MOTUnation.com

Garritan's long-speculated world instrument is out, and it's the perfect copmplement to MOTU Ethno 2, as there is almost no overlap. Here's an instrument list:

http://www.scribd.com/full/42795384?acc ... i4b6cuxhll

As you can see, this library specializes in rare winds and strings; the percussion for the most part is duplicative of every other library out there, with some rare exceptions like the unusual Tonetang stir drum.

I picked up MOTU Ethno 2 last month, alongside Ethno World 5, and will be ordering this one very soon as well. I use single-purpose libraries when possible, but there are so many instruments that these catch-all collections cover that might be a long-time coming in deeper dedicated libraries. All three are good bang-for-buck, and EW5 has a special new collection of ethnic voices from many different cultures. These three make a nice collection together.

I'd appreciate hearing your opinion of the quality of the Chinese instruments when you get this library. Hard to tell from the sample song -- it has too much going on. Some of the demos, e.g. the banjos, sounded very synthy IMO.

Sure thing. And though I already have good sources for many of those, there are still a few that are unique to this library (alongside some hard to find Indian and Japanese instruments).

Shooshie thinks it likely that this library will respond well to wind controllers, based on the work Garritan has done to make his other products wind controller friendly (though he pays more attention to EWI than WX territory). At any rate, I seem to recall that the ARIA engine is fairly easy to configure for your own controller mapping.

I've been a bit shy about buying this library, as the audio demos are horrible and don't represent much of the library. I hated everything in the ARIA free pack that came with my Aksi EWI USB (which I sold, as I prefer the Yamaha WX5). I have a feeling that I'm just not a fan of Garritan's sampling and/or programming style, in spite of support for BC.

I did use Ethno World 5 last night though, and found its coverage of South Asian instruments, Persian, Middle Eastern, to perhaps be the best sampling and programming of any of my sources (including Quantum Leap RA/Silk, the Tampura but not the deeply-sampled Sitar in Sitar World, and Ethno 2 just because it doesn't cover as much from that particular part of the world as EW5 does). Great miking, good detail, and excellent reactivity to playing/phrasing. WAY better than Silk!

Yes, the demos are disappointing, but it has more of the few specific instruments I've been looking for. It's not a lot of money so I might give it a shot.

Yeah, it is cheap, so might be worth it due to its LARGE collection of rare instruments (especially rare winds).

Surprised they still don't offer a boxed edition. The main thing is that this means full price only; retail editions can be marked down during sales.

As noted elsewhere, Garritan World is on sale for a few more days -- at least at Time+Space (UK).

I haven't had time to play with it much yet, but found it interesting that the presets are paired in two sets, one of which is oriented towards "notation", so I guess that means that Finale can work with ANY of the Garritan libraries and not just GPO.

It took me over two hours to annotate Garritan World Instrument, as at least 2/3 of the content is unique to that library.

I'm too tired to cross-reference for alternate names and thus consolidate my reference, but I am very inspired to try some of these instruments after reading the descriptions.

No other world instrument collection is quite this scholarly, or as comprehensive in covering every region of the world, as well as providing so many wind and string instruments.

As I mentioned earlier, it was worth the small price just for the learning experience alone, and the reference manual is a time-saver as it disambiguates a lot of stuff that is hard to pin down on the web (even with Wiki).