On 18.12.2005 Darcy James Argue wrote:
Johannes,
Finale's Setup Wizard *does* let you choose the exact GPO instrument
you want.
Sure, but with numerous problems:
1) After I leave the wizard, Finale will actually load all those
instruments, which takes a long time if it is a large ensemble. For me
this is completely useless, as I will not need them until much later in
the editing process
2) I have no way to influence the panning: For classical setups I want
the 2nd violins on the right, not on the inside left, to give just one
example. So I will have to come back to the instruments regardless.
3) My main problem is that if I choose two violins, I get Violino 1 and
Violino 2, not Violino I and Violino II. I have not found any way to
change this, and it means I will have to re-edit them all the time.
Which is a large step backwards from how the wizard worked for me before.
4) I don't think there is a flexible way to have things like Basso,
Basso continuo etc appear as choices in the wizard. When I looked at the
GPOinstruments.txt file I could not see how I could edit it in this way.
Trust me, from experience, it's *much* faster to use the Setup Wizard
to set up the GPO instruments for a full orchestral score than it is
to load each instrument individually. (Where you have to wait for
each instrument to load into RAM before the next one loads, etc.)
I have to wait for each instrument to load into RAM anyway, after I
leave the wizard, which is definitely the time where I do not want to
wait. So I leave it until I actually need playback.
I understand and agree with your frustration with the Setup Wizard's
limitations, but since you don't normally work with orchestra music,
I don't think you really understand how time-consuming it is to set
up GPO playback without the Setup Wizard's help. There is absolutely
no question that the Setup Wizard is many times faster.
I do work with orchestral setups, admittedly smaller than what you are
obviously talking about, and the wizard has caused me too many
headaches. Fact is that when I set up a score I couldn't care less about
the GPO setup. At the moment creating a score with the wizard will
result in several minutes of loading GPO instruments when I leave it,
and I don't want this at all. I am not going to playback anything until
many hours of work later. In this sense the GPO wizard is slower.
Also, unless you remove the non-notation instruments, it's _very_
easy to inadvertently load the wrong version of an instrument, and
there's no way to tell until you start playing back and realize that
the slurs and hairpins aren't playing back. Using the Setup Wizard
ensures that you will always load the "Notation" instruments.
I know there is space for user error, but I don't see this as a problem
once you know you have to load the notation instruments. You could
equally well forget to load the KS instruments in the wizard, and not
know until you hear them, no?
On the other hand, if you are using a substitute instrument for GPO
playback (like organ instead of voice, for instance), it's trivially
easy to make a staff name change after the fact.
Except that Organ will create three staff systems and mess up your
grouping. Good example, Darcy.
There are more things to it than just the name...
In fact, when I start a score I don't even know whether I will ever play
it back, let alone use GPO (which will choke with a full orchestra
anyway on my computer, and take ages to load in every session, at least
when I need playback.
To be honest I find the whole GPO integration in Finale more baggage
than it is worth, most of the time.
Johannes
--
http://www.musikmanufaktur.com
http://www.camerata-berolinensis.de
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