Hi Everyone,

I'm in a quandary with the arrangement of one of my songs that I wrote six years ago. It's the first song for which I created a demo arrangement when I purchased Band in a Box in December 2018. I used the Slow Country Ballad style to do this, which gave my song a bluegrass sound because of its fast tempo (140 bpm). I eventually swapped out one of the fingerpicking guitars for a mandolin to enhance its bluegrass sound. When I shared it with my producer a little over a year ago and asked him to replace the drums and bass guitar with his own custom tracks, he suggested adding strings to the arrangement as well in place of the piano. At the time, I thought it was a good idea because I knew that the arrangement lacked something. But when I heard his arrangement, I didn't like it because the strings dominated all the other instruments and mostly eliminated the bluegrass mood and feel of the song. Though I had experimented with the fiddle real tracks in BiaB, none of them were a good fit for my song either. Several months ago, I hired a pro country female vocalist in Nashville to record all the vocal tracks for this song because the synthesized vocals I had previously created for it were also conflicting with the arrangement and making it harder for me to figure out how to perfect it. Though the vocals improved its overall sound, I still couldn't determine what the arrangement needed. A few days ago, I decided to hire a pro fiddle player on Fiverr to record a custom fiddle track to go with the arrangement. After listening to her fiddle track with the arrangement last night, I have mixed feelings about it because some parts sound good but not other parts. This morning it occurred to me that I should consider finding another producer who has more experience with the bluegrass genre than my producer has, but I wouldn't know where to begin looking for one. So, I'm in a quandary and would appreciate any suggestions and advice that you can offer. Here's a link to a folder on my Box account where I've uploaded various arrangements of my song with and without vocals:

https://app.box.com/s/nnmfsrmta8thc08bzvo46y7h259q3r9v

Tom

Last edited by muzikluver; 03/09/24 11:58 AM. Reason: added "Bluegrass/country song" to the title
Tom Levan (pronounced La-VAN)
BiaB 2024 Win UltraPAK Build 1109, Xtra Style PAKs 1-11, RB 2024, Windows 10 Pro 64-bit, Intel Q9650 3 GHz, 16 GB RAM, 500 GB SSD & 2 TB HDD, Tracktion 6 & 7 (freebies), Cakewalk, Audacity, MuseScore 2.1 & 3.4, Synthesizer V