Garritan Jazz & Big Band

[Tommy V]

Garritan Jazz & Big Band

Anyone familiar with this package?

I'm looking to add some Horns to my projects without spending a whole lot of money, and this package seems to be reasonably priced.

The demos sound quite good, however some of the independent reviews online state that the instruments produced may need a lot of tweaking to sound authentic.

https://www.garritan.com/products/jazz-big-band-3/

As a guitarist I'd be using 'JamOrigin MIDI Guitar' to trigger, as well as some keyboards, but I'm not all that well versed in notation and MIDI CC's and such.

As a 'starter' package for Horns, would Garritan J&BB fit those needs nicely without breaking the bank?

Thanks,
Tommy V

[Tommy V]

> bump <


Anyone? Even an evaluation of Garritan in general?


Thx,
Tommy V

[Jordu7]

Well, the Garritan Jazz & Big Band 3 gives you many sounds, not only many horns (saxes, clarinets, trumpets, trombones) but also some basses, drums, keyboards. That's a good package for the price. I think it will be ok if you use the instruments as sections, e.g. several horns at the same time. The Garritan runs through the Aria player. To my (inexperienced) eye, there seem to be not as many possibilities to tweak Midi/channels/input/output as with e.g. Native Instruments Kontakt. But maybe I'm wrong. And you can always tweak using other tools in Reaper ;-)

If you are looking more for solo instruments I would rather recommend Native Instruments Session Horns Pro (https://www.native-instruments.com/d...ession-horns/) or even SWAM engine products (https://audiomodeling.com/swam-engine/). The latter products are rather expensive. However, many people think the SWAM instruments come closest to the real thing.
I own the Garritan and NI Session horns pro. I'm using mainly the NI Session horns to produce better sounding MIDI for some sax quartets and quintets when I want to play along.

Triggering with a keyboard shouldn't be a problem with Garritan. I cannot say how it would work with your MIDI guitar.

Regards. Jordu

[Tommy V]

Originally Posted by Jordu7

Well, the Garritan Jazz & Big Band 3 gives you many sounds, not only many horns (saxes, clarinets, trumpets, trombones) but also some basses, drums, keyboards. That's a good package for the price. I think it will be ok if you use the instruments as sections, e.g. several horns at the same time. The Garritan runs through the Aria player. To my (inexperienced) eye, there seem to be not as many possibilities to tweak Midi/channels/input/output as with e.g. Native Instruments Kontakt. But maybe I'm wrong. And you can always tweak using other tools in Reaper ;-)

Thanks for your reply, Jordu7, and based on your response I went ahead and purchased Garritan JABB-3 last night, (downloaded/installed from Sweetwater (here in the US)).

I've been playing with it for several hours now, and gotta say that for its price, and for my purposes, it fits the niche nicely.

As my main instrument is guitar, I'm using "JamOrigin MIDI-Guitar" as a trigger, although there is a fair amount of 'lag' it isn't all that bad, and can probably figure a workaround to get the attack a bit sharper .. mainly by recording the parts cleanly on guitar, then rendering the MIDI by bouncing in real-time at half speed.

Still got a lot more exploration to do with this Garritan package, but upon first impression it's a positive one

Thanks again for your affirmation on this product, which fills my need much more than the Cakewalk 'Woodwinds & Brass', which I'd been using up till now (not happily, though)

Cheers,
Tommy V

[Jordu7]

I wish you a lot of fun with the JABB-3!
Best
Jordu