Considerations / Conception

Although I knew I wanted a childlike band representing Chao before the project’s debut, the idea of Chao being an active part of the band did not come until just before Light Dash made their debut. The organ from the original Sonic Battle soundtrack is a very prominent instrument, but I didn’t want to make every band have an organ.

To that end, I thought Tari (before she was conceptualized as Tari) playing a toy organ would help, but video game synths and children’s instruments played by one person was a bit odd to me. In short, having a Toy Organ referencing that Sonic Battle sound was what made me explore having Chao play instruments.

Based on this decision, I decided to go in on Chao references and symbolism. I knew instantly that I would have to incorporate the Hero, Neutral, and Dark Chao concepts from Sonic Adventure 2. After this, I began exploring Toy Instruments for the trio to play.

Toy Suite from UVI ended up being the perfect starting point for me as they kept popping up in searches. I explored many of their sounds and quickly realized that I could do more than just have each Chao play a single instrument.

Funny enough, another toy instrument sample library appeared on the market called Abacus by Orchestral Tools. After finally recognizing their SINE Player’s “pay per instrument” model, I decided to purchase their Toy Percussion and Recorders/Ocarinas for Bam Bam and RiRi.

To back up a bit, I needed to solve the problem of Auditory Representation for the Chao without limiting myself to one instrument. These characters aren’t “real,” and I’m just one guy, so there needs to be a clear distinction within the audio itself of who you’re hearing in each group. This is especially true for characters that play the same instrument.

My solution became assigning instrumental groups to each Chao instead of a single instrument. A simple approach thinking on it now. The odds of another character for another band playing toy instruments were extremely low, but that didn’t click at the moment.

RiRi

Until now, I had completely forgotten that the Chao Gardens had toy instruments that the Chao would play in the classroom. Before this rediscovery, I had always planned on having a school recorder sound for the group, and it just so happens that the Chao Flute from the garden fits the bill.

With this, I assigned RiRi to Toy Winds instruments, sometimes called Blow Toys. Compared to the others, RiRi with a Chao flute looked more appealing and aesthetically pleasing. The bulk of RiRi’s toys come from Toy Suite. An exception is the school recorder (as heard in their debut), which mixes in the recorder from Abacus.

Toy Suite’s recorder has a lot of control over its ADSR parameters, but samples can sometimes sound repetitive. Abacus sounds too orchestral and handles ADSR parameters weirdly. I took the best of both worlds here.

KeKe

Keke’s instrumental group was primarily for using toy organ to bring that Sonic Battle sound back into the band a bit. Toy Suite’s collection of electronic organs isn’t grand but good enough. For their debut, I decided to utilize an actual toy piano instead, which is more iconic of that childlike sound.

Working with Toy Suite for the toy piano sound was tricky as some aren’t tuned properly and use sample shifting. If unfamiliar, ranges for many toy instruments tend to be too small for professional production use, so developers often record the authentic range and then pitch shift notes from that range up/down to extend the range of the entire instrument. I personally don’t like doing this much for tuned instruments, so I often use two separate toy pianos from Toy Suite.

Side note: The known mod Chao World Extended came up from my research with Chao. From going down this rabbit hole, I found out that there actually was a toy piano/organ in the game that went unused.

I started to reference that in KeKe’s instrument but decided against it for a few different reasons. Firstly, I discovered it a bit too late in the process (I was already about to send the brief to Tim at this point). Second, these two were garden variants. The piano was Hero Garden exclusive and the organ Dark Garden exclusive (from what I’ve gathered), which didn’t sit right with me for a few reasons. The biggest reason was that I still didn’t have an omochao reference in this band then, and KeKe’s instrument was the only place I could fit him in.

Bam Bam

Bam Bam was tricky because he and Rudi would share instrumental groups. Auditory Representation was even more critical here because anyone can play percussion. Unlike a pitched instrument, you can’t use rifts, unique motifs, or tones to distinguish from another as effectively.

Dropping Bam Bam and referencing the toy drum from the chao garden was not an option, and it wasn’t until I was writing Homecoming (Chao Byte’s debut) that I found a clear solution. For what I wanted with Bam Bam and what I needed with Rudi, I could separate the two through Mallets/Battery and Auxilary percussion.

If unfamiliar, Mallet Percussion includes Glockenspiel, Xylophone, Timpani, Tubular Bells, etc. The Battery is for heavy drums like snare/field drums, Rotary Toms, and Concert Bass Drums. Auxilary would be shakers, bongos, wind chimes, tambourines, etc.

Rudi would predominantly play orchestral mallets (which require skill compared to a Chao for various reasons), but Bam Bam would focus on Toy Auxilary Percussion. An exception for Rudi is the occasional use of more mindful auxiliary percussion (suspended cymbal) and Snare Drum. An exception for Bam Bam is the clear reference to the Toy Marching Drum from the SA2 Chao Garden. 

Although RiRi benefited from my purchase of Abacus, Bam Bam was the big reason I decided to purchase it for their Toy Percussion. I wasn’t too satisfied with the toy percussion collection in Toy Suite (although I do use some of them). Abacus had a nice-sounding toy drum.

Singing Chao

I kept hearing a particular remix in my head when deciding the track list for Chao Bytes. It wasn’t until I started producing Just An Average Day that I commited to the endeavor. I ended up not drafting any of Chao Bytes’ songs until Light Dash was closer to completion, but singing chao became an exception here due to the back and forth prior to the decision.

No “natural” little kid sample/sound library is on the market. By natural, I mean imperfections like a childish tone, can’t hold a pitch, no vibrato, etc. My searches often led to a “Kid Choir” type of sound, which leaned closer to cinematic orchestral. I also had no way of recording or hiring a group of kids (“Excuse me, may I bring your kid into my room to record their voice?” xD).

In addition, I wanted the chao to sing the word “Chao” as the typical word they say when they’re known to speak. This is a very niche sound, so I knew I wouldn’t have much luck finding it directly. The closest I found was from Realitones called The Ladies, which included a timbre slider, making the vocals sound more childish. I caught them on sale and began testing. I wasn’t impressed.

Firstly, for a phrase builder library, there is no “Cha” starting consonant or “oh” ending consonant so I couldn’t get a convincing “chao” phrase. I was willing to forego that and just have “la” had it not been for the other issues. The Legato transitions didn’t sound that good to me. While having an emulated vibrato control, most of the ladies have vibrato baked into the samples, making the chao sound too “trained” than what I was after.

Despite these issues, it was still the only thing that could potentially work, so my thoughts now were determining if I still wanted singing Chao. I decided to keep searching for a solution, as singing Chao isn’t done too often in the Sonic music remix community. I also knew this would help Chao Bytes highlight the creative potential behind the project. 

Of course, this led me to the other solution of vocal synthesis, which is a beast entirely outside my realm. I tried Vocaloid 6’s trail run from Yamaha, the software that kept popping up when I explored vocal synthesis. I managed to create something closer to the sound I was after, but in addition getting a “chao” phrase sounding to “ballooned” instead of “childlike,” it sounded too synthy.

I thought it was me being new to the process and began searching for tips to “sound more realistic” or “not synthy” for what I was after. This led me to a comparison video between Vocaloid and Synthesizer V Pro from Dreamtonics. 

This one video sold me on Synthesizer V Pro for 2 reasons. The first is that the sound already sounded realistic out-of-the-box to me. There was minimal editing to get a convincing sound (at least to me, being new to the game). The biggest reason was because of the vocal banks they had available. Synthesizer V Pro offered “authentic” vocal packs of child voices in the form of Lin Lai (male) and Yun Quan (female).

With these, I didn’t have to sacrifice as much for what I was after. Personally speaking, I think a new door has been opened to me for the future of this project. I’m unsure how I’d make it work, but I have a few ideas. 😉

By the way, it wasn’t until after I bought Synth V Pro that I started seeing ads for ACE Studio. By this point I was locked in.

How Its Used

Due to Chao Bytes’ writing style, I write rather messy compared to Light Dash. There’s no order in how I draft the parts. For the toys, I primarily focus on who or what is playing a melody or getting highlighted in the draft. For RiRi and KeKe, I load up a simple MIDI recorder and celesta to simulate their parts. After that, I select a random assortment of instruments in Toy Suite when it is time for production. 

I do something similar for Bam Bam, but since he’s usually on Aux percussion, I just load a midi drumkit and play with the sounds. I also do this with the singing parts by loading a MIDI choir “ah” patch.

For all Chao parts, I try to make them as simple as possible to sell the “childlike” vibe. RiRi, for example, does not play legato, meaning every note is one individual breath. KeKe can only play two notes at any given time, and Bam Bam doesn’t play anything more than 8th notes. He also never plays in triplet or swing time as heard in Chao Bytes’ debut video. This applies to all of the Chao parts actually. 

For singing Chao, I used closed chord voicing and never leap much unless they’re playing unison (even then, I make sure it either outlines a chord or is easy to sing). I go into Synth V when all parts are finalized, as with every other instrument. Synth V allows me to literally drag and drop my MIDI into it, giving me a jump start to the process.

From here, I go part by part, writing the word “Chao” and playing it back to adjust pitch curves. I also do this on the “Lively” vocal mode to ensure they are peppy and happy. When they’re finished, I bounce them out, and they’re ready to mix.

Mixing The Instruments

The toy instruments are fairly easy to mix, and I never have to do anything too drastic to them. I always get close to what I want through simple compression and EQ. For RiRi, I pay close attention to the higher frequencies above 2k because they tend to interfere with Tari’s squares. Oftentimes, I get away with a simple bell cut somewhere between 2k to 5k or use a High shelf.

KeKe’s organ is somewhat similar but often isn’t as harsh as RiRi’s toys. The Toy Piano is a little different. One note from Toy Suite’s pianos has a big frequency response, which is multiple when he plays 2 notes. Out of the 3, KeKe’s can be the hardest to mix in comparison.

Bam Bam is similar to RiRi but with lower frequencies. The fundamental frequencies of Bam Bam’s instruments often fall right in the mid-range, which can cover up the bass, Marimba, and mid-range of the piano, so I usually cut around those. This is especially true for his marching drum, which almost always interferes with the bass and kick. I started to cut this frequency but pitch shifting it upwards would be better. It better matches the sound you’d hear from a drum as small as the one Bam Bam uses.

Each of the Toys is generally panned wherever. The singing Chao are often panned using Virtual Soundstage on the Studio space. RiRi is on the left, KeKe center, and Bam Bam on the right. To finish off the space, I use Impact Soundwork’s Game Verb. I either use the PlayStation presets or the Nintendo 64 presets. 

Sometimes, I have to soften RiRi through a bell cut or high shelf similar to her Toys. For the others, I sometimes cut around 500Hz to reduce their fundamentals to stop them from sounding too boomy.

This is everything behind the scenes for The Chao Troupe. Thank you so much for reading! If you wish to support the project, sharing it around your favorite Sonic communities would be best. 

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