Range Correction - Classic Pipe Organs – Finale/Garritan Help Center

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Kent Savage Posted December 01, 2022 15:49

Mac OS 12.6.1 Monterey

So, there are some oddities in the various "instrument" or "voice" configurations in Classic Pipe Organs that should be addressed. I share this as a classically trained organist and composer for the organ:

1. Keyboard ranges for Renaissance stops should all have the 5 octave manual range as other stops from other types of organs listed;

2. All pitches of stops including 16' and 32' should be available for the full 5 octave manual ranges;

3. The interface should be updated to mimic a true pipe organ where ALL stops are available ALL of the time for both Manual and Pedal pitches like a REAL pipe organ with either the ability to have presets nested within each instance of Custom Console or just simply have all stops available for as previously described for each instance of the Custom console (both manual and pedal);

4. Tremolo independent to each stop; and

4. Add some key missing stops: 16' manual Bassoon or other reed; independent 2' stops such as 2' Octave or 2' Quarte de Nazard; a 1 3/5 Tierce, and 8' Celeste (when combined with another stop, creates an undulating effect - for strings they are tuned slightly sharp and for flutes, they are tuned slightly flat).

While the library is a significant body of work, it would be much more beneficial if it used stops and sampling like one would find with Hauptwerk sample sets.

3 comments

Date Votes

DONALD MCCULLOUGH Posted July 05, 2023 16:49

Hi, I know your post was 7 months ago, but I'm just looking into this. The setup is very strange indeed. I THINK that in Custom Organ Console, the first row of "REGISTRATION" represents one manual (stops oddly numbered 1, 4, 7, 10), the second represents a 2nd manual (numbered 2, 5, 8, 11) and the pedal is the bottom row (3, 6, 9, 12). Some of the stops in the bottom "Pedal" row are the usual 32 notes, some are only two octaves (Baroque?) and some go the full range of the keyboard as I recall.

I think one can adjust the range of different instruments (stops) but it'd be nice if the interface made sense at the outset. It feels like someone with scant knowledge of the organ had a 10 minute chat with a classically trained organist and this is what came out.

I agree that the tremolo is only good for gospel music or theater organ. Perhaps you could add a hidden staff for the solo stop (with tremolo) or assign a solo stop with tremolo separate a different staff level.

Might you you have any new insights since your original post.

Thanks!

Kent Savage Edited July 06, 2023 11:20

Hi Donald,

Thanks for your assessment that supports many of my findings. As a classically trained organist, I do not think that the console utility is arranged as Manual I, Manual II, and Pedal from top to bottom because many of the upper pitches of what would traditionally be Manual 1 are only available to the top row. Never-the-less, the lack of full compass stops remains an issue and I have not found any new insights but thank you for asking.

The responses I've received via e-mail since posting this can basically be summarized as Garritan really does not care and has no plans for correcting the library. It's unfortunate that this mentality pervades their support and development teams. They make a rather nonsensical defense that changing things could cause the sampling of the sounds to be corrupted. Perhaps, but any sampled sounds should be archived independently of the product so this makes no sense to me.

Anyway, best of luck to you. Perhaps if enough folks complain and report these issues, then a fix might occur some day.

Kind regards,

Kent Savage Posted September 08, 2023 13:30

Literally no feedback from developers as to when they will correct the issues with CPO so that it functions like a true pipe organ. Also requested info from them about how to best integrate a 3rd party like Hauptwerk with Finale for organ playback but never got a response about that. The only response was basically that they will take the CPO issues under advisement with NO PLAN to correct their errors. It's really sad that customers do not have more of an impact on the final product much less how to integrate a 3rd party product in order to get the playback results one desires. Oh well....

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