New Methods in Live Performance

As we reported in early June, our bassist Hank has moved on to other walks of life. As much as we disliked seeing him go, we took it as an opportunity to dive into an area of live performance we have been talking about for a while now. This involved essentially reformulating our live show entirely, which also allowed us to organize and streamline our live setup.

Our former setup involved all parts and instruments being performed live. Of course, this is the ideal method, but it also is somewhat limiting; four people can only cover so much ground. Since most of the tracks from our debut record involve more layers than we had performers, we had to simplify them for live performance. This often meant cutting out entire parts, which is something we did with reluctance. Now, since we are minus a bassist, we decided to rely on pre-recorded backing tracks to cover the low end. That being the case, we also have the opportunity to include some of the other song elements that were previously excluded. This is very exciting as we can now play any song we desire to, including new ones.

Preparing the backing tracks, however, proved to be a laborious task. First, we had to decide what element each person would actually perform live. In theory, we wanted each person to always be doing something, whether that be playing guitar, keyboards, percussion, etc. To decide how we would go about this, we looked at each song and identified the key elements. Obviously, vocals take precedence. Lead riffs and percussion tended to be next in importance. Background elements, such as pads and bass, didn't seem as critical, nor would they be as interesting visually, so those were left for playback. At the end of this process, each person had one or two parts to play for each song.

Since we were also trying to streamline our setup, we really focused on limiting the amount of gear we would need for each show. To do so, we translated many of the keyboard parts into guitar parts. This way Kyle could focus more on vocals, with his only other responsibilities being guitar and cueing the backing tracks. I would play all of the necessary keyboard parts, as well as an electronic drum pad and backing vocals. After minimizing our gear as much as possible, it was time to actually create all of the backing tracks.

Recently, we have been working with Ableton Live, which is an amazing program and perfect for this type of live performance. However, a lot of the older songs were created with Logic or Pro Tools, so we had to open up each of those sessions and make bounces for each song before bringing them into Live. This process started by muting all of the parts that would be performed by us. Next, we looked at what kind of processing was applied to the master output, such as limiting and multi-band compression. Since most venues already apply a bit of compression and limiting, we were careful not to add even more, in hopes of retaining dynamic range. Therefore, we scrapped the limiter and only kept the multi-band compression if it was significantly changing the tone of the backing tracks. Once we had gone through this process for each song, we began creating instrument tracks.

All of the keyboard tracks were to be controlled via USB, so we had to find new patches in Live that would work for the Logic and Pro Tools songs. Some of these new patches even sound better than the originals! We also had to figure out an easy way to switch keyboard sounds from song to song. After racking his brain for days, Kyle found the solution: dummy clips. Dummy clips are basically audio or MIDI clips that don't actually play back any audio, but control and automate effects and settings within the track. Using dummy clips, the keyboard patches would automatically change as the each song begins. Taking this a step further, we also automated the vocal effects, i.e. reverb and delay, to match the desired sound for each song.

At that point, the only thing left for us to do was rehearse and make minor adjustments to levels and effects. Since we have backing tracks to stay in sync with, Brian and I are now playing to a click track. This took a bit of getting used to, but we got into the flow of it pretty quickly. Before we knew it, it was time to debut our new set.

We played our first show in almost three months on August 29th at the High Dive in Fremont. Despite a bit of confusion during setup, the show went very well. We brought an above-average amount of people for a Thursday, our fans enjoyed the new material, and we learned a lot about this new live format. The very next day, we honed in our setup and performance even further and played one of our best shows to date at the Hawthorne Theater in Portland, OR.

With our momentum building, we plan to play shows at a more consistent and frequent rate, while continuing to add songs to our set. Many of these will be new songs that we have been writing for our next album.

See you out there!

We're on Youtube!

Well, it's finally happening. Yep, this is the big time. We've made it onto YouTube... Enjoy the videos!

Reflex

Over the Railing, Into the Lion Pit

Also, check out the newly-updated luxecanyon.com to read what we've been up to lately, what's to come, and behold more fresh media!

Lots of news!

Much has changed over the last few months for Luxe Canyon. You may have noticed we took a brief hiatus during April-May. Our drummer, Brian Joyce, was having surgery done on in his ACL, but we are happy to say he has fully recovered! In fact, just last Friday, we played an awesome show at the White Rabbit in Fremont. The crowd was lively, and the music was flowing. Props to Afrocop for hooking up the gig and laying down some sweet jams. The unfortunate news is that it was Hank Haggard's last show playing bass with us. His departure is an amicable one, though, and we wish him the best of luck in his future endeavors! On a brighter note, our time off and lineup changes have given us an opportunity to experiment with new sounds and approaches. We are in the process of making our live set even more electronically sophisticated with the help of a couple new pieces of gear, namely the Akai APC40 and APC20. Ableton Live's unique effects and performance capabilities allow us to do things live and in the studio that were not possible before. We've also been recording a lot of live drums and manipulating them in Ableton. We're excited to be working on new songs and can't wait to share them with you! Finally, we've made drastic improvements to the website. Check out our photos section.

Our Redesigned Website and How It Came To Be

A few days ago, we decided we needed to breath some new life into our website. The old format simply lacked the excitement and energy that defines our music. We knew that visually capturing the essence of Luxe Canyon required coming up with an image of some sort. Kyle had the idea to form letters out leaf stems, and place them over a bed of dead, brown, wet leaves. He took a picture of this arrangement and imported it into photoshop. With some inverting and tweaking of colors, he produced this surreal picture seen below:

Not only do we feel this picture represents us, but so does the process in which it was created. Music, at its core, is about creating something out of nothing. Similarly, this unearthly image was produced from a pile of debris. This goes to show that there is potential in anything, one only needs the mindset and motivation to harness that potential. Luxe Canyon strives to keep this in mind with everything we do.

In addition to the new look, we have added some photos to the media section with a few snaps from our first show, and some others we found lying around the corners of our computers. That being said, check out the website! 

LuxeCanyon.com's new look!

We've just totally revamped our site! In addition to the design changes, our media section now includes photos! But don't take our word for it, see for yourself!

Album review!

"Luxe Canyon's debut LP is strikingly well-produced electro pop."

We're pretty pumped on our first piece of press in the online magazine Reverb, a subsection of Seattle Weekly.  Read the full review here!

First Show Success!

Well, we finally took the plunge into Seattle's live music scene with our first show at the Nectar Lounge. Contrary to previous posts, we decided to ditch Pro Tools as a live sequencer entirely. This meant recreating all of the synth patches from scratch within our synths, a Kurzweil K2000 and M-Audio Venom. This decision was made merely a week before the show, so we had a lot of work to do in a very short period of time. Though the last patch was finished just a few hours before the show, they all turned out great.

We couldn't be more pleased with how the show went. Wiscon and Screens started the night out right with a variety of smooth to abrasive sounds and visual accompaniments. Their energy got us really excited and anxious to play! But the element that really made the night was the audience. From the moment we stepped on stage, we felt the love. This made it super easy to play and have fun all night. We even got an unexpected encore! Here are a few photos from our good friend Andrew Mark Snyder:

Kyle Nielsen, lead vocals, guitar, synth, drum pad.

Matt Nielsen, synth, back-up vocals, drum pad.

Hank Haggard, bass.

Brian Joyce, drums.

And some others from various cell phones and such:

Thanks to everyone who made it out and supported us and to all those who didn't know us but still stuck around and gave us a chance. We greatly appreciate you all.

If you couldn't make it that night, fear not, we are playing the High Dive on January 9th with Goldbar and Steph Macpherson. Hope to see you there!