LC is two guys working together to create music you've never dreamt of before.
Skye van Duuren is the resident composer and MIDI programmer, who records guitar and vocals for the band when he can. He is a student of music composition and jazz at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, but also learns as much as possible about audio technology in his spare time, and life in general. Skye writes every note you hear from scratch - no drum loops, no bass loops, no harmonizer on the piano, arpeggiator, nothing like that. What the listener receives is something very organic and free-flowing, and hopefully very stylistic and enjoyable. Skye does some of the mixing too.
Robert Rice is the resident sound guy, mixer and computer wrangler. He is a student of engineering at Southwestern Community College, but also reads up on audio technology and everything else. Robert takes care of all of the computer business (Skye hates the Mac interface) and about half of the actual mixing process as well. The process of mixing involves finding the right sounds for our instruments, making every tone perfect, making sure everything can be heard at all times, making sure nothing is out of place or stands out, and other technical nonsense. It can simply mean you get the best representation of what's written, but the mix can be part of the composition itself - listening to MIDI files isn't nearly as fun as the fully produced track!
Our music is mainly programmed and sequenced with computers, but don't be fooled: it's not all beepy and mechanized like you might imagine. We do the best we can with what we have. bAlthough we do try to have some themes present in all the songs/works, each one is different from the next, and sometimes changes radically as it unfurls, so we advise you just to listen, have an open mind, and we promise you'll hear some totally new, exciting music.
Skye: I just wanted to do something with my summer, so I said "hey Robert let's make an album", and we enjoyed the process so much that we decided to band together to make more. Not much history there. I could talk about my history as a composer but that'd be boring.
Skye: We don't currently play live, as we currently have about twelve instruments per song or more and only two people to play them. Whoops.
Skye: I guess I need to take this one too. I was brought up playing in the high school wind band, and my college education is more or less classical, but I'm also learning the ropes of jazz too, and that's been showing up more and more. But, listening to our stuff, you actually won't notice much classical influence, and my forms are seldomly pure jazz either. I just try to make nice, infectious melodies, going over a good groove, with interesting harmonies, sometimes you get some soloing, sometimes you get a surprise or a musical joke thrown in there... I guess I'm very independent when it comes to influences. Or I'm so eclectic that you can't really trace it back to any artist out there.
Logic Pro, Fruity Loops, Reason, Finale, a couple computers, Native Instruments Komplete 4, a bunch of other VSTs and plugins, Line 6 Toneport, a Shure SM-58, a guitar. If you're looking for how we got a certain tone or sound, we most likely wouldn't know what to tell you.
