Conceptions & Considerations

Up to this point, I’ve done songs that aren’t too popular in the game. The big reason is that I wanted enough time to perfect Light Dash’s “sound” via experimentation with other songs so that these more known songs would sound their best. In the lineup, I knew the battle songs would get the most attention from the community moving forward. I decided to push them back as far as I could within reason. 

In Chao Ruins’ case, the remix I released in 2019 was a big inspiration. I love the feel of it and aimed to enhance what I already did instead of rebuilding it as I did for Title Screen. Similar to Title Screen and Emerald Beach, this led to many versions of the song on the backend. After doing a bit of analysis, in addition to the mix, I realized I had an issue at the composition level of the piece more so than the sound I was getting (particularly with the drums). Put simply, the drum elements from the remix were too “chaotic” or “displaced” from the other elements. From that, the journey up to the final heard on YouTube was me walking the line between intentionally chaotic and uniformed.

Regarding band lore, Picks and Shell are more rock-oriented (though Picks is closer to the style), and Lowen is a novice. For something as jazzy as Chao Ruins, I wanted to reflect the idea of the song being a little difficult or “experimental” for Light Dash. As such, Picks and Lowen decided that they should do something “different” to spice things up for the fans and decided to let Les go heavy with his style of music, hoping to mix them.

In fact, Chao Ruins is one of the reasons Les was written to be a “Jazz” Organist and not just a random keyboard player. Because of Chao Ruins specifically, I’ve snuck various jazz elements in many of Light Dash’s songs so that it doesn’t feel out of place when getting to this song.

Creative Decisions

The first big decision was more unified hits between the drums, ensemble, and melodics. Each element is playing or references a rhythmic motif that’s already been introduced within the song. You can really hear this by comparing the drums from the final version to the old remix I did before. The intro introduces this concept through its unison hits.

The rhythm guitars are much more pronounced and cleaned up as well. I decided to have them highlight the bass part more so that the parts could be glued together better. To which, the bass part was simplified to highlight Lowen being a novice and give the bassline more weight by playing lower. Because I don’t have to compensate for the Bass playing so high from the arpeggio, it allowed more space in the mid/upper-mid area.

Regarding the song’s composition, this was undoubtedly the greatest decision for enhancing the piece. That extra space allowed me to experiment with new elements like the funk-ish guitar heard at the start and midway through the loop and the falling synth pads heard in heavier sections. I also got more presence from the jazzy stabs and chord extensions from the Organ (which can’t be heard too clearly in the old remix). Realizing the utility of this space, I took it further by having the bass/guitars hang on single notes and stop playing arpeggios. 

My personal favorite inclusion was the pitched synth shake heard in the intro and unison hit midway through. It gives a “blast of funk” to the piece. This idea came out of thin air and challenged me to sound design a bit. (Check out the GBA Synth List to learn what synths I used). I had to be subtle with it. In one version, it was used about 5 times in a single loop!

My next favorite inclusion was the walking bassline and scale walk-down heard midway through. It started as an accident when I MIDI recorded a wrong note and didn’t nudge upward all the way to fix it. I liked it so much that I cross-referenced it on my old guitar and bass vst to see how easy it was to play for Lowen (if I can play it, a novice actively studying Bass can). I didn’t want this to be the only spot I’m utilizing walkups or walk-downs, so I snuck them into various other places in the bassline. In some cases, rhythm guitar joins in as well.

Synthy bleeps/plucks and falling pads were other elements that proved very useful. I ran into an issue with my old remix and the original track: the song loses movement when the Organ isn’t playing. In my remix, you can tell I was trying to add this movement back using the drums, claps, and the already moving Bass, but I came to realize that it wasn’t enough, especially after adjusting the bassline. The swing palm mutes in the Rhythm helped with this movement, and a soft gliding synth was perfectly tucked under everything for some subtle movement.

A final note here is the Toms. In the final section before the loop back, I raised the lower frequencies of the Toms to give them more weight. I intentionally wanted to mask the bass guitar and the kick here to give the toms more weight and emphasis to the section. Because of this, I was somewhat subtle on the Toms leading up to it.

Struggles

A subtle issue I ran into in the composition was with the Organ. From Light Dash’s Band Profile, Question & Answer was out of the question here, but the Organ was playing a bit too much in general. Specifically, I wanted to emphasize when the Organ was not playing. The two solutions to this heard in the final is the lead synth playing the melody before the lead guitars do and giving the lead guitar more presence (ducking the Organ) when the Organ and lead guitar are playing in unison.

On the topic of composition, settling on the drum part was the most challenging part of the song. Again, compare the 2019 remix to this current remix, and you’ll instantly hear the difference. The drums sounded like they were “playing overtop the group” instead of playing with the group (the Tom part and fills being a prominent example). 

The Organ chord extensions/stabs were a little tricky to get right as well. They often came out too quiet or covered up the melody too much. A solution I tried worked very well for what I was after. If you’re familiar with the drawbars on the Organ, I selected the sound/settings I liked for the upper manual as usual. 

I used to do the same for the lower manual but had a little epiphany after catching the organ part on a spectrum analyzer. There were too many harmonics between the two. My solution was to prioritize the drawbars producing fundamental notes (1, 3, 4, and 6) while easing off the others. I did a slight opposite with the upper manual. In addition, I made sure to omit or double whatever melody note was getting masked.

As I mentioned, the intro and final sections before the loop often sounded static, lacking movement. Unifying the Toms spoken about in the Creative Decisions section helped, but the soft gliding synths really saved these sections by giving them more dynamic movement while being subtle. This lack of movement was another reason I came to love those pitched synth shakes as they struck through that monotonous tone.

I struggled with where to put the pitched synth stabs because I didn’t want them distracting too much from the melodic content. Similarly, I wanted to add pinch harmonics in many places in the rhythm guitars, but each one I tried covered up the lead guitar melody too much.  I ended up only adding them in the outro.

The swing palm mutes in the Rhythm guitars became necessary for that movement I wanted. Because I decided to have the bassline stop playing arpeggios, the rhythm guitars lost a lot of motion. In many versions, the Rhythm simply plays straight 8th notes. I always wanted these fast-swinging palm mutes, but they just weren’t coming out right with H7S. Every time I MIDI recorded them, there was a lag in the swing rhythm, which caused me to consistently nudge MIDI notes. 

After upgrading my computer system and getting ahold of V-Metal, it was the exact opposite! They came out so well (or at the very least, naturally) and I re-recorded the entire Rhythm guitar part using V-Metal. I’m not sure if I’ll make the full switch but for now, V-Metal has definitely been added to the toolkit. I talk more about it in Picks’ Meta Instrument post. 

On the mixing side, all of the issues I ran into here came from the relationship between the Bass, rhythms, and lead Guitars. A plugin by Wavesfactory called Trackspacer solved all of these issues. There was a lot of mid-range build-up from the rhythms, or so I thought. It turns out that the Bass was the big cause only when they were playing together (in addition to the typical 100-200Hz range of rhythms when they were palm muting).

I first automated the volume of the bass guitar but that thinned the guitars too much for my taste. I then did the opposite but I lost the tone/clarity from the rhythms. I then made a cut on the Bass but I lost clarity when the Bass wasn’t playing with the Rhythms (the 1st and 3rd verse).

From my experience with Chapter End, I immediately reached for Trackspacer (sidenote to audio producers: Side Chained Multi-band Compression/Dynamic EQ can work too. I just like the interface and already had Trackspacer before I learned about this technique). I set the cutoff/sidechain to trigger just the mid-range when the Rhythms were playing with a gentle ratio (“very” sensitive ratio knob. I never go higher than 15%. Usually, even that is too high). This got me exactly where I wanted with the Bass to Rhythm balance.

A similar situation happened between the Organ, Rhythms, Funk Rhythm, and Lead Guitar when they all played in the 1st & 2nd verse. To summarize the issue, it came from panning and Presence Priority. The Organ has the melody in the verses but doesn’t have much meaningful frequency content above 6kHz. As such, any amped guitar will naturally be heard in this range called “Presence.”

To avoid the guitars getting too much presence and being perceived as the melody, I panned the melodic guitar to the right and the funk-ish guitar to the left while having Organ in the middle. This helped, but the lead guitar still had too much presence because it naturally “would” have a presence in that range. Put another way, it sounded like the main melody was on the right instead of in the center (lopsided balance).

Of course, I tried the typical volume automation, which got me closer (for whatever reason, this worked great for the funk rhythm). However, I still struggled with volume between Organ and Lead. This is where the rhythms came in. In Chapter End, something similar happened: the Rhythm’s 4-6kHz frequencies kept clashing with the lead guitar. I used Trackspacer and sidechained the rhythms to leads so that whenever the Lead plays, that presence frequency is ducked on the Rhythm.

In Chao Ruins, the opposite of this worked very well! The rhythmic parts were “rhythmic” in that area and were already balanced from being hard-panned. Put another way, it sounded more like a “stereo hi-hat” than a panned melody like what I was getting from the Lead. It’s there, but because it’s so percussive, you don’t really interpret it more than the Organ, even though it fills that space. Leads sat right in the pocket while still being on the right out of the way. Of course, I swapped this so that when the Lead and high Lead guitar play in unison, the Rhythm’s presence frequencies are duck, similar to what I did in Chapter End.

That’s all for this track breakdown. Hope you enjoyed and thanks for reading. Please reach out with any questions or ideas for the future of the Sonic GBA Project! 🙂