Finale 2008 with new Garritan sounds - first impressions

[qccowboy]

well, I FINALLY got it work (and no pun was intended there)

however, the Garritan choral sounds as included with Finale are not as practical as I would have liked. for example, the tenor "ahh" sounds cut off at a high F, which is MUCH too soon for any choral tenor section. if teh high A above that had been the cut-off, I might have understood, but F is a baritone note.

<sigh> there goes my dream of a decent demo of my missa brevis.

I have to say that I find the KP2 MUCH more complicated to get a grip on than the KP1. It might perform better, but it REALLY needs some sort of easy step-by-step user's manual for "getting you started". there are an awful lot of knobs and things that are all Greek to me.

at least I can get Finale to play back my 2nd symphony now, which Fin'07 could not.

well, more later as I explore.

[Samantha Penigar]

Cowboy did you do the last KP2 upgrade in 07c? Did you do all the copying and pasting like the rest of us? Did you use the HP fix-it file posted here? I'm asking because I want to know did you have to do anything prior to installing the upgrade.

I'want get my order until Friday, and I ordered early the first morning of MM's official announcement.

[C J Pro]

The basics of Kontakt Player 2 are the several main panes of the window (assuming its just like the standalone KP2 player that I downloaded). On the top, you have a few basic buttons and some activity monitors. The buttons in the top row are all toggle buttons. One toggles the display of the keyboard, one toggles the display of the browser (the pane on the left), one toggles the output panel, and one toggles the MasterKontrol panel (which offers a metronome, the master tuning knob, and a reference tone, just incase you actually need those).

On the left, you have the browser. It will list the libraries you have installed, give you control over the Kontakt engine (incase it crashes), and allow you to tie different knobs to MIDI Controllers.

On the right, you have the main portion of the program, the multi display. Each multi can hold 16 instruments, and there are 4 multis. This means you can have up to 64 intruments loaded into Kontakt Player 2. Each instruments display is rather straight foreward, mimicing the display of each instrument in Kompakt. You have a solo button, a mute button, a tuning knob, a panning slider, a volume slider, volume meters, a mod wheel knob (for expression and volume), and several knobs that differ between instruments. The pitchbend allows you to control how far the pitchbend wheel can bend a note. Also, var 1 and var 2 help make the instruments sound a little bit more human.

You might also notice that there is an AUX button. This is a more advanced topic and I recommend getting yourself used to Kontakt Player 2 first. Also, the outputs panel is straightforeward. For the most part, you want to modify the output channels on the left. The grey ones on the right are the auxilary sends (which ties into that AUX button). The blue channels are usually two stereo outputs and one 5.1 surround output. Anyways, if Show Inserts is toggled, you will see 4 inserts above each output. I'm guessing you will be using st. 1 as your output. If you click Edit Effect and then click on one of those inserts/effects, you will notice another panel pop up (if you clicked one that was not empty). This will allow you to modify the output sound, like reverberation or equalization. There is probably enough information I could tell you about Kontakt Player 2 to fill up a website, but for now, that much should get you started. If it's still too complex, feel free to ask.

[qccowboy]

no, actually, I did the update for the KP2 today before installing Finale'08.

The KP2 seems to be handling the instruments very well.
I'm pretty sure I'm missing something however.

The new features I've been able to play with in Fin'08 are WONDERFUL. Like the new way of selecting and copying. VERY efficient.

Finding all the OLD things I was used to is a bit tedious, however. I'd like a tutorial on how things are different between the two versions.

The new selection tool is just brilliant, also.

And of course, being able to mix GPO and other Garritan sounds with the soft synths is quite nice, along with all the new sounds included with Finale Sounds.

[Nickie Fønshauge]

I have to say that I find the KP2 MUCH more complicated to get a grip on than the KP1. It might perform better, but it REALLY needs some sort of easy step-by-step user's manual for "getting you started". there are an awful lot of knobs and things that are all Greek to me.
Michel, did you take a look at the .pdf manual, installed by the updater in GPO Library\Documentation. It has a section about KP2.

[qccowboy]

Michel, did you take a look at the .pdf manual, installed by the updater in GPO Library\Documentation. It has a section about KP2.

no, thank-you Nickie, that is my next stop. I suspected there might be a PDF hidden away somewhere.

[Jeff Turner]

QCowboy,

What are your impressions of the new user manual? It's not a PDF, is it?

Make sure you check out the "What's New in Finale 2008". It'll detail all of the changes as well as having a chart to refer to to help you learn where things have been moved as a result of the tool merges, etc...

And be sure to play with Robert Piechaud's new ScoreMerger. It's really amazing.

Jeff

[qccowboy]

what I AM having trouble with is getting Finale 2008 to recognize that I have full version GPO installed.

I can load the instruments by hand right into the KP2, but from the Wizard, I can't seem to load the instruments automatically.

[Samantha Penigar]

Ah-o? What? Sounds like more copying and pasting!

[qccowboy]

oh, and I just used the score merger function to bring together 3 movements of a full symphony into one single file... and it worked like a charm! linked parts and all (at least, I THINK it did, I haven't had time to go through all the parts yet)

I'm finding that with KP2 some of the instruments are a bit louder than they should be (or than they WERE with KP1).

So there may be a bit of re-adjusting to do with the new version of the player for scores created in preceding versions and optimized for them.

[KeithW]

Just out of curiosity- what is the dot level release of K2P that comes with Finale 2008?

Thanks!

Keith W.

(Mine won't be here for another week...)

[qccowboy]

I'm afraid I don't know what it is you want to know...
if I click on the Finale edition player it says version 2.2.2.001

[qccowboy]

my main criticism is the rather limited range of the voice samples. I DO hope that full "Garritan Choirs" will have more realistic ranges. For example, "sopranos" can't go below an E (if I'm recalling corrrectly), and tenors can't go above an F, which is silly.

I'm accepting this as a "preview" version of Garritan choral sounds, however, so it's nothing major. But having in the past worked with one of the finest choirs in Canada, I DO hope I'll be able to expect at LEAST the same ranges with a synthetic choir as I could from 300 fine living (and in most cases) breathing singers?

[qccowboy]

I found the missing gpofull2instrument.txt file I needed. I had downloaded it from somewhere here on the forum a few weeks ago. At first I thought I was going to use it with Finale 2007, but they immediately announced Finale 2008, so I thought I'd wait.

just moving that file (and the equivalent one for J&BB) into the Finale VST folder made everything perfect.

[Samantha Penigar]

I found the missing gpofull2instrument.txt file I needed. I had downloaded it from somewhere here on the forum a few weeks ago. At first I thought I was going to use it with Finale 2007, but they immediately announced Finale 2008, so I thought I'd wait.

just moving that file (and the equivalent one for J&BB) into the Finale VST folder made everything perfect.

Is gpofull2instrument.txt different from gpo2instrument.txt?

[qccowboy]

Is gpofull2instrument.txt different from gpo2instrument.txt?

I believe the latter is for the Finale-edition sounds, while the former is for full-version GPO.

[Samantha Penigar]

I am finding that the GPO strings are not functioning properly in Finale 2007 with the KP2 update. If I use the tremolo in one measure then the KS stings loaded into the player are chaned in the player to tremolo strngs, or pizz.

[qccowboy]

here's a quickie sample of Finale 2008 playing full-version GPO Violins KS, with a couple of different articulations.

http://www.dosblanc.ca/music/examples/violin_test.mp3

GPO violins were loaded from the set-up wizard, and are played back via KP2.


I've found that KP2 requires slightly higher volume than the older KontactPlayer did... so in the mixer this is set to around 75, rather than the 60-65 I used to sue.

[Samantha Penigar]

Am I to understand this is the GPO strings that comes with the Finale bundle using KP2?

[Samantha Penigar]

Oh yes if it is then they sound brilliang and clear. On the mixer/instrument list settings. You have them set between 60 - 65. This example sounds crystal clear.

[Michael_uk]

I found the missing gpofull2instrument.txt file I needed. I had downloaded it from somewhere here on the forum a few weeks ago. At first I thought I was going to use it with Finale 2007, but they immediately announced Finale 2008, so I thought I'd wait.

just moving that file (and the equivalent one for J&BB) into the Finale VST folder made everything perfect.
Michel,

I have the gpofull2instrument.txt but I can't find the JABB full .txt file for Finale.

Where did you find your jabb .txt file?

Thanks.

[qccowboy]

Michel,

I have the gpofull2instrument.txt but I can't find the JABB full .txt file for Finale.

Where did you find your jabb .txt file?

Thanks.

I believe it's called GarritanJazzinstrument-K2.txt

I think I got it right here on the Garritan forum.

[Michael_uk]

I believe it's called GarritanJazzinstrument-K2.txt

I think I got it right here on the Garritan forum.
I've searched for that file both here and on the MM site but can't find it.

Interstingly, full JABB appears to be working in Finale 08 with just the default GarritanJazzinstrument.txt that was placed there when I installed JABB.

Perhaps this is all it needs?

[qccowboy]

have you tried loading from the wizard instrumetns from full J&BB?

I could not until I put that file into the correct directory.

[Nickie Fønshauge]

Michel,

I have the gpofull2instrument.txt but I can't find the JABB full .txt file for Finale.

Where did you find your jabb .txt file?

Thanks.
http://www.northernsounds.com/forum/showpost.php?p=503133&postcount=10

[Michael_uk]

http://www.northernsounds.com/forum/showpost.php?p=503133&postcount=10
Thanks for the links Nickie. :)