I always like a "Composer Challenge". These are little events where someone, usually a sample library company, invites viewers to compose a bit of music with some constraint.
Recently, The Crow Hill Company held a little challenge to celebrate the release of their sixth free Vaults instrument, Studio Drums. The brief was, simply, to write a piece only using the free Vaults instruments.
At the time of writing, the free instruments available are:
Attic Grand (piano)
R&D strings
Celestatone (a Celesta)
Shimmer Guitar
Chorus Synth
Studio Drums
For a free offering this is stunningly good, and they are adding more instruments as time goes on.
I don't often have the chance to write anything, or if I have time, I then lack the inspiration, but this time the stars aligned! I kept the piece brief, and happy. I used all the instruments, sometimes a couple of times with different settings. Finally, I added a little production like the panning effect on the synth pulses.
Unfortunately my piece wasn't picked as "the one they liked most", but it's mostly the taking part that counts (I'll admit to being slightly disappointed) and it was fun writing it. There are indeed some excellent other entries, you can listen to them here, but I'm pleased my piece doesn't stand out as being rubbish compared to them. In my opinion, anyway.
In fact, I think I might like this track the very best out of everything I've written. I keep humming the melody so it only goes to show I shouldn't agonise over things so much. This track was mostly all shoved into the DAW in one evening session and the melody was a very final afterthought.
Here's the piece: