What is the Pendulum?

While working on team projects at BUAS, I found myself swinging between feelings of hope and despair about our progress. Although I feel stronger in this regard now, especially since becoming DP Lead for our year 3 project and stability is required of me, as a developer without the oversight of the whole project it was more chaotic. I channeled both ends of the Pendulum here. Truthfully this EP has little to do with game development, but how those feelings feel and seeped into other areas of my life too.

Dreams Die

I tried to give the song’s intro movement only through instrumentation, so not relying on risers or other effect tricks. To that end, the intro is spread across 3 movements that increase in complexity and act as major chords, before it crashes into the melancholy of the chorus. The first part is also played soft and rises in plucking strength, only to diminish again.

I use the intro as an opportunity to bring in the bass thats a bit unlike what I’ve used before, and acousticly isn’t that related.

I wanted to give the vocals lots of space, with silence afterwards to let the mood and words sit with you.

The guitar work is actually very chopped up from this point due to the limitation of not writing down the part beforehand, and not wanting to rerecord it. I had to chop and extend sections, pitch up, to give it proper timings and variation.

The chorus returns with more intensity on the drums and a distorted voice in the background. This gives the vocals more weight, and hints at a shadowy figure behind me who is fueling my depressive thoughts. The distorted voice gets introduced in the previous verse for a similar reason

The structure is very short and simple, intro, chorus, verse, [breakdown?] chorus. There was potential to grow into a larger song with another verse, but I liked the conciseness and potential. It tells a story and I didn’t have more to say here. The lyrics were difficult enough and had a rewrite in them

Gamepad

The intro changed a lot during production. This song started with the gamepad sounds forming a beat, hence the name, but then turned into another hotline miami inspired song. I replaced the intro with a more classic electronic intro with EQ’s rising and different instruments fading in and out. But I tried reintroducing the original gamepad beat because it sounded good and it ended up creating this simple beat construction turned epic twist as the sonic landscape changes dramatically. Playful experimentation with the scrap sounds in the project file that can sometimes bring wonderful results.

The structure is quite similar to many electronic tracks. intro/build- drop – build – drop. But then I add a breakdown drop 2 as the vehicle to build a energetic moment. The breakdown was once again borne from in-project messing around but the path was clear from then on.

I used the energetic climax to communicate a dark feeling I have as an artist. A feeling I have to shout from the rooftops if its going to be heard if at all. That I feel repelled by the audience I find with my songs. It’s a screw you to the audience in what would otherwise be a crowd-pleaser.

This is my love

The intro to this song is extremely bare for what it turns into. I think this contrast reflects my feelings around attachment well. It’s a moment of frail lucidity before my full “dark” feelings enter the picture.

“This is my love, I’m sorry” → the rest of the song being “my love”

the “black words black thoughts .. etc” are to paint a picture of black tendrils coming out of me, but then I realized it could also mean black, like racially. Or black, like black metal which I’m taking a lot of inspiration from. I kept it.

The lyrics are both self-aggrandizing and anti-social, depressive, isolated. This is my psyche at a bad point.

HeavyMetal 3

This song pains me for it’s mixing.

Originally another black metal song, I replaced guitars with my favorite little oo aa plugin because it felt more impactful than the guitars, a skill issue.

For emil’s verse, I was originally fast rapping over it, but wasn’t super happy with it and wasnt feeling up to lyrics. I asked Emil to drop something he’d do and it sounded amazing. He called these scratch tracks despite being like 10 takes. I think he has different quality standards than me with vocals. No he definitely does.

I love the guitar on the back end. The drums follow 2 patterns back and forth, one cramped and one open which creates a nice to and fro. The guitars have a irregular pattern they follow which is shown before which keeps it fresh on multiple listens.

I WISH I TOOK ANOTHER FEW MINUTES WITH THE MIXING THO

Iloveyouwow

Pure emotional lightning in a bottle. This song is in reference to myself, its a self-love song. Pretty cool.

Dieyoung

After finishing the album, it felt impactful but missing a downbeat after iloveyouwow. I was really feeling Kesha’s song, especially thinking of Penny Parker’s slowed rendition. I felt this gave enough of an emotional slowdown after the more intense performance and leaves the listener with a happy feeling about the project. Maybe it dilutes the overal work’s impression. Idk, I like the comedown here.

Technically it isn’t very impressive. Mixing is eh, vocals are eh, guitars are good, bass is off-tempo. I like the vocal effect for the high pitch bridge in the middle. best part of the song