Mind Blown! A GR-55, Reaper and Spitfire BBC Orchestra

Peter Devine

I just received my FREE version of the BBC Orchestra pack, and I can't quite believe it. Installed it in Reaper this evening.

I can't play a piano, so I'm stuck with a GR-55 guitar thingy as my Midi input.

Haven't had this much fun in years!

https://soundcloud.com/peter-str-mberg-1/return-of-the-redeye

All credit to John Williams for the "inspiration" :)

Thank you Spitfire for the amazing software, that even makes an idiot with a guitar sound like a 20 piece orchestra. I've tried every guitar pedal under the sun to get a good string sound, and suddenly there it was.

Des

That’s very impressive , I’m not familiar with midi guitar so Im interested to know apart from pitch,note length and volume ? Does the GR send any other midi data to your daw ?

Justin

https://community.spitfireaudio.com/discussion/comment/1117#Comment_1117

I think it can also send pitch bend MIDI messages when you bend a string.

Peter Devine

Cheers Des, I never expected such results right out of the box, and how often can you say that?

It doesn't send pitch bend as such, it sends the actual tone you are playing, unless you set the 55 to only send whole tones.

So the whammy bar and string bends are your pitch controls :)

You get a lot of natural volume variation, it's easy to do swells by playing harder, though there is also a foot pedal on the GR-55 you can assign to volume, pitch, etc.

The great thing about the Spitfire set-up is that it already splits the "keyboard" up, so I can have bass sounds on the bass strings and violins on the treble strings etc, without too much messing about in midi settings, i.e. I send everything on channel one and split/transpose in software.

The only thing I did on the virtual keyboard was the harp crescendo at the end, and copy/pasted it once to give two hands :)

Stuart

I like it but was also expecting to hear a wailing distorted guitar lick to end it :)

Peter Devine

https://community.spitfireaudio.com/discussion/comment/1130#Comment_1130

Perhaps when I try the imperial march... :)

Sascha

https://community.spitfireaudio.com/discussion/130/mind-blown-a-gr-55-reaper-and-spitfire-bbc-orchestra

This is fantastic! The first time I heard that you can record MIDI with a guitar was in 1999, when Mike Oldfield released his album "Guitars". Very exciting! I like your short piece of music!

Glen

Ha! So funny, great minds think alike! This is one of the first things I did with the BBC. Using a DX-7 as a controller.

https://soundcloud.com/user-169093375/skywalker