The Crow Hill Company is not simply an online music tech store, it’s a network of composers trying to bring the best out of one another. I’ve participated in their open-forum “Fellowship of the Ring Pull Podcast” chats for several months now wherein anyone and everyone hops on a video call and we gab about the industry, creating, music history and one another. It’s a very worthy hour and a half once a week. I feel as though it’s not only helped me gain confidence with my career choice as a musician, but I’m also learning and growing in the presence of international success stories.

As a part of their community efforts, composing challenges are hosted regularly. Prizes go to the most engaging pieces and winners are offered money, virtual instruments and much more.

In their most recent challenge, they tasked their network with rescoring the trailer for the Snakes of Russia’s Venom sample library. I am very pleased to share that I won third place with this very submission. You can watch the announcement and hear me talk about my triumph here.

Prizes aside, it was a real joy to reach outside of my comfort zone as the criteria involved sampling via mobile phone recordings, and I had never sampled anything prior. Luckily, outside of sampling phone recordings, the world was our oyster.

My journey began with my cellphone and an elastic band wrapped around my leatherwork toolbox. With the help of heavy compression, loads of EQ and saturation, that very sound filled the role of a bass and I framed the rest of the track around the bass line that you’ll find kicks in halfway through. Of course, the natural progression for me was to build an off-kilter drum kit. So, I grabbed my leather burnisher, smacked my desk and whittled away at the sonic energy of it all; pulling me toward the ever-so-nostalgic sound of a 007 Goldeneye-esque snare. The bass drum bellowed through a large vase that laid a towel across, rested on the side my bathtub and tapped on the bottom with an ancient wooden sort-of butter churn, mashing tool that I bought one day thinking I might need it AND THAT DAY HATH COME.

Now, I’ve recently taken to using fountain pens, so the hi-hat is actually a pen swiping across a bit of quality paper; delivering a scratchy, earthy quality. By this point, the song was really beginning to take shape though it lacked air and texture. I decided to break out an old violin bow, a metal candlestick and a silver chalice that I use around the house because I’m ridiculous. At the risk of giving myself a headache and losing my hearing, I tacked on an inordinant amount of EQ, reverb and delay to sculpt high pads, a tubular synth and a few wooshes to transition between sections. The final pieces of the puzzle trailed out of layering, mixing down, layering again, throwing arps on a few established sounds and layering some more, then mixing, then mixing and then I mixed it also.

I loved this challenge, I probably spent way too much time on it but I’m glad I did. Who knows, maybe down the line I may start selling my own sample libraries or virtual instruments…

To cap this post off, and for your listening pleasure, I’ve included links below to a few other composer submissions:

· Carlos Yusim
· Cats and Sound
· Superstudio
· Phillip Nathaniel Freeman
· Leigh Randle
· Tom Coote
· Barry Power
· KG70