GPO quality?

[Felixissimo]

Hi,

Some time ago I mentioned that I was writing an opera for a school project. My plan was to use GPO in combination with recordings of real singers. Since the result will most likely be heard public I want it to sound, well, "good". As in "like a real orchestra". I know it's probably impossible to create sounds just as good as the real thing with computers but I've taken a listen to Richard Birdsall's "Knights & Magic", and well, wow. The problem is that I'm not exactly a genius in the field of, you know, the whole audio engineering thing.

As I see it I have two options:
1. Learn how to do it (maybe not as good as Knights & Magic but still good) (I've got Sonar 7 PE to work with)
2. Get someone to do it for me (put that'll cost me right? If so, what kind of money are we talking about?)

Option 2 is obviously the easiest, but I don't feel like blowing huge dollars one that so my question is really if I can learn enough by myself in order to go with option 1?

[robh]

I think most here would agree that DPDAN would be the best person to contact for both options.

The mixes I have heard from him have been really good.

Rob

[rbowser-]

Felixissimo! Your post takes me by surprise. You've been an active member here for some time - I was thinking you must be fairly proficient with using GPO!

Quite a lot on your mind about this big project - You Do need to get it organized into something which is practical, though no matter how you go about it, it of course will be a tremendous amount of work.

Your subject line seems to be asking one question, and your post asks another - "GPO quality?"---I think you're asking a general question about whether or not GPO is able to produce acceptable music for a live production. Is that what you meant? - If so - where have You been?! LOL!---How about the L.A. Ballet Company's production of "The Nutcracker" utilizing GPO, and U2 touring with GPO in their sound arsenal, - many other examples I'm sure, including my own "Dorian Gray" which was performed live to GPO driven tracks.

I'm trying to stick with your basic questions - I can't resist a side observation - "good, as in like a real orchestra"---What a giant can of worms that opens. We all must surely know by now that there is and will always be a limitation to how totally believably electronically produced music can replace live bands/orchestras. I wish we could all just realize and accept that music produced this way can have its own beauty and power which is different from the playing of acoustic instruments but that the difference is to be enjoyed. Using samples to emulate a live orchestra will always be an abstraction, a simplification of "the real thing." And that's fine.

--Probably more apropos to that topic is Gary Garritan's often repeated point that samples are meant to help composers and musicians in their creative process, but aren't intended to replace the need for musicians playing traditional instruments.

Back to your most urgent point - I remember you posting about the opera you're writing for a school project. I assumed this meant you were sufficiently confident to do the necessary GPO work - You are being very modest and insecure about your ability to use the library - have you sat down and actually tried yet? - How did the idea for the project come up if you didn't feel at least somewhat capable of actually producing the music?

I think it's VITAL that we all set projects up for ourselves which push us beyond what we think our limits are. If I stuck with only doing what I already know how to do, I wouldn't ever do Anything. I am constantly treading into unknown territory when I work on music - I can't allow myself to think, "OH I need more training" or "OH I need more experience." No no, - the "training" and experience come from the Doing.

So - I'm suggesting that you're more capable of producing your opera's music than you think you are. And don't forget you have this Forum to run test recordings by - We'll help you with tips for improvements.

The second option--to hire someone? Oh my - Yes, no matter who you hired it would be very expensive. How could anyone be expected to do that kind of major work without being paid an appropriate hourly rate? And you surely know that your project will take hundreds of hours to produce. Do you have a spare $4,000 to $10,000 for this?

Roll your sleeves up, my young friend. Make the leap from where you currently are in your confidence into the Zone where the act of creation leaves no room for self doubt.

You can do it. You had a great idea for a project - Now it's time to produce!

Go to work.

Randy

[Styxx]

Rob beat me to it. DPDAN has quite a gift. If you decide on number 2 ...... DPDAN!

[Felixissimo]

Oopsy, I was obviously unclear in my post. ~| I never meant to imply that the quality of GPO could be questioned, Me scusi, mye ingelish is, how you say? Not zo good. :p
But seriously, what I really was trying to understand was if I (as a mortal) could learn to master the samples by my own. And how good the quality of the product would sound in my hands after I had my way with it, or something like that ~|

Randy, since you are so very optimistic (and since I'm broke :eek:) I might just give it a chance! :) My composing hobby have so far been writing the music in Finale and then pretty much just exporting it as audio and the settleing with that. Therefore I'm not that familliar to the whole high/lowfilterEQanalysisaudiobuscc1MIDIPIDItweakypeakyt hingie going on, which is what I believe is requiered for this project .:p

In other words, you all have to be prepared for a whole bunch of newbie questions about audio mastering! Hihi ~|

Thanks a lot to y'all! )(~

[Raymond62]

I don't want to question the quality of the GPO instruments and having listened in the very past to some demo's - great in sound and composition - I decided to purchase GPO.

Much. much later I found out that some of those really great sounding demo's were made with GOS, not GPO alone. OK, even with GOS it was quite a "maestro- like" thing to make it sound so good, but one cannot compare the bare GPO with the quality of the GOS sounds.

... and then we are all waiting for ... we all know.... and then I will re-render all my symphonic works.

I am honest enough to say that I will never reach the level of DPDAN, but a new "GPOS" will set me in the right direction.

Raymond

[Garritan]

Much. much later I found out that some of those really great sounding demo's were made with GOS, not GPO alone. OK, even with GOS it was quite a "maestro- like" thing to make it sound so good, but one cannot compare the bare GPO with the quality of the GOS sounds. As a note of clarification, only a very few of the Listening Room demos used any GOS. DPDan has used GOS on occasion, but I am not aware of others. GOS is good for the special FX and less than common articulations. For GOS, one must have GigaStudio and almost everyone here uses GPO in Kontakt. GOS was discontinued 4 years ago. The vast majority of the fabulous demos people have done ( thousands of them) use only GPO strings.

There is a misconception that GOS sound quality is somehow better. All the GPO section strings come directly from GOS. They are the identical samples but in Kontakt format, just fewer samples and articulations.

Best,

Gary

[DPDAN]

Thanks Gary for helping here,
Danial,
Randy said you can always post your work here and we can give positive, but genuine advice on things to fix. The participation at this forum is so great!

I am confident that every single sound in Knights and Magic are from GPO, the only thing I believe is the piano which might have been from JABB because I like it's sound better. The only thing used from GOS was the background noise... :)
I'm busted :p
OK the applause was from church :)

Does anyone else get major goosebumps right after the tubular bells and the big retard....? That is some great writing!
Has anyone heard from Richard B.?
Dan

[rbowser-]

Hello again, Danial

I really think you'll do just fine if you put your mind to it. The first place to start getting help on the "...high/lowfilterEQanalysisaudiobuscc1MIDIPIDItweakypeakyt hingie..." is the myriad of sticky posts and tutes all over this Forum. You also have a big head start since you're already proficient at using Finale.

And I'm glad to see you here again making some clarifications - because you gotta see how your subject line was kind of an alarm bell since it sounds negative. I imagine that's one reason Gary came to see what the thread was about.

I'm also very glad to see you clear up the misunderstanding about the posted demos, Gary - I don't understand where this idea came up that the strings were often from GOS in the demos. ALSO it's great that you explained how the GPO strings are actually from GOS, just stripped down a bit and with fewer articulations.

Randy

[Raymond62]

As a note of clarification, only a very few of the Listening Room demos used any GOS.

Some years ago when the list of demo's was much longer, I am speaking off.
At that time I wasn't aware of such thing as the Listening Room. I only saw that list of demo's with full and small orchestral works and I wasn't aware of the difference between GOS and GPO..... if there was a difference in sound then it had to be the "mastership" of the maker.

Raymond

[karvasika]

There is a misconception that GOS sound quality is somehow better. All the GPO section strings come directly from GOS. They are the identical samples but in Kontakt format, just fewer samples and articulations.

Really?!! That's good to know... I always somehow assumed GPO was a "Lite"-version of the original GOS.

[LFO]

Hello Danial,
I totally understand where you are coming from regarding getting the best sound from GPO you can get. As already described few times, GPO is very capable of creating terrific sounding music.

But how to get there?

It is like eating an elephant, one bite at a time. :)

So what bite to take? If I were you, the first thing I would do is learn about how to manipulate GPO using MIDI CC controls, sustain pedal, etc. I would play around with the various controls as that is the only way you will really learn what they do.

Next step, I'd learn how Finale integrates with GPO. This means how to use articulations to maximize the potential of human playback, etc.

Next step is to start tweaking the data to improve how your music sounds. This is the step when you send us soundbytes and questions.

Once you have everything in Finale and the parts all tweaked, then worry about EQ and reverb. For my taste, they are inter-related. You will find tutorials on each here on the website.

Now you are done!

Best of luck,

Kevin

[Jeff Turner]

Danial,

I'd suggest working in Finale, then exporting the midi file into a sequencer and tweaking from there. If you choose to do the entire project in Finale, learn to use the midi tool and if possible upgrade to Finale 2010. In 2010 you have the option to bring in other audio processing programs (i.e., different reverb, EQ, filters...).

And listen to your audio on various speaker combinations: computer speakers, headphones, monitors.

JT

[Raymond62]

There is a misconception that GOS sound quality is somehow better. All the GPO section strings come directly from GOS. They are the identical samples but in Kontakt format, just fewer samples and articulations.

Best,

Gary


Must have been a marketing decision. Why downgrading a Rolls Royce to ....? Typical....

Raymond

[rbowser-]

Must have been a marketing decision. Why downgrading a Rolls Royce to ....? Typical....

Raymond
Hi, Raymond - I don't intend the following to berate you, I just felt moved to come on this thread again because your new post is puzzling to me.

Gary can obviously quite well speak for himself, but he's made it clear many times, like in the letter of greeting which came in the original packaging for GPO - that his mission in developing GPO was to put an affordable virtual orchestra into the hands of musicians. This isn't my interpretation of Gary's intentions with GPO, I'm accurately paraphrasing what he's said many times.

Libraries of orchestral instruments existed before GPO, but they were beyond the budget of many composers/musicians. His own GOS, a strings-only library, cost $1,400. That made it available to professionals who were already accustomed to paying that kind of price for their samples.

But then Gary developed GPO, which as we all know, includes samples of the entire orchestral family (PLUS some, Organs, Pianos, extended Percussion) - and he made it available for the astonishing and record-breaking low price of under $200.

So I would say that developing GPO was a "marketing decision," to use your phrase, motivated by a very sincere desire to place a full orchestra into the computer of as many composers as possible.

But to think of GPO as a "downgrade" GOS seems to really miss the point, and to not even be any kind of appropriate description since the two programs did two very different things - GOS providing a large selection of strings-only samples, GPO providing the basic essentials of a string library PLUS every other instrument a composer needs.

There - I feel better. I may have imagined the sarcasm I thought I heard in your post, Raymond. But I wanted to answer you in this conversation. Have a wonderful day.

Randy

[Garritan]

Must have been a marketing decision.It was a Personnel decision rather than Marketing. Tom was feeling frisky and needed something to do.

Why downgrading a Rolls Royce to ....? I considered it an upgrade actually - offering something much better. Randy accurately stated it: "put an affordable virtual orchestra into the hands of musicians".

Rolls Royce? Thanks for the compliment. This story may be on point....
An MG Midget pulled alongside a Rolls-Royce at a traffic light. “Do you have a car phone?” its driver asked the guy in the Rolls.

“Of course I do,” replied the haughty deluxe-car driver.
“Well, do you have a fax machine?”

The driver in the Rolls sighed. “I have that too.”
“Then do you have a double bed in the back?” the Midget driver wanted to know.

Ashen-faced, the Rolls driver sped off. That afternoon, he had a mechanic install a double bed in his auto.

A week later, the Rolls driver passes the same MG Midget, which is parked on the side of the road–back windows fogged up and steam pouring out. The arrogant driver pulls over, gets out of the Rolls and bangs on the Midget’s back window until the driver sticks his head out. “I want you to know that I had a double bed installed,” brags the Rolls driver.

The Midget driver is unimpressed. “You got me out of the shower to tell me that?”

Typical.... Pardon me. Could you please pass the Grey Poupon? ;)

Best,

Gary

[Raymond62]

Pardon me. Could you please pass the Grey Poupon? ;)Gary

This one?

http://cagle.msnbc.com/working/050922/margulies.gif

Raymond

[Garritan]

This one?

http://cagle.msnbc.com/working/050922/margulies.gif

RaymondYes, now you understand ;) Musicians need help and as Randy aptly put it, our goal is to "put an affordable virtual orchestra into the hands of musicians" and not the once-typical Rolls Royce/Grey Poupon variety.


http://cagle.msnbc.com/working/050922/margulies.gif