Playback Template for Garritan Instruments for Finale

Hey all, I’ve actually been a Dorico user for quite some time but recently I’ve gone in with the news of Finale’s demise and exported a few of my old Finale projects to Music XML files so that I can have them in Dorico and not lose them.

When I went back into Finale to take a look at some of these old projects, I realized I very much enjoy the Finale sounds… they’re not great in terms of realism IMHO, but there’s something about them that is endearing to me and I miss that sound when writing. I’d LOVE to have access to those sounds again, and of course I could create my own playback template in order to make sure that I have access to them (and I have all the necessary sounds from Finale downloaded to my system) but I quite honestly do not have the patience nor the time to create a playback template. Does anybody have a playback template for the Garritan Instruments for Finale that they would be able to share with me?

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Are you on Mac on Windows? (It matters, because the Mac version of ARIA is incompatible with the Windows version.)

There are a LOT of instruments in the whole GIFF – about 400! So producing a complete template would be a lot of work.

Most instruments will respond to a simple Expression Map – the “GPO Default” map in my GPO5 template would work.

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Thanks for that, I’ll try that out!

I’m on Mac, apologies didn’t realize that would be relevant in this case.

Seems to me that MakeMusic is missing an obvious marketing opportunity. I would be willing to pay for custom sound maps that let me use my Garritan sound libraries in Dorico. The excess reverb in Dorico and limited instrument list is driving me bonkers.

Except, I suspect, if you need to apply technique text recognition, I was able to have all my GPO5 sounds load and playback well into Dorico (Dorico found the Aria player VST just as Reason finds it). Same with the Reason Rack VST. I did not do anything other than selecting them in the Play tab. So yes, the default mapping works. .

Well, yes: but only to give you the default patch, with no other control. You’re not taking advantage of the different techniques within a key switch instrument, like staccato, pizzicato, etc.

Exactly But if you don’t need that then it’s fine. But I wouldn’t use just the default mapping for key switches. I still have to read up on making that work outside of noteperformer. Noteperformer’s piano wasn’t working as well for my current piece so I used something else.

If you haven’t already, I’d read the extensive notes I’ve written about making expression maps for Garritan in the linked thread. (And have a copy of the Garritan webpages or PDFs detailing the MIDI controls for the various instruments.)

Yes I’ve read it. I just didn’t need that for piano :wink:

If you want legato, as well as effects for the pedals**, then you’ll need more than the default map.

**After adding my fix for the lack of a soft pedal on the Steinway D.

For my work, I had the Reason Rack Plugins piano set to lay back a specific degree of pedaling (throughout) and same with piano mechanics (which is why there is a touch of realism for some of the key ups in a specific section). But yes, for precise and on-demand pedaling etc, the default map won’t cut it. I will next learn about that stuff since it’s a very new and unique aspect of Dorico.