On 18 Dec 2005, at 3:35 AM, Johannes Gebauer wrote:
On 18.12.2005 Darcy James Argue wrote:
Johannes,
Finale's Setup Wizard *does* let you choose the exact GPO
instrument you want.
Sure, but with numerous problems:
1) After I leave the wizard, Finale will actually load all those
instruments, which takes a long time if it is a large ensemble.
Not as long as having to load them all manually! Load, wait; load,
wait, load, wait; etc. At least they load all at once, and without
further input from you. You could go get a cup of coffee, or browse
the web for a few minutes.
However, I agree that Finale needs to offer more control about when
GPO instruments are loaded.
2) I have no way to influence the panning: For classical setups I
want the 2nd violins on the right, not on the inside left, to give
just one example. So I will have to come back to the instruments
regardless.
Same problem whether you load manually or with the wizard. At least
if you load using the setup wizard, you get *some* kind of panning by
default -- manually loaded instruments default to dead center.
3) My main problem is that if I choose two violins, I get Violino 1
and Violino 2, not Violino I and Violino II. I have not found any
way to change this, and it means I will have to re-edit them all
the time. Which is a large step backwards from how the wizard
worked for me before.
Yes, I understand the problem, but how long does that take to change?
4) I don't think there is a flexible way to have things like Basso,
Basso continuo etc appear as choices in the wizard. When I looked
at the GPOinstruments.txt file I could not see how I could edit it
in this way.
If there's a GPO instrument you don't normally use (perhaps one of
the organs, or even one of the non-KS cellos?) you could edit it. But
again, in large scores, changing the staff name and/or attributes for
a handful of staves is still *much* faster than loading an entire
orchestra one instrument at a time.
Trust me, from experience, it's *much* faster to use the Setup
Wizard to set up the GPO instruments for a full orchestral score
than it is to load each instrument individually. (Where you have
to wait for each instrument to load into RAM before the next one
loads, etc.)
I have to wait for each instrument to load into RAM anyway, after I
leave the wizard, which is definitely the time where I do not want
to wait. So I leave it until I actually need playback.
If you load GPO instruments manually, you have to use the Kontakt
Player interface (which is terrible) to load the first instrument.
Then wait. Then click the second slot, find the instrument you want
in the Kontakt Player, select it, and wait. And repeat, and repeat,
and repeat. It's *much* faster to have the Setup Wizard load all the
instruments at once -- the interface is far superior, and since you
aren't forced to sit there while each individual instrument loads.
If you manually load any nonpitched percussion instruments, you will
have to edit the channel in the Kontakt Player.
If you load more than 8 instruments, you need to use several Kontakt
player instances.
You will also need to edit the Finale channels in the instrument list.
You will have to manually set the panning for the entire orchestra,
instead of having a set of intelligent defaults to work with.
Bottom line -- it can take up to ten minutes to configure a full
orchestral score for GPO playback when loading instruments manually.
It takes about a minute to do the same work using the Setup Wizard.
Since you generally only work with smaller ensembles, and you require
more customization than the average user, I'm perfectly willing to
accept that the Setup Wizard might not be a good choice -- for *you*.
But anyone using who wants GPO playback for a full orchestra will
find the Setup Wizard invaluable.
I know there is space for user error, but I don't see this as a
problem once you know you have to load the notation instruments.
You could equally well forget to load the KS instruments in the
wizard, and not know until you hear them, no?
There is a visible difference between KS and non-KS instruments --
they have different names. The non-notation instruments have exactly
the same names as the notation instruments, so it's easy to load the
wrong one without realizing it.
On the other hand, if you are using a substitute instrument for
GPO playback (like organ instead of voice, for instance), it's
trivially easy to make a staff name change after the fact.
Except that Organ will create three staff systems and mess up your
grouping. Good example, Darcy.
Oh come on. It's trivially easy to just delete the extra staves, and
then the other staves respace automatically. Or if this is really
such a big deal, pick a different instrument to substitute for voice
-- solo flute, say.
In fact, when I start a score I don't even know whether I will ever
play it back, let alone use GPO (which will choke with a full
orchestra anyway on my computer, and take ages to load in every
session, at least when I need playback.
Well then clearly, for *you*, using GPO instruments in the Setup
Wizard isn't the way to go! But for someone who definitely wants and
needs GPO playback, it's a different story.
Cheers,
- Darcy
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