You preferences regarding a folky song's outro

So I'm working on, for me, a very orchestral song.

• Voice
• Guitar
• Piano
• Violin/fiddle
• Mandolin
• Harmonica.

It runs to about five minutes.

The piano, fiddle/violin, and mandolin players will do line-end/chord-change fills call-and-response style. E.g., the piano does one fill. On the next fill-spot, the violin speaks, etc. At a few points, they join forces. And they each have a small solo on an instrumental section that runs through the verse, bridge, and chorus chords.

We've even got this turn-taking and response-playing in the vocals, as the players will sing certain lines in the thrice-repeating chorus.

All that's pretty nicely worked out. The outro, though, is giving me a bit of a headache.

A few of our songs end with piano, or mandolin, or violin, or guitar being prominent or solo. What we don't have is one ending on just the harmonica. Also, our venue has a very nice natural reverb, giving harmonica played there an aptly haunted quality. So that's a plus for ending on the harmonica solo, with the other instruments having faded out as this harmonica begins.

But a harmonica can be so freakin' harsh and melodramatic, especially when the song's spirit is that time and Stuff Happens can wash away a relationship and even its bittersweet memories. The harmonica can clash with this resignation-to-fading-away meaning. I can play the harmonica gently to a slow fade, but there's a risk there that, say, the mandolin, able to feather itself out so gently, doesn't quite have.

Hence the poll. In a folky, wistful song, what fades on {X instrument} generally seem to best fit?

Yeah, yeah, you need to hear the song first. But I'm not sharing that until it's done. Not even with this charitable crew.

Thanks for your choice/any thoughts you wanna post here.

Also, how the hell do real composers do it? It must take ten lives to truly orchestrate 70-some instruments for more than 15 minutes!

 

If I go with the harmonica, I think it does. Since the song is about eternal things in effect erasing memories. (Not that I planned it that way, but that is what it patterned out to be.)

I like the mandolin a lot here, but a prior song in the set ends with the mandolin's lovely feathering out on the winds quality.

 

Hmmmm..... Might be the ticket!