Conceptions & Considerations

In my channel update, I mentioned songs that were “already done” in terms of their compositional frameworks.  Out of these songs, Title Screen was the most important song and took the most time. I predict that no other Light Dash song will take as much time as Title Screen because there was so much behind it regarding the project scope, Light Dash’s first song, and being the project’s opening song. In short, I wanted it to be right!

The version I released on YouTube is the 10th “finalized” mix I created since starting the project, and it is even more if you factor in the old 2019 remix I made. Title Screen was made a little before Light Dash’s members were fully finalized, and it was also used as the “sandbox” for many of the musical concepts I created with Light Dash. Check out Light Dash’s Band Profile to learn more.

The old remix I did of Sonic Battle was supposed to be an advanced translation from the GBA era to an emulated rock band. If you’ve read my Remix Series Guide, the 2019 remix leaned towards Instrument Swapping and didn’t do much in terms of Modifying or Problem-Solving.

In fact, I added stuff overtop of these elements. The result of this mindset is the composition sounded too cluttered. There were two layers of guitars playing different Rhythmic parts in addition to the Organ and Lead guitar. This led to a lot of mid-range build-up, causing me to turn down a lot of parts. 

There were other issues as well, but this was the big one that would simultaneously address most other problems. As such, my first goal was to combine both of those rhythmic parts into one and create a stable “motif” within the rhythm guitar parts to play with. I took the motif from the baseline of the original song. Deconstructing it, it created a motif similar to Splatoon 3’s main theme. I didn’t mind, given the relationship the Sonic GBA project has with Splatoon.

With my mindset directed toward Problem Solving the issue of clarity within the composition, I began to rewrite Title Screen from the ground up using my updated workflow.

Creative Decisions

I already discussed the creative decision to combine both rhythmic guitar parts into one and create a motif out of the bass. The next significant change I wanted came from the Splatoon 3 Main Theme. There is a concept that is a bit niche in the topic of composition, but it’s called Melody/Voice Distribution. In this context, this means how long an instrument holds the melody.

For example, Splatoon 2 & 3’s main themes have melody distribution between their boy inkling/low voice and girl inkling/high voice. The low voice would sing first, the high voice would sing second, and then they’d eventually sing together, evenly distributing the melody throughout the entire song.

In short, I wanted even melody distribution for Title Screen, just like the Splatoon series, given that only the Lead Guitar and Organ were the melodic instruments. Herein laid the first issue, which made me wrestle with many creative decisions. In the original, Title Screen does not have even melody distribution between the guitar and Organ. The guitar plays the melody too much.

I first tried a direct emulation of Splatoon’s melody distribution. The Organ would take the melody in the first verse, then the lead guitar in the second. This worked very well initially because I used the lead synths in the Intro and in between the verses as a support or bridge, which helped with melody distribution.

Sadly, this method fell apart at the Chorus of the song. As per direct emulation of Splatoon’s melody distribution, my first idea was to have the Guitar and Organ play unison on the melody. In short, it wasn’t hitting the same energy as the original. I even tried switching the voicing with the Organ on top and the guitar on the bottom. I tried octave lead guitars (this is where I solidified Picks’ octave lead Micro element).

It got closer, but the Organ kept getting buried. I reversed this and tried octave Organ with Lead Guitar. Whether through bias or the combined tone of the instruments, it just wasn’t sounding the way I envisioned. Ultimately, I decided to stick with the original voicing, forgoing melody distribution here.

Another factor of this was the Break after the Chorus, where the Organ and guitar were already playing in unison. To have continued down the unison melody in the Chorus and then into the Break, it would’ve diminished the weight of the Break section a bit. 

Aside from Melody Distribution, I also made a few modifications to the melody. In the first verse, the Organ plays little bleeps in between breaks in the melody. I did this to “extend” the melody a bit, as it sounded a bit dead when played straight when putting everything together. I did something a little similar that echoes the original in the second verse. 

In the original’s 2nd verse, the melody would be split between guitar and Organ but I decided to play the guitar the whole melody while the Organ would pad out the melody through little licks and solos in-between breaks like in the 1st verse. I did this because I didn’t like how they split the melody the way they did. The Organ doesn’t have enough weight or presence compared to the guitar. To my ears, the melody loses a bit of attention when split between those voices.

Similar to my 2019 remix, I lowered the guitar part in the 2nd verse to contrast the guitar in the 2nd verse with the guitar in the Chorus, which is playing higher. Again, this gives the melody more stability in the 2nd verse and deviation from the 2nd verse into the Chorus.

To make the Chorus as big as possible, I ended up layering a lot of background elements into it. There was the natural organ part heard from the original, two layers of synths and two different rhythm guitar parts believe it or not! Rhythmic part A is the main rhythm guitar you hear, while rhythmic part B was supposed to be playing more sustain notes to contrast the palm mutes heard from Rhythm A.

The goal was to pad out this section to make it feel more open, but after introducing a soft synth lead and synth pads, the Rhythmic part B became unnecessary. The synths performed the job I wanted from this 2nd rhythm part well, so I decided to tuck it deep under the other stuff. 

I tried lowering the Rhythm part A on the right ear and raising the Rhythmic Part B on the left ear to make it sound more even, but it was still clashing with the lead guitar and Organ, which also had a hard time becoming more present in the Chorus.

Struggles

As for some of the struggles I ran into, the first was with the bass. There is a trick I learnt from a mixing metal music YouTube video. This is taboo in many circumstances so experiment first if you plan on using it. 

The idea is to put a Stereo Widener on the bass guitar as the goal is to blend it into the Rhythm guitars already on the side to gel them together, giving the guitars more weight. In many rock songs, the bass is considered “half of the guitar tone” so the idea makes sense in theory. 

This method worked in certain areas with Title Screen, so I actually used this technique in a few of the finalized mixes I created. The issue with this came from translation and the Chorus section again. The bass would disappear on specific devices, and I couldn’t get much clarity from it. Yet, when I adjusted the volume, it would be so overbearing on other devices that it would almost bury the guitars. I struggled to get the bass to sit right with this technique. Specifically, I debated whether the bass would be buried deep below the drums and guitar or be present enough. 

This led to me automating the Stereo Width for certain sections to give some parts more power, bringing me to the Chorus. Unlike most of the song, the bass isn’t playing the same exact thing as the Rhythm Guitars which means that any movement the bass did was very noticeable. Herein was the big revelation in using this technique; it’s good only when in unison with the Rhythm guitars. I didn’t want to drop the bass part I’d written either. In the end, I simply decided that this technique was a bust for me and just kept it center. The final mix on YouTube has this stereo effect turned off entirely.

The last struggle I’ll mention was the unison melody of Lead Guitar and Organ in the Break before the loop. For example, when I tried unison at the Chorus, the Organ kept getting buried when mixed with the lead guitar. This time, the issue was in the high guitar lead from the octave guitar. Removing that high-lead guitar made it lose excitement from the piece. Removing the lower guitar to make room for the Organ, didn’t give it the melody enough weight with the Organ playing the lower part. I didn’t want to remove either instrument because this was the only time I was able to write in unison melody after the attempt in the Chorus. It’s also part of the original, which would be very noticeable otherwise.

My only solution was panning the instrument and playing with the stereo field. The Organ would play the melody in octave, and all 3 instruments would be panned just enough to get clarity among their parts. The melody felt a bit lobsided to me because up until this point, the melody, counter melody, and follow-up melodies were all in the center. I knew I didn’t have much of a choice however so this led to experimenting with panning parameters such as 4% right 13% left and the like.