"Here I Am" - First attempt at orchestral arranging (with Miroslav Philharmonik)

Hey everyone
 
This is a song written and performed by a gospel singer friend of mine and arranged and produced by me. When she first played and sang it for me (on piano) I heard a kind of Middle Eastern sound in the melody and chords and so took that approach with the orchestrations (using Miroslav Philharmonik by IKM). I wasn't sure I could capture it the way I was hearing it in my head, I've always been more of a Pop/Rock/R&B style arranger, but I gave it a shot and loved the challenge. (Plus it gave me a good excuse to try out Miroslav which I bought last spring during IKM's big discount blowout but never really experimented with much.)
 
Anyone care to give it a listen, feedback is welcome! Thanks... 
 
https://soundcloud.com/pjfarrauto/here-i-am

Thanks for listening, bitflipper.
 
Swells would definitely bring more life to it, for sure. I was disappointed to find that MP doesn't respond to aftertouch (or, if it does, I haven't figured out how to activate it. I have Sonar enabled to receive it). There is a knob labeled "Swell" on the UI and I've tried playing with its settings, but it doesn't seem to do anything that's obvious...?
 
I guess I'll have to do it manually like you suggested. It would be so much more convenient (and natural) to be able to just adjust the volume/brightness by pressing a little more/less on a key. If you happen to know of a CAL script, plugin, or any technique that could expedite doing this I'd sure like to hear it. There's a CAL for crescendo/decrescendo, but it's for note velocity (and is how I created the cymbal swells). I think I remember seeing something in the manual about mapping certain controllers (i.e. using the mod wheel to control channel volume on the fly). That would help. I'll have to look into that.

Very pretty.  Nicely sung and orchestrated.

Thanks Lynn. Chrissy was going through a particularly bad time when she wrote the lyrics and I guess was in a more heightened state of awareness.