Personal Orchestra in Cubase SX

From Garritan Wiki

Welcome to the Garritan Personal Orchestra - Cubase SX user tutorial. This will breifly describe how to get the beautiful sounds of GPO up and running within Cubase SX in no time at all.

Once GPO is installed, open up Cubase SX. Create a New File for this project by clicking on the File -> New Project:

This will open a blank working project. Next, we will open up the Devices drop-down menu and choose the VST Instruments which will bring up a new dialogue box. From this dialogue box we will click on the first VSTi slot and choose PersonalOrchestra from the list:

This will bring the Garritan Personal Orchestra VSTi up on your screen:

Next we will load an instrument into Slot #1. For this example I will load my personal favorite, the solo Guarneri violin. First click on the left-most slot so it is highlighted, as above. Then, click on the LOAD botton, and follow the path to load which ever instrument you'd prefer:

This will load the instrument you choose into RAM and into Slot #1 and it will now be available for real-time playing through a midi controller/keyboard:

Next we will set up a MIDI track to control GPO. For now, close the GPO window. Then, insert a new MIDI track into our blank project by right-clicking within our project and choosing Add MIDI Track:

For our new MIDI track to be able to "talk" to GPO we need to set-up its routing to GPO, this can be done in the left hand panel. First, set the "in:" to your MIDI input device. Second, set the "out:" to the Garritan Personal Orchestra. Last, set this MIDI track's channel "chn:" to the corresponding Slot # for the instrument you wish to control, in this instance, Slot #1, chn:1, the Guarneri solo violin:

Next, record your MIDI performance, or program it in using your mouse, as you play or program the notes, you will hear them played back instantly through the high-quality instruments of the Garritan Personal Orchestra. Once finished performing or programming in your music, your MIDI track should resemble something close to this:

Clicking play should now play back your performance in real-time through your instrument of choice. The last thing we are going to do is place a 'global' reverb on the performance. This is useful for taking a number of different instruments and making them sound as if they were recorded within the same environment. To do this, open your mixer window by hitting F3 and focusing in on the Master effects slots, let's load the Ambience plug:

Dial in your favorite environment using the Ambience plug (mine being the Cathedral) and now as you add instruments to the project they will all sound as if they were in the same environment. I hope this tutorial will help you get started with this amazing library quickly and with very little hassle. For more info, visit Gary's official site http://www.personalorchestra.com

Enjoy YOUR orchestra,

Alan Lastufka