I haven't done a timed challenge
in a while, so I decided to give it a go last night and see what happens. I had already selected the thumpy synth bass in Track 1 (from a previous jam I was playing around with), so I guess I cheated a little, but I hadn't written anything with it. Since I had very limited time, I only got 4 tracks, the bass, some drums, a weird synth noise, and a piano, but all in all, I think this turned out pretty cool. It definitely has some sweet ideas, particularly in the piano part, which I may expand on and use for a more complete song.
Listen to Ancient Lessons here.
The bass begins the track,
with the progression taking up 8 bars total, before repeating. Next up is the drums, for which I use the 'Drums' set from Spitfire Audio's LABS. They wound up working pretty well, and the snare ghost notes sound really sweet. Track 3 is a synth noise, which just drones on a C on the 1st and 3rd (and 5th and 7th) bars, which I added last minute, just to try and divide the song up a bit, as it was repetitive. Finally, we have Track 4, the Soft Piano, also from LABS. The progression here turned out pretty cool: (first 4 bars) CminAdd2, Fmin7/11, Fmaj7, to Gmin, (second 4 bars) CminAdd2, Fmin7/11, Bb (second inversion), and lastly, Bb (spread voicing). You could sub in an Add9 for the Add2s, but I don't like using that unless it actually is a 9th above the root, which in these cases, wouldn't be accurate.