I’ve been using Kontakt as my software sampler along with Finale for quite awhile now. The quality of many sampled Instrument libraries these days is quite good. Using Kontakt to load custom sounds to playback a Finale score can vastly improve the quality of your demos and mockups than using the stock Garritan sounds.That said, the topic of what I am about to discuss would also apply to the Aria Player that comes with Finale.

As I just mentioned, the quality of instrument sounds available these days is very good. You could simply load up the standard “legato” or “long” instrument patches found in any sampled instrument library and you would get a decent approximation of how your music sounds. One way to improve your recordings is to use different Articulations that can bring your music to life. At a minimum, the addition of a detached or staccato sound to a legato sound will make your music more realistic. Creating Articulation Templates can help with this process.

The first thing you need to do is think about the type of ensemble you will be scoring. You need a definite number of instruments. Second, you need to think about how many different articulations you want to hear. Third, you need to think about how large your instrument patches are and how many midi channels your computer can handle. I find that I can use 16 channels if I load smaller sound files.

Say you are writing for a solo instrument. With a bank of 16 channels, you could have 16 different instrument articulations. For a duet, each instrument could have eight articulations. For a trio, each instrument could have five articulations. You get the idea. If you write for just a moderate size orchestra, you could easily take up 16 channels with one articulation for each instrument. If you really want to do virtual orchestration, you will need at least two instances of Kontakt open. You might also consider upgrading your computer so that you have at least 16 GB of ram and the biggest hard drive you can get (at least a terabyte). Virtual orchestration will tax your computer system if you don’t have a lot of ram.

Loading the same instruments each time can take up a lot of time. This is where creating templates can be a real time saver. Creating an effective template takes some planning but the benefits will be great. Next time I’ll continue discussing how to create articulation templates for a few small ensembles.