The three violins’ vibrato is a touch overstated for my taste, and some may regret the absence of non-vibrato string performances.

Other new additions are freshly-squeezed solo strings and small sections of three violins, four violas, three cellos and two basses, all playing a selection of basic styles. That mega-opus was a true labour of love and it’s good to hear its instruments, now benefiting from loops, keyswitches, improved processing and full-range presentation, back in action again. These sections actually first came to light in Garritan Orchestral Strings, described in SOS’s May 2002 edition as “the most ambitious sampled string library ever undertaken”. The lower strings match the violins’ quality: I was impressed by the violas’ singing, transparent upper range and the rich, vibrant timbre of the cellos, and enjoyed using the library’s auto-legato and portamento functions to perform Bollywood-style string slides. Also included are harmonics, loose and tight col legno and pizzicato, Bartok ‘snap’ pizzicato, ricochets and effects such as atonal glissandi. The violins play vibrato sustains, sumptuous detachés and seven types of short note, highlights of which are a sweet, lyrical portato style and a brisk, agile sul tasto bowing ideally suited to rhythmic ostinatos. Recorded at New York’s Lincoln Center, their large sections (12 first violins, 10 second violins, 10 violas, eight cellos and seven double basses) sound bigger, lusher and less synthetic than their antecedents. The ‘better strings’ demanded by long-time GPO users have duly been delivered. If you want to dig deeper, check out the SOS reviews of the original library and GPO 4 update, published in October 2004 and June 2010 respectively.

In this review we’ll concentrate on GPO 5’s new material. Projects created with previous versions won’t load in GPO 5, so anyone wishing to revisit earlier work should keep their old versions installed. As well as incorporating GPO 4’s samples, this major upgrade adds much-requested additional strings, new choir sections, expanded Project SAM brass, two new grand pianos and a host of fresh features, resulting in a greatly expanded sample database of 11.6GB (installed size).Īs with its predecessor, the library runs exclusively on the Aria sound engine, which works stand-alone and as a VST, Audio Unit, AAX and RTAS plug-in on operating systems from Windows 7 and Mac OS 10.8 onwards. This approach proved durable, spawning several updates which have now culminated in the release of GPO 5. The latest incarnation of a long-running library introduces new instruments, articulations and enhancements.īack in 2004, Garritan Personal Orchestra provided a radical alternative to the massive symphonic sample libraries of the day by cramming every orchestral instrument under the sun into a supremely affordable package requiring a mere 2GB of disk space.

Garritan personal orchestra 5 pdf