User Manual
6 A User’s Guide to Garritan World Instruments
Welcome to World Instruments!
A New World Order of Music
Music is very important to all peoples around the world. It is an integral part of a people’s identity,
reects who they are, and distinguishes them from other cultures. Many cultures have created a rich
and beautiful musical heritage that they express through unique musical instruments. In the West we
experience only a small fraction of the number of instruments that grace this planet.
Today’s music incorporates cultural cues from all regions of the globe. Every day we hear a cross-pol-
lination of musical instruments in blockbuster movies, television, popular games, Olympic sporting
events, ceremonies, and contemporary music. We are fortunate to live in a time where exposure to
such a diverse palette of sound is so easily accessible.
We produced this World Instruments library to celebrate the wonderful instruments from around
the world. We did our best to capture the essence of these enthralling instruments while providing
the necessary controls to play them expressively. e Garritan World Instruments collection oers
a large variety of beautifully sampled Native American and European utes, bamboo utes, Irish
utes, Chinese and Japanese utes, pan utes, and many other exotic winds from around the globe.
Included is a dynamic array of percussion instruments of all sizes and shapes—Taiko drums, Gamelan
instruments, Ewe and log drums, tablas, cymbals and gongs, mallet instruments, talking drums, steel
drums, a broad selection of Latin percussion, and much, much more. ere are numerous plucked
and bowed strings, including Indian Sitar, Japanese koto and shamisen, African kora, Middle Eastern
oud and santoor, and erhu, to name just a few. It took seven years of searching for these instruments
in order to provide this comprehensive collection, yet it by no means encompasses the vast number of
instruments throughout the world.
We think the world of you and your music. With Garritan World Instruments you need not be an
ethnomusicologist to produce world-class music. Our goal is to take you on a musical journey—to
explore new instruments and new types of music. ere is a world of instruments waiting for you to
discover. It is our hope that these diverse musical instruments from around the globe will allow you
to take your music in new and exciting directions.
Happy Musical Journeys!