WIP Update #31 - Oceans

Hey Everyone!

Today, I want to follow up on my last update and show you the rest of the songs for the EP I'm working on. Details below!

0:00 - Gray: As I get older, I realize that nothing in life is black and white. That becomes more apparent every day. Life is gray and I felt that come through a lot of the source material for this EP. I wanted chords that made you feel slightly uneasy - not good, not bad. And I designed the main synth to feel “watery”. I hadn’t intended to write lyrics for any of these songs, but they just came out for this one so I went for a Kavinsky "Nightcall" style vocoder - though I might decide to sing it straight myself or ask a female vocalist to sing it. There are some dialogue parts to fill out the verse sections, but I can't include them in the preview.

Here are the lyrics:
All I see is gray.
I can feel the tide pull me in both directions
All I see is gray.
I’m just cold and gray

All I see is gray.
Nothing left for me out on these lawless oceans.
All I see is gray.
I’m just cold and gray

3:54 - Rethinking Everything: This is a Drum and Bass song about making a life-altering, challenging decision. I can't get into the specific situation I wrote about here, but it's really sad. I wanted each section to represent a part of the process: the sadness and struggle that it is to make a weighty decision (intro), the fear & danger that ensues once you've decided to move forward (build up), the unsureness and rethinking that occurs just before following through (right before the chorus/drop), and the finality and sadness that sets in as you move forward (chorus/drop). 

This is the saddest song from the EP - I chose Drum and Bass for this piece because I thought this style lent itself really well to emulating how a person would feel with all of these emotions racing through you in a situation like this and because the tempo of the song can vary greatly (slow vs fast).

The bass synth here is supposed to represent waves, there will be some dialogue bits to accompany the final version, and of course there's a lot to do on the sound design side.

6:50 - Hunt the Hunters: This song is written about overcoming tough challenges and it relates somewhat to "The Storm" that I showed you in the last update. The main emotion of this song is "perseverance," but overall I wrote this song to encompass the human spirit to survive, especially in harsh conditions. Each section of the song represents something: The intro is supposed to feel like your on a boat, swaying back and forth having conflicting thoughts, the build is about embarking on a challenging journey, and the chorus/drop is when you're on that journey.

I wanted to round out the EP with a more traditional "Approaching Nirvana" song and this is definitely it. There will also be some dialogue parts in the final version.

---------------------------------------------------------------

The writing stages of this EP are basically done. I'll be finishing up all these songs before the end of the month and moving on to my other project, which is a bit different to this and I'm hoping to be able to show you something from that next week.

Like with last time, I may need to remove this update at some point, but for now you get a bit of insight into what I've been working on the last month or so. 

Both of these projects are really exciting, so I'm really happy to be able to show you some of the music :)

As always, thanks for your support - I hope your new year has gotten of to an amazing start.

Have a great weekend!
- Andrew