At the 2016 NAMM show, we announced that Garritan Personal Orchestra 5 (GPO 5) would be coming soon, and simultaneously placed a “Coming in February 2016” message at garritan.com. We’ve been delighted with the volume of interest (and questions) this advance information has produced. While we will release GPO 5 before the end of February, we hope to answer some of those questions in this post.
Personal Orchestra is the virtual instrument library that democratized the creation of orchestral music by making access to great sounds affordable. Scheduled for release in February 2016, GPO 5 takes Personal Orchestra to the next level.
GPO 5 is five times larger than GPO 4 and offers more than 500 instruments. Some of the additions include:
- New Orchestral Strings including 94 section string patches, 33 small sections, and 28 solo strings in a wide range of bow strokes and techniques.
- Seven additional choir groups with 23 patches, including boys’ and children’s choirs as well as sopranos, altos, tenors and basses.
- Updated brass instruments from the renowned ProjectSAM’s “Orchestral Brass Classic.”
- Two new concert grand pianos: a legendary 9’ Model D and a 7’ Model B.
- Completely new harp instruments with harp pedaling emulation, a custom organ console for expanded pipe organ control, more than 16 new impulse response presets, and much more.
New instruments are just part of the GPO 5 package, with many advances also made in new techniques, performance spaces and reverbs, and instrument body resonances. The result empowers musicians to produce truly inspiring symphonic sounds with a much higher level of realism.
Want to hear it in action? Take a listen to the full orchestral demos, brass and woodwind examples, several short string techniques, and some choir and organ excerpts.
Also included will be an updated ARIA Player, with additional controls, and a tree view making it easier than ever to load virtual instrument sounds.
GPO 5 will have a list price of $149.95, and registered owners of GPO 4 will be able to upgrade for just $49.95.
We’ll share more details (including a complete patch list) in the next few weeks as we release GPO 5 and the updated website, and we’ll send an email to owners of Garritan products upon launch. If you have questions in the meantime, please let us know by clicking on “Comments” below.
