Working with GPO in Finale 2007

After reading the manual, I still have some general questions about working with GPO, or any other advanced soundfont library for that matter, in Finale.

My first question is how much tweaking actually needs to be done in order to make for a realistic performance? If my understanding is correct, the more you meticulously prepare your score in Finale with articulations, slurring, dynamics, etc, human playback with automatically work with GPO to render a realistic sounding performance. However, I do not find the end result that convincing. Actually I find human playback in Finale 2005 to be more satisfying, which means I must be doing something wrong somewhere.

My next question concerns the different patch samples: How can you move from one GPO patch to another? Tremelos and other things were easier to have executed in earlier versions of Finale it seems. I have noticed that in some libraries (Eastwest or maybe the full set of GPO), that there are different patches depending on the dynamic level, type of attack, playing style, etc). Do you have to select and move between these patches yourself or does human playback automatically do that for you? How is this best done? What does KS mean in the string samples (ie. violin KS)?

Finally, How does reverb work in the master selector in mixer? Whenever I try to tinker with the reverb in the master in the mixer, nothing happens. Also, as I try to sustain the note lengths in kontakt (as I'm editing an instrument), it doesn't seem to be transfered to actual performance. Are these settings saved just for the current composition, or are they applied to the master samples?

I would appreciate any insight any of our experienced users could offer. I just find it disappointing how my woodwind piece sounds better in Finale2005 with the usual soundfonts as opposed to using GPO in Finale 2007.

Maybe it would be of interest to have a subforum on using advanced soundfonts with notation programs. That way everything related to this topic could be in one location. I tried to find past postings on this site concerning GPO and Finale, etc, but often they were scattered around the site and not that easy to find. There could be treads about using GPO with Finale, another one with GPO and Sibelius, one for Eastwest, etc. Just an idea.

Thanks for your help!

how much tweaking actually needs to be done in order to make for a realistic performance?

The answer to this is a little difficult because, while it's true that in order to get a realistic rendering, you need to be extremely precise and meticulous with your markings, you're not actually always marking it the way you would for real players. What I ended up doing was creating two scores; one was notated and marked the way it would be necessary for real performers, and then a second one for the GPO recording. This second one would end up with a whole crapload of dynamics markings, articulations especially and even slurring that would not be necessary (or even make any sense) for a live performer.

Because you're working with a computer program here, you need to learn to communicate what you want in a way that the program best understands. I could sit here and give a whole bunch of tips on the subject, but ultimately the best way to go about this is to just play around with your markings and learn how GPO responds to them - it won't take long to get it sounding realistic.

How can you move from one GPO patch to another?

This one you actually answered right within your question, so I'll help you out by giving you a brief definition of KS patches. KS stands for "Key-Switch", which basically means that outisde of the range of the actual instrument, there'll be a few keys set aside which, instead of doing nothing like they do in the standard patch, will execute a switch to a specific different playing style (tremolo, pizzicato, etc.).

If you load up one of these KS patches and open up the actual player, you need only shift the octaves a bit and you can see the keys which have these effects. They'll be in a different colour. The easiest way to use these is to figure out which key does what and then jot that down somewhere (although I was pretty sure it was in the full GPO's manual...) and then whenever you know your instrument's part is going to have multiple playing styles, load up the KS patch and then whenever you need to switch between arco and pizzicato for example, you just put the appropriate KS note between the arco and pizz sections. Note that the KS notes are often WAY outside the standard range (to keep from being confusing) so you may need to change the clef briefly to make the note input practical and avoid lots of ledger lines.

This side-effect of using KS switches in Finale is one of the main reasons I make two scores (one for actual printing and one for the recording).

How does reverb work in the master selector in mixer?

Basically put, it doesn't. The reverb in the main mixer window is only meant to affect the standard Finale softsynth - it has no effect on the GPO patches. As soon as you start using the GPO sounds, you need to get your reverb from the much more advanced and realistic "Ambience Reverb" plugin which comes with GPO.

To access this, go to your MIDI menu and go to "Native Instruments VST Setup..." From there, you'll see the pull-down menus for all your active instances of Finale GPO and right below those you'll see a little checkbox with "Ambience Reverb" and an "Edit" button beside it.

To activate and use Ambience Reverb, check the little box and click "Edit". When you do that, the funky little plugin window comes up and you can play around with all the settings to get your ideal reverb setup. Assuming, however, that you don't know exactly what effect increasing the decay diffusion or setting treble damping to 19% has, you can direct your attention to the top left of the window where you'll see a handy "Presets" pull-down which will give you a variety of different settings that are already prepared. So play around with those and see which fits best and then you're good to go!

I hope that answers your questions, but if it doesn't, what I can do is offer to work through the score with you myself. So you send me a copy and we'll set up some time and then over MSN (or some messenger) I'll help your through what *I* would do with the score to get the most realistic possible output.

To give you an example, HERE'S a link to a woodwind quintet (I understood yours was also a woodwind piece?) of my own, rendered entirely through GPO.

Good luck!