Sonic 2 - Sonic the Chemist (Chemical Plant Zone remix)

[MartinH]

https://youtu.be/CKcqx6JwrkM

Since I'm almost a pure Nintendo player, the Sega world is kind of new, except for Sonic of course. But I never really played anything else from Sonic than the very first game, so Sonic 2 is new in every way for me. I was very surprised by the soundtrack, every song has so much potential! And there were some songs I just couldn't let go of, Chemical Plant was one of them. And I will grab more for sure!

I would say this one goes under blues, funk, maybe fusion of some kind, and I really took advantage of those genres by tweaking my synthesizers to sound like instruments used regurarly in those genres. Dry, fast, max attack, not much effects except for the lead with some delay, and the bass with a heavy chorus effect (just like some of the 80s synth basses which I love).

I wanted the remix to be very recognizeable from the original in many parts, but with some enhanced harmonies and fills from new composed lines. And then a completely new section - I'm not sure how I came up with it, it often just starts with one chord off from the original and then my head is spinning loose with countless ideas of which I just grab one and write down. 

For some reason I took some inspiration from Dream Theater starting at 1:22 - I think I would refer to it as an John Petrucci part where all things calms down, the tempo goes down to half and there are these extended tones from his singing guitar playing a beautiful melodic solo, maybe along in harmony with Jordan Rudess' wizard like keyboard play. The chords kind of follows how Petrucci would have wrote them too.

Overall I just loved working on this song, the original is so catchy and fun. Really love this style and tried to extend it as much as I could without trashing the original too much.

I already got suggestions on other Sonic themes, but would love to have some more. And if you know any more songs in this particular style I would be very interested in hearing them.

/Neon X