Conceptions & Considerations
Green Hill Zone was the final song in Light Dash’s debut when the project was first started. For the band’s initial track list, there were many popular songs lined up with Green Hill being one of them. To that end, Chao Ruins was supposed to be the end of the 6 track lineup, but I decided to upload Green Hill last for three reasons.
The first was to split up well-known songs since I knew Light Dash would return throughout the Sonic Battle phase. Each batch from Light Dash is planned to have a “heavy hitter” in this regard and I thought Green Hill would be the best one to end the project’s debut. As mentioned, I did other songs to iron out some kinks with Light Dash’s sound so that Green Hill Zone would sound its best. The last reason was because the song would serve as good marketing over time being a known song outside of Sonic Battle.
With all this, I immediately decided to go back and completely redo my 2019 remix. With the other corresponding songs, I went into their project files to reference material, but this Green Hill remix was truly “redone by scratch.” My big aim was to write better in Light Dash’s style. This decision led to playing around and displacing some common elements heard throughout the original Green Hill from Sonic 1.
Creative Decisions
In line with Light Dash’s writing style, the song is naturally too long to switch between lead guitar and Organ so constantly. There are many places where the synths act as a separator between them. This was the goal of having the intro near-exclusively synths and having neither guitar nor Organ featured in the final break before the loop.
Speaking of, the ending section before the loop was a cool lick I came up with. It was initially designed to highlight Picks’ lick spoken of in the band profile. My original remix from 2019 lost a lot of energy in this section so I decided to fix it here. It fits nicely in line with the song’s original melody but ended up a bit thin by itself, which is why I saw the opportunity for a short Organ solo (which actually highlights Les’ lick). A small side note: the rhythm guitars are much more active in this remix than in my 2019 remix which has less movement.
Per usually, I changed up the drum beat in many places of the song. I felt the original beat was too static. In addition, another goal of mind was to help differentiate between sections in general, similar to what I did for other songs. Panning the rhythms of the guitars in the earlier verses helped accomplish this as well but in truth, I thought it just sounded cool so I did that on a whim.
Lastly, I found myself gravitating towards more oldish/simple preset synths or FM synths with a hit of nostalgia, which includes a heavy emphasis on squares and saws.
Struggles
I had trouble writing for both Shell and Les for this piece. For Les, it was hard sneaking in jazzy rifts while still fitting the song’s tone. Many takes were used before reaching the final. In short, it felt too forced to add too many jazzy elements to the piece without sacrificing the original melodics and feel of the song, so I utilized Les to fill up space rather than getting too fixated on jazz.
Shell was naturally tricky because of my decision to change up the drum beat to differentiate sections. I was also conscious of not repeating my mistake with the drums sounding too out of control in most of my previous 2019 remixes.
Getting the drums mixed right was also an arduous endeavor. The kick had a hard time cutting through even though it was brightened up and had two layers of saturation on it. Toms ended up very muddy when it came time to mix, and even the cymbals sounded too washy initially. Mixing the drums gave me a surprising amount of trouble for this remix.
Mixing Picks’ panning guitar part in the 2nd half of the first verse was also a challenge because of how they would break up the stereo field for the rhythm section. In short, they sounded lopsided no matter what trick I tried. My solution was to play palm mutes on the other guitar when the panned guitars hit to preserve the stereo image better.
That’s all for the track break down for Light Dash’s Green Hill Zone. Thanks so much for reading, and I hope you continue to support the project in the future. Keep on the lookout for the next band. Consider supporting me through Discord, YouTube, or Patreon membership to unlock full access to the Meta Blog!
