Problem with Clarinets

The rendition of the first movement of Mahler's Symphony No. 1 is almost completed: missing are only the flutes, oboe, and clarinet voices from bar 263 till the end. But now I hit a slight obstacle: the Es-Clarinet requires a high A and high B to be played - however, the Garritan Personal Orchestra (GPO4) samples only go up to the high G... I have hit these limitations of the GPO4 already in other instruments earlier, when I recorded other movements, for example when some very low notes of brass instruments were not there. Mahler just uses the full range of the instruments. For some reason, GPO4 did not record those extreme notes... it would be nice if in such a case the missing notes would just be automatically extended, based on the last available sample. It would not matter if this would not sound perfect - since it is an extreme note, it is anyway not supposed to sound perfect, even with a real instrument - these extreme notes are often only used to create an effect.

I had solved this problem in other renditions by using a standard software synthesizer in SONAR: Cakewalk TTS-1. However, as soon as I loaded that synth and played the first note on it, SONAR froze, the audio engine crashed, and I had to reboot the system. This happened several times... I suspect this has to do with the fact that I have loaded many (more than 30) GPO4 samples into memory, using 4 different ARIA VST instances. Should theoretically not matter, as the 12 GB memory of MAESTRO-2 are not fully used yet, but it appears that the memory management has some difficulties handling both the GPO4 and the TTS1 simultaneously.

So it looks as if I will for now not be able to play those high notes in the Es clarinet... fortunately this is in places towards the end where the music is very loud, most instruments of the orchestra are playing ff, and that single clarinet would not have been audible anyway, would only have contributed to the overall sound colour. But still, is a pity! I will have to find a solution for this eventually.

Uploading Debussy's "The Snow is Dancing"

Just tried to upload the MP3 file of Debussy's piano music "The Snow is Dancing" to TuneCore. Choose a very generic "artwork", had no time to work on any other more sophisticated version.

But there was "a problem with the MP3 file": the bitrate is too low. Turns out Tunecore wants MP3 with at least 300 bps. I thought that I had used a variable bitrate, but it seems that the file was at 128 bps.

Not sure if my MP3 encoder supports 300 bps...

Anyway, for iTunes the file must NOT be MP3 or any other compressed version, but pure Wave... that will take a while to upload.

Designing of Cover in TuneCore - Problem

Ran into a few problems: Could not get an image snap shot from my own video - need to use the original capture software to do this. I want to have a snow-fall background, as it is on the YouTube video of my version of "The Snow is Dancing".

Ok, so I decide to use one of the predefined templates on TuneCore. Scroll ahead until page 6 - no page with a snow background. I choose any that does not look too weird. Then: the template shows up again, centered on the page, enlarged. But top and bottom are cut off. I try to use the window slider - the template display keeps flickering, and remains "centred", which means that top and bottomn are cut off, because my XGA screen is too small.

People at TuneCore, have you ever tried your web interface with reaal people? Who came up with the idea to keep the design template always centred, and then have the bottom cut off? Especially because there at the bottom there is a button to press, something "I take this template". But since it keeps just flickering out of view when I scroll, I have no chance of clicking it.

I guess I give up for today... uploading a single does not really work fast.

And anyway, why am I prompted for album artwork, when I just wanted to upload a single track?