Overture is powerful, easy to use, and integrates quite nicely with Garritan Personal Orchestra. Before playing GPO Studio with Overture, you should have installed GPO Studio and rebooted. Start GPO Studio before starting Overture; on Macintosh in particular, you must always start GPO Studio first before starting Overture. When you first start Overture, you will not need to configure any MIDI ports, since Overture automatically uses the GPO Studio midi ports.

Note: If you load new samples and do not hear notes when you enter them with the mouse, press the space bar to begin playing.  This will reset the Mod Wheel (volume) on the newly loaded samples.

Overture allows you to use GPO Sound Sets, which are instrument setup templates of GPO instruments. These correspond to the instrument setup templates in GPO Studio. You can access Sound Sets in Overture by using the menu items of "GPO | Load Sound Set…" and GPO | Edit Sound Set..." If you choose to edit a Sound Set, you will see the eight Players for GPO Studio and also eight slots for each player, just like in GPO Studio. If you create any Sound Set via the edit feature, you will need to match the Sound Set that you create with a saved session file in GPO Studio; to do this, use the same instruments in the same player and slot positions, for both the Overture Sound Set and the GPO Studio saved session. For the default Sound Sets that come with Overture, GPO Studio generally has corresponding templates file that you can load into GPO Studio. Using matching templates and Sound Sets will properly synchronize your Overture session and GPO Studio session. In Overture, you can refer to the menu item of "Window | Tracks Window" to find the name of the Sound Set currently in use, so that you can load the appropriate matching template in GPO Studio.

After you have loaded a Sound Set in Overture and an appropriate matching template (or manually created matching session) in GPO Studio, open up the Tracks Window by using the menu item of "Window | Tracks Window". The Tracks Window in Overture shows you what instrument/patch from your current Sound Set is being used by each staff (or track).

You can change the instruments used by a staff track easily. First find the "Device" cell for a staff track in the Tracks Window, and choose one of the GPO Players as the Device. You do this by clicking and holding down on the cell - you should see eight GPO players available in this device slot. Then in the Patch cell click and hold and you will see all the patches available on the first player (as defined by the Sound Set). If you go to the Device cell again and choose a different GPO player, then you will see different patches available in the Patch cell. Each GPO Player device has different patches available. The currently loaded Sound Set details exactly what instruments/patches will be available for each Player. If you wish, you can refer to the current sound set by using the menu item of "GPO | Edit Sound Set..."

You can add dynamic and expression markings to your Overture scores that perform MIDI functions upon playback. This is especially useful for using Overture to change Mod Wheel levels (for volume) or to change the MIDI channel or keyswitch (for KS instruments) in the middle of a staff. The "pppp" and "Expr" buttons in the toolbar allow you to add dynamic markings and expression markings, respectively. If you click and drag a button, you can also see the dynamic and/or expression palettes.

The dynamic markings provide an intuitive and easy way for you to add Mod Wheel messages to your scores. When you insert a dynamic marking, you can use the mouse to edit it. Choose a Modulation value for the Playback function. This will provide the correct volume change for GPO Studio playback whenever you add a dynamic mark to a staff.

You can use expression marks to change the instrument in use by a staff, whenever you wish in your composition. When you add an expression mark to a stafff, you can select a new Instrument for the Playback function in the Expression dialog window. If you choose a KS instrument, you can also send a Key Switch message at the same time. For example, you might wish to use a sustained violin patch for most measures of a staff, but for one measure you might want to change to a pizzicato violin. You can add an expression mark to the beginning of that measure called "pizz", and for the Instrument you might use Violin 1 KS Combo. When the score reaches that expression mark, the instrument for that staff will change to Violin 1 KS Combo. If you select a Key Switch as part of the Expression mark playback, you can choose A2 Pizzicato so that the violin will play pizzicato.

In GPO Studio, when using Overture, you should always set the GPO Studio mode to "Default". Make sure you load a template in GPO Studio (or load instruments manually) to match the Overture Sound Set you are currently using, otherwise you may get no sound! Assuming you have already configured GPO Studio's Audio drivers correctly, and reduced the GPO Studio Ambience CPU quality to a level your CPU can handle, you should now be able to play back sounds from Personal Orchestra sounds when you press Overture's Play button!

To Learn More

• Refer to the help file in the GPO Studio folder.

• Go to the support section of our website at www.garritan.com.

Music Notation and Overture^™ SE

Getting Started with New Scores: When you open Overture, a New Score dialog box appears. This is the quickest and easiest way to get started. To load a new score, go to File => New and chose from a list of available templates.

Each template uses a different Overture Sound Set, as shown by GPO => Edit Sound Set... If you wish to use Overture to play back sound with Garritan Personal Orchestra, you will need to run the GPO Studio application at the same time as Overture. Please refer to the GPO Studio section of this manual for details.

Entering Music Notation

Once the score is set up, you can begin entering notation. You can input notation on-screen with your mouse or computer keyboard, or by recording a performance with a MIDI keyboard. Overture’s intuitive interface puts powerful editing tools and symbol palettes at your fingertips, so you spend time composing music instead of searching through menus. Overture has a main toolbar from which palettes can be taken. There are note, dynamics, articulations, noteheads, expressions, groups, ornaments, text and various other palettes to choose from. These palettes are movable and sizeable. Overture also allows you to place and move symbols quickly and easily.

Overture SE allows you to change music notation however you like. Add symbols, text and markings with a click of a mouse, and then change them just as easily.

To input notes with a mouse, pick the desired note (half-note, quarter-note, eighth-notes, etc) from the note palette with the mouse, and click to place them in the score. You can also get other markings such as accidentals, rests, clefs, slurs and time signatures from palettes. You can also use the computer keyboard to specify note duration. Use 2 for a half note, 4 for a quarter notes, and so on. The chart on the Quick Reference card shows a complete list of keyboard substitutions. Once you select the desired notes from the palette, simply position the cursor on the score where you want them placed and click to insert.

Overture has many tools for adjusting score elements. In many instances, it is not necessary to specially select them; you can just move the pointer over the element and the pointer will change shape to let you know that you can now edit the element.

To change pitch, drag a note up and down on the score and it will move the note to the desired new pitch. First position the pointer over the note so that it becomes a Drag Cursor, then by clicking the note head turns red, indicating that it is selected, then drag it up or down. Another way is to select it, then press the up or down arrow keys to reposition the note. To change a note’s duration, select it, and then type the keyboard equivalent for the correct value (e.g. typing the number 2 for a half note). Overture lets you edit multiple notes simultaneously. Select multiple notes by shift-clicking them or by dragging a box around them. Any edit operation affects all selected notes. To erase any item from the score, select the eraser cursor from the tool bar (or type e). Position the cursor over the note or symbol you wish to delete and click.

There are also palettes for adding dynamic markings, expressions, ornaments, articulation indicators and groupings. To use the dynamics palette for entering and modifying dynamic markings, simply position the pointer under the note of the score and click to place a dynamic marking there. Some dynamics symbols, like the crescendo hairpin, are resizable and appear to grow as you drag. You can add ornaments (like fingerings), expression markings and articulations (like staccato marks) to the score just as you add dynamics or notes, by simply positioning the pointer and clicking to place a marking. Overture also allows you to group notes in various ways by using the group tool. You can create slurs, ties, glissandos, triplets, and various other groupings depending on the type of tool you selected.

OVERTURE does support MIDI playback both with Garritan Personal Orchestra and with external MIDI devices, allowing you to play back your notated music. Overture will read and play back standard markings. If you plan to use MIDI, please refer to the section of this manual describing GPO Studio, and to the Overture online help.

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