Conceptions & Considerations
Preparing to tackle Eggman Plots, 3 factors influenced the final sound heard on YouTube. The big highlight or surprise was the inclusion of Eggman’s Theme, which is heard throughout many moderate Sonic titles. I really like this theme musically and thought I’d sneak it into Eggman Plots since this track only really plays when Eggman is the focus in story.
I didn’t like the track itself because there wasn’t much emphasis on melodic development. To put this another way, the lead melodies were too buried and not as memorable as I’d like them to be. To which, I took a lot of liberties when creating the melody to be more memorable and to better highlight Light Dash’s Question & Answer (or Call & Response) writing style I talked about in Light Dash’s band profile.
To contrast this, I really like the general rift heard in the bassline throughout the song. You can hear me playing around with it a lot with some slight tweaks. Had a lot of fun playing it on my guitar during the writing process. These 3 factors introduced their own unique struggles and challenges during different production phases.
Creative Decisions
The original loop of the track repeats from the intro, but I felt that the piece loses a lot of the energy it built. I believe this was done to break up and contrast the mood of the piece, which is very static and doesn’t move much. Since this song was being remade from the ground up, I achieved this objective by changing drum beats and adjusting the last section to feel more like a reference to the intro. As such, I had no reason to have the song loop entirely back to the beginning.
Because of this decision, I needed to make a transition segment from this chromatic-focused section that naturally looped back to the main verse. This was where the modern Eggman’s Theme came into play. To emphasize being back into the main verse, I added my own little licks through the lead guitar.
I like motifs that heavily emphasize chromatics like the modern Eggman Theme does. For my purposes, it makes it easy to fuse into many styles of remixes. Eggman Plots also has chromatics in the piece from the Organ and the final section, so the crossover between the two was very pleasant in the last section before the loop.
However, I thought it’d be too convoluted to get the reference for some so I wanted a more direct reference to the theme. From the Question and Answer writing style, the verse towards the beginning was the only real place I could put it without it “intruding” on the rest of the piece. The solution was “constructing the verse.”
For example, the Rhythm/Bass Guitar starts and sets the foundation while the Organ plays its original part. Then, the lead guitars play their original part, which nicely builds upon the foundation. After which, Eggman’s Theme would play overtop of the Guitars. However, if the Organ continued playing its original part, it would clash with the melody, so the Organ switches from sustaining notes to playing rhythms that almost offset the rhythms from the guitars.
My goals for the melody to reach that Questions and Answer format was to simplify the melody on Lead Guitar but play a more “soloing” version in the Organ. This better symbolizes Picks’ and Les’ musical dynamic as well. Its here that you’ll find the most discrepancies between the original melody and my version. There are many places where I completely ignore the original melody on Organ.
Struggles
It’s in these Organ solos that I’d run into my first main issue. I wanted these solos to sound jazzy while still referencing the melodics found in the original and the simplified melody played by Lead Guitar. In short, I had a hard time writing the organ part. If you’ve read Les’ Meta Instrument post, this was a huge bottleneck for the entirety of the song’s production. As such, I went through many solos and tweaking the part until I was satisfied enough to move on.
The last few struggles came from mixing the verse of the song. In addition to Eggman’s Theme playing here, soft pads played sustaining chords to give the song some depth. With everything else playing here, it was hard to balance everything right. Many things had to be turned down, which emphasized the bass too much while simultaneously making the lead guitars sound louder than desired.
There were also many times when the synth playing Eggman’s Theme got buried or sounded too thin, so I had to play around with the MidSide between the pads and this melody, which influenced the volume of the rhythmic guitars. Needless to say, mixing the low-mid range of the song took the most work.
Even so, I’m generally satisfied with how everything came out. Eggman Plots has become a personal favorite of mine both in production and creativity. I hope you enjoyed this In Depth post. Thank you so much for your support; it allows me to make this content full-time. Please get in touch with me with any questions, suggestions, or feedback to ensure you’re getting the value you expect from supporting me.
