How to get Garritan harmonics to sustain (Garritan Orchestral Strings and Finale 25)

Via Finale 25 (latest possible version).

So I've been using the Garritan String Harmonics and noticed that they do not actually have a decay or fade out - they just stop sustaining rather abruptly (and at different durations for different pitches even, unpredictably so). I'm working out a passage where there are long sustains of harmonics and the playback sounds insanely choppy and jumpy as a result and I'm trying to figure out some way to make it sound like continuous sustain. Take for example, in violin 1 section harmonics: play F# and A 3 and 4 ledger lines up respectively and notice how the A drops off sooner than the F#. The only way I was able to so far fake it is to have 64th notes (my tempo is q=45)...across the whole sustain passage. It's close enough but it's a major kludge. The patch also does not respond to tremolando so 'hardcoding' of the 64th notes was necessary.

Is there some clever way to properly loop or tweak the patches such that they can sustain longer or overlap better such as to fake a sustain? Thoughts?

Yes, you can make loop points in the sfz file.

You'll need Audacity (or some sample editor capable of opening raw sample files). Note that the samples might be slightly distorted, play in the wrong pitch, etc. when looking at them in such a sample editor due to encryption techniques which are corrected in real time via the registration process, but it should be good enough to find some smooth loop points. Typically you'll want to find a zero crossing point, where the waveform shape is similar, and the amplitude on both sides is similar. If you can't find a good point with matching amplitudes, then you'll use 'cross-fading' to level out the transition.

Have a look at this video to get an idea of how it all works. It walks through the process of making a simple single layer flute instrument from scratch. In your case, the instrument will already be built, you'll just need to enter loop points and possible cross-fading information.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dNoQo01mr7g

Here, you can find more information on sfz opcodes:

http://drealm.info/sfz/plj-sfz.xhtml

And here one can find more information about ARIA specific opcodes:

http://www.plogue.com/phpBB3/viewforum.php?f=14&sid=c182c282bc685809066290a15378cbc1

Experiment and build your own instrument extensions/variations. Just be sure to back up the original sfz first in case you need to revert :)

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