Using Garritan Personal Orchestra with QuickScore Elite


This tutorial is valid for QuickScore Elite version 11 and above.

For this tutorial you will use the Garritan Personal Orchestra as a VSTi plugin in QuickScore Elite. It is assumed you have installed QuickScore Elite and Garritan Personal Orchestra. To make Garritan Personal Orchestra available to QuickScore Elite as a VSTi plugin, you must copy the file PersonalOrchestraVST.dll from the Garritan Person Orchestra VST plugin directory VST, in the directory where you've installed Garritan Personal Orchestra, into the QuickScore Elite VST plugin directory VST Plugins, which is in the directory where you've installed QuckScore Elite.

Start QuickScore Elite and choose Synths & MIDI Effects from the Options menu. From the list of available effects, choose PersonalOrchestraVST by double-clicking on it or by clicking on it and then clicking on the left arrow button. The PersonalOrchestraVST entry will appear in the active list. Open it by clicking on the Edit button.

Now let's load some sounds. For our example, click on the Load button in the Kontakt Player, then choose Multis and String Quartet. This will load eight string quartet sounds, four bowed sounds and four pizzicato sounds, each of which will play on a separate channel. To see the mapping of sounds to channels, as well as other parameters for each sound, click on the sound in each of the eight windows at the top of the Kontakt Player.

In QuickScore, click on Mute Direct MIDI Output in the Synths & MIDI Effects dialog and close the dialog. Muting direct MIDI output will ensure that only sounds from VSTi software synthesizers such as the Garritan Personal Orchestra will sound when notes are played, not sounds from MIDI sound modules attached to QuickScore Elite's MIDI Out.

Before we start playing sounds, there is one thing we should understand about the Garritan Personal Orchestra. The orchestra uses the modulation wheel controller (controller #1) as well as the volume controller to control volume. By default the modulation wheel in the Kontakt player is at zero. Before a sound will sound, a modulation wheel controller with a value greater than zero must be sent on the sound's channel. There are several ways to do this. It can be done by choosing each sound in the Kontakt Player and moving the mod wheel from the bottom up to the top, using QuickScore Elite's Mixer, by choosing the Modulation Wheel controller and moving the fader for each track to the top, or by setting a modulation wheel controller with an appropriate value (for example 127) at the beginning of each track in the piece we will be playing. Doing this has the advantage that it will automatically be sent whenever the piece is played.

For this tutorial we'll use a piece already prepared for the String Quartet group of sounds in the Garritan Personal Orchestra. Load the file Brand41Garritan.qsd. This piece has each track on a separate channel, each channel corresponding to the appropriate bowed string quartet sound loaded in the Garritan Person Orchestra. Each track has a modulation wheel controller with a value of 127 at the beginning.

Click on the play button in QuickScore Elite's main transport to start playing. You should hear the first movement of J. S. Bach's fourth Brandenburg concerto played by the Garritan Personal Orchestra string quartet.