Garritan Instruments for Finale

Included with Finale is an integrated collection of instrument sounds from Garritan Personal Orchestra (also known as GPO) and other Garritan libraries. These instruments are professionally recorded sound samples designed to offer the highest quality playback.

Noteman says: For the best experience in using a standalone Garritan library with Finale, see Setting up Garritan sound libraries in Finale in our Knowledge Base. (These steps are not necessary for the included Garritan Instruments for Finale,)

Whenever you start a new document or add an instrument to your score with the Score Manager, Finale loads the included Garritan sounds automatically (so long as Play Finale Through VST is checked under the MIDI/Audio menu). Finale does this using Sound Maps, which link each instrument with the most appropriate Garritan sound. Sound Maps are ranked in order of priority in the Sound Map Priority dialog box. All sound assignments can be viewed and individually edited in the Score Manager.

Tip: See Garritan and Human Playback Tutorial for detailed guidance on using Garritan Instruments for Finale and the full version of GPO along side Finale.

Choosing the appropriate Garritan sound (Player vs. Solo instruments)

The Player ("Plr") designation in a Garritan instrument name indicates that it has been designed exclusively for use in an ensemble setting. These Player instruments are derived from the corresponding "Solo" instrument and constructed so that none of the three numbered Player instruments have any samples in common with one another. Each Player instrument has been mapped starting with a different note (e.g. C, C#, D) and uses every third sample in the mapping. This allows all three instruments to be applied to unison ensemble lines without having common samples for any given pitch. For their designed function, these instruments work well together, despite the samples sometimes sounding less than ideal if played by themselves.

Only the "Solo" instruments are intended to be used in a solo context. Also, the "Solo" instrument should never be used along side any of the "Plr" instruments if a unison occurs in the score. Again, this is because the "Plr" instruments all have samples in common with the "Solo" instrument from which they are derived, causing phasing problems.

Adding keyswitches as expressions

When using Garritan instruments for playback, you can add a keyswitch at any point to change the instrument sound, for example, from arco to pizzicato. A keyswitch is simply a regular note outside the playable range of the instrument that is programmed to trigger this change. For a list of keyswitch mappings, see Garritan Instruments for Finale Instrument Details.

If Human Playback is enabled, text such as arco and pizz is interpreted and keyswitches are triggered automatically. If you are not using Human Playback, choose from a list of keyswitch expressions available by default in the Expression Selection dialog box to add these effects.

You can also assign a Keyswitch to an expression manually by defining the expression to send a MIDI Note On message at the pitch of a keyswitch. By doing this, you can invoke a keyswitch by simply adding the expression defined accordingly (a “pizz” text expression would change the playback to a pizzicato sound). Remember, keyswitches are a feature of Garritan instruments, and will not apply to other playback devices.