Hey Paul,

Welcome to the forum!! Quite an ambitious undertaking switching styles and tempos in the middle of the song a la Paul McCartney in his Band on the Run days.

I applaud your courage and experimentation. I am pretty sure you have my phone and email and I would love to chat about this production because my thoughts would go on forever in a post.

If you have the new version of Band in a Box there many solid styles (especially the Xtra styles which I highly encourage you to examine on the home page) in every genre that pretty much do all your preliminary mixing for you insofar as basic tracks as concerned.

http://www.pgmusic.com/xtrastyles.php?pak=all&os=win#pak4

Once you have a profoundly solid bed, you can go in and start adding vocals in your DAW of choice. BIAB is built to take much of the guess work out of professional songs, but again we can talk about this on the phone if you want to. Sticking with a style and augmenting it slightly with other instrument choices carefully made allows you to settle into a tight, tight groove and grab a hold of that elusive "catchy-ness" factor.

I am glad you are writing and posting here man. This place will be a blast for you to go on an educational journey.

There are some real pros on here and they can get pretty specific, so get ready for the feedback.

smile