To do this in a musically effective and controlled way requires a slight learning curve, and also some adjustment of your expectations about how sampled instruments behave. That sounds terrific, but what does it mean? In a nutshell, the idea is that rather than supplying a large number of disparate multi-sampled performance styles that have to be pasted together in a sequencer, the instrument is designed to let the player create a wide range of articulations in real time using combinations of controllers - to put it simply, you actually play the instrument as opposed to programming it. This time, the claim is that Stradivari uses 'real-time sound shaping' rather than 'freeze-dried samples', or if you prefer, 'morphing samples combined with instrument body resonances and intelligent performance scripts make the gestalt of these innovations something unique'. The most telling link is with the Drake Music Project in Edinburgh, which enables people with disabilities to play and compose music - using Stradivari, a program called E-Scape, and pressure sensors to control expression and vibrato, Rhona Smith, an 18-year-old woman with cerebral palsy, has created a moving version of Massenet's 'Meditation' ( Like many manufacturers, Garritan is never slow to talk up his products' new features with a juicy bit of incomprehensible jargon. Although he displays canny market awareness, Gary Garritan is clearly not out merely to make a buck, and his web site proves it: bristling with artistic and educational features (including over a thousand user demos, an interactive edition of Rimsky-Korsakov's Principles Of Orchestration, and a radio station featuring contributions from over 180 composers producing music using Garritan sounds), the site has a strongly supportive community feel. Someone once said that if all the people in the music business who were in it for the money were to pack up and leave, the industry would become a far healthier and downright more enjoyable place. Although something of a stylistic departure, Jazz & Big Band was no less musically effective, but now the Stradivari Solo Violin (created by Giorgio Tommasini, Stefano Lucato, and Garritan himself) sees our man resuming his lifelong love affair with orchestral stringed instruments.
#Garritan sounds full#
This was followed by the critically acclaimed Garritan Personal Orchestra, which endeared itself to impecunious musicians and composers everywhere by squeezing the full instrumentation of an entire symphony orchestra into a 2GB player costing less than £200 in the UK.
In August 2001 Garritan's Orchestral Strings caused a stir by offering 8GB (at the time an unprecedentedly large figure) of sampled string sections. His 1999 Gigaharp library was one of the first to take advantage of Gigastudio 's unlimited sampling time.
When it comes to sampling orchestral instruments, Gary Garritan has a long and distinguished track record. Tial Kontakt 2 version should have been superseded by a functionally identical Kontakt Player, which will also open up in Kontakt 2. This remarkable instrument is now available to all you budding Paganinis, retailing (I'm glad to say) at a considerably lower price than a real Stradivari violin. The man in the clip was Stefano Lucato, filmed playing Gary Garritan's Stradivari Solo Violin instrument live at the Frankfurt Musikmesse 2005 trade fair. Even allowing for the player's tasty keyboard technique, the soaring, emotive legato phrasing, dynamic response, swelling vibrato, and expressive portamento slides of the instrument were reproduced so accurately that it was hard to believe that some kind of sorcery was not involved. The DVD given away with SOS August 2005 featured an intriguing video clip of a man producing an amazingly lifelike and expressive solo violin performance from a bog-standard MIDI keyboard. Will it create a new generation of virtual Paganinis?
Gary Garritan's powerfully expressive solo violin instrument features some impressive technical innovations.
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