Floyd,
That is a wonderful song; the sentiments, the vocal delivery and the arrangement are all top class.

Strings are in my opinion notoriously difficult for us "home recordists" to get to sound accurate as there are SO many variables to play with. I just mention attack and decay of the individual instruments as an example.
Then there is the arrangement of the notes. If the chord change is G to C, for example, then the movement of the notes are important, as are the inversions of the chords for each section of the orchestra. eg: the notes are G B D to G C E, or G B D to E G C or B G D to C E G, (no passing notes mentioned here)

I sometimes use Cakewalk Studio Instruments in my arrangements in my string sections and I try to get the 3 instruments Bass, Cello and Violins,recorded individually, to stay in the range of their real counterparts. Which is <swear word> difficult mad to get to sound right as it takes as long to do that as it does to do the writing,singing and recording.
So I usually just dial up an orchestra patch in say EMU Proteus Free and play the chords and then add some movement after.....sometimes!!
I also use the CHORD track, which can be saved from a BIAB song, for this as all the notes are already displayed as midi and need some judicious transposing which then achieves a simplified version of movement. A few songs I have done have involved many versions of that track, with notes added by me and some notes of the same pitch "glued together". In a 2 bar version of the 1st example above, G B D to G C E, I occasionally glue the G's together and say split the G in the second bar at beat 2.
In my DAW, Cubase SX, there is a midi mute tool which I use a lot to try and keep a part to, say, a 2 note chord which moves. Usually done visually by looking at the piano roll with a chorus/verse fitting the screen.

Here is an article giving advice on Arranging for Strings which explains it better than I could.


BUT the song, The Girl Next Door is still as in my first paragraph. A wonderful listen.Well done, I assume the wife is proud to be the subject of such a wonderful song.

Alyn

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