values in Giga. If you are testinging from Giga 3 then I hope GS3 reads the tuning values from the previous version. We'll check into this.

Gary Garritan

[Tom Hopkins]

Gugliel,

I'm curious, which sampler are you using with GOS? Are you using GigaStudio 2.5, 3.0 or a conversion to another sample format? I ask because a great deal of time was spent 3 or 4 years ago adjusting intonation region-by-region with custom MIDI test files and using Auto-tune as a reference for reading values. These values were then transfered to the regions at the sample level within GigaStudio. All intonation values are the sum of these plus the overall values placed at the instrument level (if any). The dual location of these values can cause problems with translations to other formats, for instance. If, on the other hand, you are using the new GS 3.0 then we might need to see if there is a problem with the new version reading tuning values correctly. If you are using the native GS 2.5 format, another possibility would be our using different software for analyzing the tuning of the samples. We have found that different software (and even the same software in different modes) can give different values. As I said, we used Auto-tune during development.

Tom

[gugliel]

Gary, Tom, thanks for your response -- perhaps it is indeed an equipment change that caused notes not quite in tune, or I'm doing something wrong. That would be a pleasant surprise -- or maybe this is an undocumented feature of the 'Maestro Tools', to tune instruments? (Hope not, the manual says: "GOS is in no way dependent upon Maestro Tools")

All these recent pitch evaluations use my 2001-copyright GOS; neither of the two updates (2001, 2003) I have received has changed these particular files. And, there is vibrato involved, which makes precise tuning more difficult (not much on the low c, thank you)

I have been using Gigastudio 3 while doing these tests. Did not calibrate the tuner, though I did cross check. You can hear the fluctuations in the D3 and G3 pretty easily.

And, furthermore, despite the many variances listed, GOS is actually BETTER than the other two string libraries I own: the strings from Advanced Orchestra and the VSL Horizons Solo Strings. AO ranges up to 24 c sharp (Eb3, sus f leg) and VSL 24 c sharp (F#4 ff, VC_mV_sus) to 18c flat (G#4 ff, VC_mV_sus).

I just got an old copy of gigastudio 2.5 running again and checked, and the result is the same.

An example GOS_susV_samples.mp3 is here:

http://mysite.verizon.net/guglielmo/GOS_susV_samples.mp3

Contains 4 notes: C3 pp, D3 ff, G3 ff and C#5 ff. The C3 is better, reviewing, than I had it listed; the D3 and G3 perhaps worse.

If there is any solution for this it would certainly be welcome. I experimented with recording all the pitch changes and reversing them -- but that eliminates expression, doesn't work at all well!

While writing this lengthy note, I also recorded some sick-sounding thirds using the D3 and G3 plus a correctly tuned cello-with-vibrato sample from a Kurzweil synth:

http://mysite.verizon.net/guglielmo/GOS_susV+K26_thirds.mp3

It was this kind of result that got me looking at tuning!

[gugliel]

Update -- the gigastudio 3 seems to correctly handle fine tune changes programmed for gigastudio 2; at least, they show up in the editor correctly.