Upper and Lower Pitch Limits in GPO-5 Custom Organ

Windows 10, Garritan Personal Orchestra 5, Finale 24

THE PROBLEM

It seems that the top playable note for the GPO-5's Custom Organ is written C5 (C above the treble clef, but sounds an 8va higher). In Aria Player I have registered the Swell as Principal 4' (expression CC50, value 6); the Great as Principal 8 (expression CC51, value 16'; and the Pedal has two stops: Pedal Trompette 8' 4' (expression CC52, value 17) and Contre Tromp 16' (expression CC53, value 29).

Neither the Swell nor the Great will sound above C5 *written), and the pedal refuses to change registration and/or sound below C1, even though a 16' stop should transpose down an 8va.

Finally, it is my understanding that pipe organs can produce notes outside the range C1-C5.

SOME FINALE DETAILS

In the Score Manager, the organ is assigned to one track and channel (I can't figure out how to create three separate tracks of one stave each for the organ: whenever I try to add a new track - say, exclusively for the Great - Finale insists on adding three staves.) So, I use the expression tool to create custom miscellaneous expressions with the parameters as I have shown above.

There are several instruments whose ranges in GPO5 are deficient. (The Bass singers don't even make it up to Middle C...!)

Apart from one update shortly after release, there have not been any fixes to any of the lingering problems within GPO in the four? years since its release.

The good news is that it is possible to edit the SFZ files (which are text instructions that define each instrument) and adjust the ranges. The ARIA Player can take a sample sound and 'play' it at a different pitch: and this is how many of the notes are already produced. Whether those notes will sound any good when stretched by an octave remains to be heard, though organ notes are fairly clean tones.

In the folder that contains the Garritan samples - mine is at:

/Library/Application Support/Garritan/Garritan Personal Orchestra 5/Instruments/Organ

you'll need to find the mappings file for the stops you want to change. Then you need to look for a line that is something like:

<region> lovel=1 hivel=127 key=36 amplitude=100 tune=0 loop_mode=loop_continuous loop_start=42489 loop_end=123313 sample=01 JOpdcf32-C1_0002102C.audio

You want to change "key=36" to "lokey=24 hikey=36 pitch_keycenter=36". If the line already has those three commands, then just change lokey value to 24.

Make sure you make a copy of the original file, so that you can restore it if things go wrong! You can test things 'live' in the standalone player, as ARIA will update the instrument when you save changes to the file.

You'll need to do the same at the top end by adding the three commands to the region, changing hikey to 96.

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