RE-POST: Yet another ensemble building question

[luisto]

Hi! I've recently started using GPO to learn about orchestration from scratch. I read the documentation and the tutorials for building ensembles with the different patches. However, now that I'm trying to build an ensemble for the first time, I'm confused. I just got a score that lists the following:

- 8 first violins
- 8 second violins
- 5 violas
- 5 cellos
- 5 basses

How am I supposed to build two 8-violin sections? If I understand correctly, I only have 12 solo/player violins. I also have 10- and 12-player string section instruments. So, what should I do?

1. Create two 6-violin sections with my 12 violins?
2. Combine the 10/12 player instruments with the solo/player instruments (e.g. put Vln 1 Lush with a couple of Plr instruments and create a pseudo 14-piece section) and put more than 8 violins in each section?
3. Do something else? (I've read about pitch-shifting and other stuff here in the forum, for example)

Any advice would be appreciated. Thanks!

Luis

P.S.: I posted this originally on the "Tips & Tricks" forum, I guess I posted to the wrong one :(

[qccowboy]

I love the idea of ensemble building, and it works in certain types of music. however, if you have switches from pizz to arco occurring throughut the piece, it gets really tedious to deal with, and also it can nearly double the amount of samples you need to load (all staves with non-KS samples need to have both pizz adn arco assigned to them).

however, this complaint aside.. the end result is stunning! I recently made a recording of one of my string pieces this way. it was laborious and at times tedious, but it was quite beautiful! Sounds just like a real string orchestra made up of separate musicians.

[luisto]

How did you handle the number of players in your piece? My challenge is figuring out how to use GPO to fulfill the number of players suggested in my score, in this case, 8 1st violins and 8 2nd violins...:confused:

[cptexas]

I noticed you mentioned there are 12 solo violins. Keep in mind that you cannot layer a solo instrument with it's plr instrument. Phasing should result. Stick to the plr instruments when building a section, unless you use the pitch shifting thing. Theoredically you could create your 5 piece viola section with the pitch shifting thing but vibrato speeds are going to be all over the place and keyswitches will be a pain. GPOA was origionally planned as GOS2, so the GPOA strings should be stunning. From what I hear GPOA should have the ability to enseamble build even large string sections from individual players.

In the mean time, this is what I do. First look at the style of music you plan on writing. Baroque-sounding music will usually have smaller string sections, and work great with GPO enseamble building. Generally, I use the enseamble patches with solo patches layered. I layer two solo violins to the first violin section, one violin for the second violin section, one viola to the viola section, two cellos to the cello section, and the bass to the bass section. There are some excelent tutuorials on enseamble building. Here are some:
http://www.garritan.com/tutorial/StringEnsembleBuildingTutorial.html
http://www.garritan.com/tutorial/MasterClass_Strings.html
Dan Kury (DPDan on the forum) is also very knowledgeable in this area.

-Chris