Recording - November 2012 - 47

Adding Garritan Aria The next step I wanted to try was to add Garritan Aria and try out its sound libraries within Sibelius. Both Garritan (nowadays owned by and incorporated into Sibelius’ main competitor, Finale by MakeMusic) and Native Instruments have long histories with Sibelius, and it shows in added convenience in using them together. I entered the Playback Devices window again, activated an instance of Garritan’s Aria Player and followed the steps above with these exceptions: In the first window I had to choose from three Garritan sound sets on my computer: JABB 3.0, Concert and Marching Band 2.0, and Personal Orchestra 4.0, with the latter being the appropriate choice for this piece. Because I’d selected the Sound Set in the Active Devices pane and Automatic Switching was supported, there was no need to enter the Manual Sound Sets pane so I skipped right to the Preferred Sounds pane, where I selected brass from the Sound ID’s, then Aria Player from the dropdown menu, then clicked “Add” and closed the window. I opened the mixer, and as soon as I hit play, Sibelius loaded up all my newly preferred brass sounds and began playing the piece. That having worked smoothly, I went back to the preferred sounds pane and made Aria the player for all of the orchestral sections except the piano, which I left on Ivory. I did an audio export of the piece in that configuration, which you’ll find in the online support files that accompany this article at http://www.recordingmag.com/resources/resourceDetail/389. html The result was a credible rendition, although for my taste the Sibelius 7 Sounds version was preferable. You can hear both and decide for yourself. Adding VSL Moving on from Garritan, I elected to try to create an orchestra, or at least part of one, from Vienna Symphonic Library (VSL) via my Vienna Ensemble Pro 5.0 software. Although I own the entire Pro Library in its original Gigastudio format, I only have the Vienna Epic Orchestra that was bundled with VEPro in the current format. This is a limited collection, but I thought it was still worth the attempt. In order for Sibelius to take full advantage of the features in modern sample libraries like this one, such as key switches to choose between performance techniques, and automation of the various MIDI controllers, it’s necessary to have a Sound Set for the library. VSL makes this available, along with a House Style document, in the user area of their website under the category “Needful Things.” These files need to be downloaded, then placed in the Sounds and House Styles folders that you’ll find at: Users/your username/Library/Application Support/Avid/Sibelius 7/Sounds. For previous users a word of caution: I spent a considerable amount of time cursing and flailing about because I wasn’t used to having the name “Avid” inserted into this path, and when I looked in the usual places the target folders were nowhere to be found. The folders were, of course, exactly where they were supposed to be. Once those items were in place, I went back to the Playback Devices window and added an instance of Vienna Ensemble Pro and selected VE Epic Orchestra as my Sound Set. Then I opened the Manual Sound Sets pane and chose the Vienna Ensemble Pro Device. The VE Epic Orchestra was already preselected from the previous pane, and I checked manual sound set. You then decide on the number of channels you want to use in VEPro, and for each channel you select a Program name (the dropdown already has the list of available instruments for the Sound Set), and then hit the Apply button at the bottom. Each successive instrument you set up will appear in the column on the right.

Beside the Device dropdown list there’s a Show button, and pressing it brings up the VEPro editor window (Figure 4). Here you have to load each of the sounds that correspond with the settings you just made in Sibelius. After this, you move on to the Preferred Sounds pane (Figure 5) and, one by one, select the appropriate Sound IDs, then select Vienna Ensemble Pro as the preferred playback device, and hit the Add button. When you’re finished, closing this window prompts you to save your changes. VSL has a PDF manual titled “Optimizing Sibelius Playback with Vienna Ensemble – A Guide to get More out of your Scores” which contains many tips on how to get the best possible results using Vienna Ensemble and their sample libraries. One helpful hint involves using controller 11 to control velocity crossfading rather than expression, thereby
Fig. 4

Fig. 5

getting both volume and timbre changes when you increase or decrease that controller. There are others that concern optimizing legato, portamento, glissando, use of mutes, etc. I exported an audio rendering of the string section for comparison purposes. There were still some issues to sort out with dynamics and phrasing but I didn’t want to alter the score before hearing the possibilities with different virtual instruments. If by now you get the impression that this is a procedure that’s not for the faint of heart, you’re dead right. I had to read every scrap of documentation I could find from both Sibelius and VSL to get this right, and some of it more than once. But the kicker is this: once you get it set up and working correctly, you get that truly glorious sound we’re used to hearing from VSL products, and everything gets saved as a template that comes up effortlessly ever after (at least I want to believe that). Barring system and other software updates that might give rise to new bugs or quirks, I think you can count on this being a reliable and worthwhile exercise to go through. Before we leave VSL, I just want to point out that without the Sound Set we just took great pains to install, it’s much more difficult to switch to different instruments for different articulations or performance techniques, or to interpret the phrase and dynamic markings we put into a score as MIDI controller data. Every such bit of information would have to be manually input as MIDI control information, which would make your work flow a lot slower. As you’ll see
RECORDING November 2012

http://www.recordingmag.com/resources/resourceDetail/389.html http://www.recordingmag.com/resources/resourceDetail/389.html

Recording - November 2012

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Recording - November 2012