BuildOrBuy Network News http://www.buildorbuy.org/ http://www.buildorbuy.net/ Subject: Giga Newsletter For May 2002 Date: Mon, 20 May 2002 13:12:55 -0700 From: gigainfo@tascam.com To: news@buildorbuy.net You've received this e-mail because you requested to get updated information about GigaStudio, GigaSampler and associated audio tools. If you do not wish to receive future notices via e-mail, then please reply to this message with "REMOVE" in the subject header. Be sure to include your name and e-mail address as well. === Giga Newsletter For May 2002 GigaStudio Mastery Tutorial Original Giga-Gurus Dave Govett and Kevin Phelan are putting the final touches on their new multimedia tutorial that takes you deep into the world's most powerful sampling technology. All of the different facets of GigaStudio are covered in-depth, including everything from a complete road map of the program itself, file management, understanding and working within the Instrument Editor (including example .wav files to use during the lesson), Distributed Wave, S Convert, Quick Sound, and a whole slew of tips and tricks. This wealth of information and experience is delivered in a comprehensive 4 CD-ROM set that includes both Dave and Kevin walking the viewer through step by step lessons comprised of narration, active screenshots, and streaming video. I recently had a chance to preview the product and I have to say that I am really impressed! It will be a "must have" for anyone who wants to get the most out of their GigaStudio. Dave and Kevin are in the home stretch of tweaking and finalizing the GigaStudio Mastery Tutorial, so it should be available in the next week couple of weeks. TASCAM will be the exclusive distributors of this amazing product, and all of this knowledge and experience comes with a price tag of only $99, so keep checking the site for a confirmed release date. Garritan Strings Many consider the Garritan Orchestral Strings library to be one of the finest collections of sampled stringed instruments ever compiled. In many composing circles, it has become the string library to have for serious music production. Utilizing hand-picked players and instruments recorded with state of the art recording equipment in the legendary Lincoln Center For The Performing Arts, Garritan Orchestral Strings is a product that must be heard to be believed. Although the full version of the Garritan Orchestral Strings consists of 16 CD-ROMs and over 8000 samples, the $999 price tag put the library out of reach for some people. Addressing the immense interest from many users for a more affordable version of his library, Gary Garritan has made available the Garritan Orchestral Strings "lite". TASCAM will distribute this offering which includes; · 3 CD-ROM String Ensemble Library - Two Dynamic Levels · Basic Articulations & Bowings - Sustain Vibrato, Non-Vibrato, Sordino, Tremolo, Trills, Detache, Marcato, Spiccato, Portato & Pizzicato. · Free Special Edition of Chicken Systems' Translator · Same Quality Instruments as in the Advanced GigaStudio version · Both Looped & Non-looped Sustains & Sordinos Key Switching, Expression, Warmth & Vibrato Control. · Performance Set-ups - Allows for Easy and Quick Orchestral Setups · Upgrade path to the Advanced GigaStudio Version Look for Garritan Orchestral Strings Lite, available from TASCAM dealers and on the TASCAM Giga shopping site http://www.shopteac.com/Merchant2/merchant.mv?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=SN&Product_Code=SL_GG_GL&Category_Code=SL_G GigaStudio Road Show Hits New York I (Dave Casey, for those of you who have no idea who writes this monthly newsletter) will be in New York at B&H Pro Audio on May 29th, and at Manny's on May 30th spreading the Giga-Gospel, answering questions, doing demos, and looking for the quintessential slice of New York pizza. I must admit that I am a die-hard Joe Peeps Pizza fan (a wonderful little hole in the wall in North Hollywood), but I am looking forward to sampling some of NY's finest. If you are in the area, be sure to drop by and say hi. I will be hanging out with composer Doug Cuomo (more on him in the Giga On TV section of the newsletter) and showing off some of the new Giga libraries. I hear that there is no place finer than New York in May, so even if you aren't going to be in the area…you have my blessing to take a few days off from work and come hang. Have your boss call me if there is a problem :) Giga Forums The Giga forums at TASCAM.COM are flourishing quite nicely. We recently split the main Giga forum into smaller sub divisions to better manage the massive amounts of posts we are getting. There are now separate forums for: General System Issues/Solutions Tips and tricks for using the Giga Software Sample Library Discussion General User Discussion If you have never been by, or haven't been there in a while, be sure to drop by the Giga forums. There is a wealth of technical advice, system advice, as well as discussions about current and future Giga developments. Moderators include primary Giga support mavens Allen and Chris, Giga-Godfather Kevin Phelan, as well as yours truly…Dave Casey. It is also not uncommon for many of the key figures in the development of the Giga software and libraries to lurk around from time to time as well. Come by, kick your shoes off, have a cocktail and discuss the most important topic in the free world today: Giga. http://www.tascambbs.com/cgi-bin/ubbcgi/ultimatebb.cgi Developer Spotlight: Thomas Scarbee When I really want to floor any clinic audience with the power of GigaStudio, I usually bust out with one of the demos from the Scarbee Bass libraries. Scarbee's J-Fingered and J-Slap libraries have become two of TASCAM's most popular and best selling libraries. Born in Copenhagen Denmark, Scarbee began his music career as a guitar player. At an early age Scarbee was forced to stop playing due to a chronic wrist condition which made playing the fretted instrument extremely painful. Later in his life, Scarbee tried once again to play music. Upon experiencing the funk driven music of bassist Marcus Miller, Scarbee began to explore the bass guitar. Unfortunately, the wrist pain that had originally forced him to put down the guitar resurfaced again and made playing the bass equally as difficult. Having always been fascinated with magic and special effects, Scarbee sought a way for him to create music using a little "smoke and mirrors". Sampling seemed like an interesting technology to explore. Right around the time his wife had purchased a beautiful Yamaha bass for a birthday, Scarbee was turned on to a new sampling technology that was poised to revolutionize the world of sampling and music in general. This technology was the original GigaSampler. Armed with a vision and the technology of Giga to help him realise his dream, Scarbee started out on a path to create the most realistic sounding bass library that he could. The first offering was the Scarbee J-Slap library, followed most recently by the Scarbee J-Fingered library. Both are incredibly realistic sounding libraries that take full advantage of the power of Giga to give the end user what has proven itself to be an invaluable music production tool. Check them out here: http://www.nemesysmusic.com/products/libraries.html Giga On TV As many of you already know, Giga has become the standard in the music production world by providing the user with an incredibly powerful sample playback tool. But did you know that most of us hear Giga on the television on a daily basis? Unless you live under a rock (hey, rent is high here in Los Angeles, and there are some really nice rocks in the Burbank area!), you have heard Giga on many of your favorite shows currently on TV. Here are just a few of the composers using Giga to create music for TV every day: Doug Cuomo. Doug calls New York home, and has been creating music for television for quite a number of years. His latest projects include music for the hit TV shows Sex In The City, and Homicide. David Schwartz. The man who created one of the most popular TV theme songs with the music from Northern Exposure is currently using Giga to create music for Murder In Small Town X, and Leap Of Faith. Bruce Miller. Legendary Los Angeles composer Bruce Miller has created music for TV shows like Becker and the wildly popular Frasier. Danny Lux. Danny created the music for Profiler, Sabrina The Teenage Witch, and a somewhat unknown little Fox show called Ally McBeal :_ Dave Casey. This wonderboy created the theme music for that annoying guy who does the Dell Computer commercials…Ok, maybe I didn't… but I was the one who came up with his catch phrase, although it originally was written as "Dude, you're getting a Giga system!" Hollywood is a cold town… Sound Card Spotlight: Aardvark Aardvark broke into the digital audio world over ten years ago and has been a major player in the market ever since. The Aardsync II has long been one of the most popular and widely used word clock generators ever made. Over the last few years, Aardvark has moved into the computer I/O market with offerings like the Direct Pro 24/96. With a history of excellent digital audio products, it was no surprise that Aardvark computer audio I/O solutions would be equally as successful as Aardvark's synchronization products. With more than a few models that are GSIF compatible, Aardvark has become a popular Giga sound card choice due in part to Aardvark's inclusion of analog and MIDI I/O as well as digital I/O into most of their products. http://www.aardvarkaudio.com/aasd-v1/index.html Giga Tip: Managing Data On A Giga PC Sounds simple, but many people don't pay close attention to how they are setting their Giga system up to function in regard to data. Giga is an extremely efficient code base, and is able to perform really well with minimal system requirements. But as is the case with any audio software application, you need to keep in mind that these types of programs are streaming large amounts of audio data, and need to be set up properly to deliver real performance. Here are a couple of things to keep in mind when working with your Giga computer: Two Drives. It is not absolutely necessary to run a separate Giga instrument drive, but it will help to deliver the maximum performance that Giga can deliver. If you are working with a lower polyphony version (GigaStudio 24 or 32 for example) of Giga, you can get away with running one drive. If you are someone who will be pushing their Giga computer to the brink (I've seen rigs run at 99% of the system resources all day long on a fairly regular basis!), you will want to read on. 1. Giga instruments will play back more efficiently if they are all that the hard drive needs to access. Streaming up to 160 voices is difficult enough for one drive, but if you throw in having to access any sort of a temp file, or virtual memory resource, - or heaven forbid - audio tracks from your DAW, the potential for throwing the drive trying to access huge Giga instrument data an unintentional left hook goes up quite a bit. Drives are dirt cheap right now, so making this performance upgrade will not put a big dent in your Giga-Wallet J 2. De-fragmentation. A typical hard drive is a dynamic storage medium. By this, I mean that data written to it is constantly updated, changed, deleted, and saved. Over time, clusters of data tend to get separated or "fragmented" from other chunks of the same data group. As a drive becomes more and more fragmented, the drive must work harder to seek out the data to make it available for you to work with. Once a Giga instrument is installed on a hard drive, it rarely gets changed (unless you make adjustments and save it under a different name within the Instrument Editor). This makes it far less susceptible to the effects of fragmentation. It is for this reason that Giga power users will advise other users to have a separate drive for just the instrument data, in addition to the primary OS/Program drive. It is also not a good idea save your Giga Performance data on the same drive as the instruments. Giga song performance files are always being updated and changed. As this is done over and over, other data on the drive gets shifted around (fragmented), and will in some degree effect the way the drive is able to play back the installed instrument data. Loaded Instruments. Keeping your song Performance File neat and streamlined is a good discipline to develop. Often, we don't pay attention to what instruments are loaded and whether they are being used or not. As more and more instruments are loaded into GigaStudio, they draw system resources (primarily RAM) whether they are loaded into a MIDI channel and are being used or not. Frequently reviewing your Loaded Instrument window, and clearing unused instruments will help you to give your system the headroom it needs to perform like a champ. Let Us Hear From You GIGATEAM@tascam.com is the connection if you need to find a local Giga dealer, or have a question, request, recommendations, etc. === If you would prefer not to receive further messages from this sender: 1. Click on the Reply button. 2. Replace the Subject field with the word REMOVE. 3. Click the Send button. You may receive one additional e-mail message confirming your removal.