GPO instruments into Cakewalk. How to?

Hello good music folks,

I want to use the sheet music functions of Cakewalk to compose. Yet I can't figure out how to bring in and play Garritan (kontact) instruments. Am I missing an obvious sequence of commands or do I have to file convert first. If so, who's software can do the conversion?

Thanks for any help,
Paul Bruening

 

There should be .nki files in the Garritan library folder. You can open these in Kontakt 1, 1.5, or 2, from what I understand.

 

Sure I can. What good does a virtual keyboard do me? I need to get these excellent sounds into my Cakewalk software so I can compose them on Cake's sheet music and play them back. Am I missing something here?

Thanks,
Paul Bruening

 

The instruments are loaded in the eight "slots" above the keyboard. You then add midi tracks in Sonar for each of the instruments giving each a unique midi channel.

This is all well laid out in the manual. Worth the read.

CH

 

I see now. I thought you were asking how to load them into Kontakt, not play them once they were loaded.

Yes, this is something you should look to the Cakewalk manual for. Sending MIDI tracks and different channels to a single VST/DXi... Not sure how it works.

 

Which version of Cakewalk are you using? I'd recommend using one of the newer versions such as Sonar 3 or 4.

You want to use GPO as either a DXi or VSTi plugin. If you are going to be inserting tempo changes during the song, then I recommend to use the VST version.

You'll need to close out of Cakewalk Sonar to run the VST Adapter. This is included with Sonar 3 or 4. See the manual on how to add a VST instrument.

Open up Sonar after the VST Adapter finishes.

Click on Insert, DXI and scroll down to GPO. You'll need to click on Insert, DXI, VST if you installed as a VST instrument. This will also add an audio track for the output for the inserted instrument.

You'll then need to add a new MIDI track. You'll need to set the output to the newly added GPO plugin and select a MIDI channel. Add an instrument into the GPO plugin and select the channel you want it on. By default the first slot is Channel 1, 2nd slot is Channel 2, etc.

You should now be hearing the instrument you added.

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Another option for doing sheet music is to use the included Overture SE program. This is a dedicated music notation program and will get better results for printed music than Cakewalk.

There are tutorials on the www.garritan.com website on how to setup Overture, GPO Studio and GPO player.