BuildOrBuy Network News http://www.buildorbuy.org/ http://www.buildorbuy.net/ Subject: Giga Newsletter For July 2002 Date: Mon, 29 Jul 2002 18:40:16 -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 July 2002 Giga Artist Profile: Cheche Alara As a producer, composer, musical director or keyboardist for the likes of Christina Aguilera, Paulina Rubio, Destiny's Child, Alejandro Sanz, Ricky Martin, Enrique Iglesias, Mya and many others, one constant has remained steady in Cheche Alara's illustrious life: a great piano. "I've played hundreds of acoustic pianos," says Alara, 28, who graduated from Berklee, studied at the New England Conservatory and earned a Masters degree at USC, "and GigaStudio is by far the closest any sampler has come to emulating what it's like to play a real piano. Nothing beats a physical piano because you're dealing with an instrument that could be over 100 years old and has a very strong identity. But GigaStudio has taken sampling more into the actual personality of the instrument now and it's getting way past the point where we say, 'That sounds like a grand piano,' to, 'Now, that's a Steinway!' Like Duke Ellington said, 'If it sounds good, it is good.'" The busy L.A.-based Alara takes his TASCAM GigaStudio rack and a pair of Korg keyboard controllers to every session, rehearsal and concert. He is also fond of his system's abundance of onboard sounds and Foley effects for his occasional movie soundtrack work, and he sometimes even gets to arm wrestle his favorite samples with fellow session players around town. One once foolishly suggested his oboe sound was even better than Cheche's. "I have a background in orchestral music and I have GigaStudio so I can bring out the subtleties of the real instruments, so I told him, 'No way, man, your oboe is not that good!' [laughs.] The GigaStudio sounds are just outstanding, and the GigaPiano is the piano I use the most. You can hear all the resonance and the decay of the instrument, and the different layers of frequencies are very, very musical. It responds like a real acoustic piano does. You have to juggle and compromise your performance in order to keep an instrumental part sounding real if you use a conventional piano or orchestral sample on any other platform. It's all about the music with GigaStudio." Alara recently completed an orchestral score for the opening of rapper Black Diamond's new CD, is rehearsing and demo-ing a new rock band, and may finally complete his own long awaited solo album incorporating jazz, Latin, classical, hip-hop and R&B roots. "Diamond's overture begins with solo classical piano for eight bars. It sounds like a million bucks, and if you can believe it I almost maxed out my GigaStudio rack with all the orchestral textures and string sections I used. With GigaStudio your memory is basically limited only by the size of your hard drive, which is amazing, and it's so easy to browse through all the patches. Just find the right one and load it in two seconds--I have no idea how TASCAM does that!" How's it going so far, Cheche? "Well, GigaStudio is really simple to learn," he concludes. "Within a day I was easily making great music with it at a very intricate, complex musical level. I owned hardware samplers before but my experiences with them were always, 'Man, why is this so complicated? Why all the sub-menus?' Then it's always, 'Load from floppy, Load from CD', or the Akai or the E-mu won't read the Kurzweil sample, or whatever. I always told everyone that if I could play without using a sampler at all, I would. Now that's all changed for me since GigaStudio." Free Update Shipped to Registered Users of Garritan Orchestral Strings New York, NY, June 12, 2002 - The Garritan Orchestral Strings (www.garritan.com) is shipping another free update to registered users of the GOS Advanced GigaStudio version. This newest update is over 1.5 gigabytes in size and contains 400 new instruments on two CD-ROMs. Moreover, it expands the total number of CD-ROMs in the GOS library from 16 to 18 CDs, increasing the library’s size to over 10 gigabytes. Free upgrades are what make Garritan Orchestral Strings unique and set it apart from all other sample libraries. "And there'll be more updates coming later this year," announced Gary Garritan, producer of the GOS string library. This update expands the library with new and unique features while maintaining the original introductory price of $995 Tom Hopkins brilliantly programmed most of the new features in this update. However, users, making GOS an evolving, open-source have created some of the features library. GigaStudio Mastery Now Available! The GigaStudio Mastery Tutorial from famed Giga-Guru Dave Govett is now ready for the masses. For those of you who are not familiar with Dave, he was one of the primary Giga support dudes in Austin, home of the original NemeSys team. Since departing the support front, Dave has become the “Go-to Guy” for editing and programming many of the more popular Giga libraries on the market today. Dave has spent much of the last year creating what he likes to refer to as “The Ultimate Giga Learning Tool”. This four CD-ROM collection goes in depth with every possible aspect of the GigaStudio program and provides detailed instruction and tips for getting the most out of the software. The tutorial covers everything from the process of registering and setting up your system, to editing and creating elaborate instruments, and everything in between. GSM is presented in a multimedia format with audio narration, active screen shots, and streaming video presented in an easy to navigate lesson-by-lesson format. Anyone wanting to really dig into the meat of this incredible application will benefit tremendously from Dave’s tutorial. The first run of GSM is quickly flying out the door, so don’t be the only one on your Giga-block who isn’t taking advantage of the power of GigaStudio Mastery! Check it out here: http://www.shopteac.com/Merchant2/merchant.mv?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=SN&Product_Code=A_GSM&Category_Code=A Giga Tip: S-Converting Akai Libraries Ok, I just purchased GigaStudio and put my old hardware samplers up for sale on Ebay. Now I have 100+ Akai formated CD-ROMs collecting dust on my studio shelf with no real value to my future sampling creations, right? Wrong! GigaStudio lets you convert all of those old libraries for use in Giga with a powerful feature called S-Convert. Here is a step by step on how to give those older libraries some new life in the Giga world. 1. Launch GigaStudio with the Akai formatted CD-ROM already in your drive. 2. Once GigaStudio finishes launching, go to your CD-ROM drive icon in the lower left-hand portion of the main Giga page, and single left click. This will tell Giga to look at this drive and recognize the Akai contained within. You will be told that Giga is assessing the amount of partitions on the disk (Akai formatted disks are divided into partitions). When it has profiled the disk, all of the included partitions will be listed. 3. Now set up a folder on your main Giga instrument drive for the converted files to be placed in by S-Convert. 4. At this point, you can either convert by individual partitions or the entire disk at one time. For the sake of demonstration, we will let S-Convert convert the entire disk. Go to the CD-ROM icon and right click. This will open a group of conversion options. We want to "Convert To Gig". 5. At this point, S-Convert will ask you to choose a destination folder. Locate the folder you previously created, and click OK. 6. S-Convert will now begin to convert all of the partitions and instruments included within to Gigs. This process will take a while, so don't worry. A full Akai disk can take as long as 30-40 minutes to complete, but there is a progress display feature within the S-Convert which will allow you monitor the conversion progress. As you can see, converting Akai libraries is very easy, and almost as much fun as skippin' rocks on a pond (well....almost). As step 4 points out, you have a number of options for the actual conversion process including ripping just the .wav files or converting partitions one by one. Obviously, you can choose the specific conversion process that works for you. This lesson followed the process of how a majority of the Giga users need to convert their Akai disks. Happy converting! Buying Giga Stuff Online Makes You Smarter.... Well, maybe it doesn't exactly make you smarter, but it does show that you are a highly enlightened individual :) The Giga store at TASCAM.com is a great way to purchase GigaStudio, libraries, and upgrades right from the comfort of your own home...with the peace of mind of knowing that TASCAM.com is a secure shopping environment. In other words, we've got your Giga-back! Give it a peek: http://www.shopteac.com/Merchant2/merchant.mv?Screen=SFNT&Store_Code=SN Developer Spotlight: Q Up Arts Salt Lake City was recently the host of the winter Olympics, but it has been the home of Q Up Arts for more than 10 years. “We were all excited to have the Olympics here, but it is kind of nice to have things back to normal again,” explains Sue Morton, one half of the husband and wife team that started Q Up Arts. Along with husband Doug Morton, Sue started Q Up in the same way as many successful companies do: a dream, and a house to set up your business in. 10 years later, Q Up is one of the most successful and respected sample library companies in the music world today. Doug and Sue’s working relationship began in the early 80’s when the two worked together at E-Mu. Later the two went on to work for a company that manufactured some of the first CD-ROM library products. It was during this time that Doug, who was recording and creating some of the more popular libraries for the company, decided that the opportunity to found his own library company was too good to pass up. With boxes like the Akai S-1000 selling tons of units, the need for high quality sample libraries was increasing. The idea for a company like Q Up Arts was born. Doug had come from a musician/composer/engineering background, and along with wife Sue (who had extensive experience as a percussionist), the two were primed to create higher quality, more esoteric libraries. Q Up eventually gained the reputation as leaders in the production of world/ethnic percussion sample libraries. The extensive collection of Q Up titles can be heard in film and TV productions, but (as was pointed out by their youngest son) they are also quite prominate in the most popular cartoons on the TV. “It was incredibly funny when our young son whipped around and pointed out a specific sample from his favorite cartoon,” Doug recalls with a chuckle, “It really drove home how much our product is used on a daily basis in all forms of entertainment.” Doug and Sue work with some of the most influential sample creators and engineers in the business like Douglas Spotted Eagle (Voices Of Native America), Denny Jaeger (Denny Jaeger Private Collection), and David Torn (Tonal Textures and Pandora’s Toolbox). Be sure to give Q Up Arts’ extensive collection of sample libraries a look- you surely won’t be disappointed. http://www.shopteac.com/Merchant2/merchant.mv?Screen=CTGY&Store_Code=SN&Category_Code=SL_QAL Drop Us A Giga-line Got a suggestion or specific question for us? 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