Thank you a ton for the listen!
Throughout the process of making these, I was reading articles and watching youtube videos for how writing for strings works and I essentially found a lot of people who were writing for strings, but for stringed instrument players. They would say things like "Its really demoralizing for a bass player to receive 3 pages of whole notes. If you want long pads thats fine but basses can play the melody too. Make sure you give everyone a turn"
This kinda felt like it was unrelated for a day or so before I started to think "Well, I know im not writing for people, but what if I wrote like I wanted people to play my music?" and that became the basis for how both pieces were composed. I tried not to move past 3 musical ideas at a time and kept the energy up by raising the notes of lower instruments instead of the higher pitched solo strings. I kind of adopted the same mentality for track 1 with horns, but I used to be a jazz drummer so the conversations between instruments felt like it came intuitively. The hard part was really just making sure that all the instruments were having fun playing.
I learned that mid way through the composition week and that seemed to shape the rest of the tracks. Im really glad that you found something enjoyable in listening to these songs! I really thought coming in that my composition was going to be a weaker aspect.