Asandir's interviews with Newgrounds forum users

This week's interview features the user Lich.

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When did you find Newgrounds and why did you join? Why did you choose the username LichLordMusic and why did you change it to Lich?

Lich:

"I did try and join Newgrounds originally as just 'LichLord' but the name was sadly taken. So I just added the word music onto it and I was well away to slowly try and make more Electronic music as I found out back then it sounded better and took much less effort than dabbling with Sequenced Black Metal. I fondly remember uploading my first couple of tracks which I made on some cheapo Creative-branded speakers and a mouse (I still have my old Creative's, I mainly use them for playing music in the kitchen off of my phone when I'm cooking alone etc.).

Through thick and thin and following a bumpy road of progression, we come to this point today after almost 3 years on Newgrounds where I renamed myself to 'Lich'. The main reason for this is that 'Lich' sounded alot more memorable and I think better than 'LichLordMusic' as the majority of my listeners and online friends and collaborators come from Newgrounds and the rename made me think I could possibly try and fit in more with it done.

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Do you think that you changed over the time you were here, as user, or also in real life?

Lich:

"Most definitely! Talking with other users, getting constructive criticism on much needed pieces and seeing how other people behave and respond has definitely made a positive impression and has changed my behavior slightly. I'm still pretty crazy though for sticking with the genre of music I make and saying some of the stuff I do.
Te best part about sticking around with Newgrounds was the valuable and helpful information and methods which has bettered me as a musician (thank you to every which has helped me out so far through Forum posts and/or PM's!) Occasionally I do try and help out others by posting my own Constructive criticism or letting people know when there are Software deals currently running. I don't mind trying to share some helpful IT hints and solutions for people having issues. It's only fair I help others when I have been helped myself in the past."

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Are there any other users that you like, and how do they affect you?

Lich:

"I get on with most of the people I generally interact with, especially users such as Deshiel, KatMaestro, JRob, Cabbster and most of the audio regulars when I bother to post random bits in the Audio forum. The audio guys have been some of the most helpful and nicest people I have talked to on pretty much any forum despite any differences we may have.

For users I have seen post in multiple sub-forums, I do like most of the forum responses which NeonSpider, Rahmemhotep, SubliminalVirus and a few others I've kind of forgotten about make. Hopefully with more time I should get to know more people better and I muight actually bother to participate in the Newgrounds IRC channel one day."

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Are there any users that you would consider enemies or that you just don't like?

Lich:

"Not really, there isn't anyone who currently gives off that kind of feeling. It's no secret to a few people I have had big disagreements with a few users whom I shall not name but eventually we all kiss & make-up per say and get on with life as usual. 99% of the time it's pretty much my fault anyway for overblowing a situation so I'd like to think that after learning some more self-control and thinking about hidden and subtle meanings towards worded responses that I may actually make my responses abit more diplomatic and less hostile if I think someone is pushing my buttons unintentionally per say.

I'm not impressed by some of the other regulars responses in both the General forum and Political forum for some of the more sensetive topics being posted though. I don't want to intervene and start off a flame-war over such topics and I shall not name some of the users who seem to repeatedly do this but it's prett difficult to make another person change their opinions altogether in a few lines. 'Why fight an uphill battle' is what I usually say myself when I see posts like that and then I usually close my tab and dive back into my sequencer instead."

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What is your opinion about the forums? Is there one forum that you prefer? And is there another forum user that you want to see getting interviewed by me?

Lich:

"The forums on Newgrounds seem to inflict the right balance. 'General' pretty much exists as the 'post-about-almost-anything' domain and it isn't afraid to burn users over rampant stupidity or ridiculous notions. The other sub-forums seem like little pockets full of helpful individuals and valuable resource waiting to be discovered and utilised. I'm especialy fond of the Audio forum despite the slower activity it seems to have compared to one or two of the other more popular sub-forums.

Interview-wise, I think Deshiel would be an interesting Musician to interview since he has been hanging around on Newgrounds since 2008 and has uploaded 468 audio submissions since he has been a member on Newgrounds. Anchorwind or TheHeartgrinder are also very interesting and talented Electro-Industrial and Noise musicians whom I would also strongly recommend interviews for, some of their uplaoded work sounds insane!"

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I guess that you have an opinion about the moderators of Newgrounds. Do you think that they do a great job or not?

Lich:

"I think out of all of the Moderators I have seen on the forums, I have only ever been unimpressed with one Mod whom has now been de-modded (yes I'm talking about a certain one whom some of you may know threatened bans to users live on the Newgrounds Pico Day Live-stream. Sorry dude but you didn't leave a very good first impression if you are reading this.) Other than that I have full confidence in the Forum, Audio, Art and other moderators as they seem to keep everything running very smoothly on Newgrounds and I would like to thank them in advance for volunteering their time to making Newgrounds a better place one small step at a time."

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Would you like to become a moderator on Newgrounds? If so, what kind of moderator?

Lich:

"Moderating Newgrounds would be an honor and I think I could do a reasonable job but I personally don't think I would like it that much after awhile. There are many other users out there who I think are more deserving of such a position. In the case where I would be selected to try and moderate, an Audio or Forum moderator position would probably be more ideal for someone like me. But it's pretty much all wistful thinking if anything."

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It seems like you built a few computers in the past. When did you build your first one? What would you consider the most difficult aspects of building a computer?

Lich:

"My first personal machine was built back in 2011, back then it was a pretty nice machine running on an AM3 chip-set equipped with a Phenom II T1100BE, 8GB 1600MHz RAM, an OCZ Agility 3 SSD, a Crosshair IV Formula AM3 motherboard and a be quiet! Dark Rocker Pro (The original) Air coller for the processor. Probably costed me around £1000 in parts back then and I was personally very happy with the system up until this year when it's age started to show trying to process some of my more FX-heavy tracks. It's pretty common for it to spike at 100% Usage on all 6 physical Cores and all of my reserved RAM to nearly be taken up as well. I've only just installed some Noctua PWM case fans into it after servere overheating issues became present after torturing the poor ol' thing after 3 years of heavy usage.
For other machines I have built, alot of them are bits for friends and colleagues. Nothing terribly expensive or complicated to build but I do offer to sort out some of the trickier bits for them like assembling and mounting large CPU coolers with weird mount brackets and systems and connecting their nice fancy Full/Semi Modular PSU's to the correct slots on the Motherboards.

Related to the IT work I do for the current company I work for, there isn't too much system building to sort out. I may occasionally swap out faulty parts provided by our OEM and fit low-profile graphics card in for users who request Dual-Screen setup's but other than that it's mainly imaging for our clients situation.

For my next system I am building I am going to wait for Intel to release their Xeon E5-2600 V3 series at the end of Q3 2014. Extra L3 cache and cores for all of the updated Xeon's at a rumored value to be the same as the current V2 series is definitely a plus. Probably going to try and grab the Xeon-E5 2630 V3 when it comes out and shove it on a good Supermicro or ASUS workstation board, shove in somewhere between 16/32 GB ECC Registered RAM, Crossfire two cheap ebay-acquired Firepro W5000's for non gaming GPU use, shove in a Platinum-Grade Full Modular Corsair PSU, maybe an LSI Raid card aswell, definitely an RME or ESI ASIO Soundcard as my potential audio solution's (Also toying with the idea of getting a UAD Solo-Core, you musicians out there, be envious :D ) and probably around 4 SSD's and two SSHD Backup drives to power the whole system and a Noctua NH-D15 and the case-fan equivalents to keep this monstrous sytem nice and cool. I could realistically build such a system for probably around £1700-£2000 depending on how cheap I could get the FIrepro's and the LSI Raid card for.
The most difficult part of a system I have ever seen to install would be a Custom-Loop water cooling system. if anyone asks me to sort one out for them the answer is going to be a flat out 'NO'. If it leaks I don't want to be held responsible."

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Alghazanth is one of your favorite bands. What do you like about their style in general and what are your favourite songs?

Lich:

"Ahhhhhh, Algazanth! I mainly listen to and dabble with Electro-Industrial nowadays but Alghazanth will always remain to be my favorite Black Metal band all day. With Algazanth it's all about the songwriting and the beautiful atmosphere they give off in their music. The mastering for the tracks sounds just right, not clinically clean and not awful. Cutting out some of the low end and focusing on the sheer awesome tone and atmosphere their stuff projects was the best decision they have probably ever done. Their 2013 release 'The Three-Faced Pilgrim' is probably my all-time favorite from them although their 2008 release 'Wreath Of Thevetat' is a close second.

I'd say my top three tracks I like from them altogether (and urge Black-Metal enthusiasts to listen to) would be: 'To the Pearl on High', 'In Your Midnight Orchard' and 'On Blackening Soil'."

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You are an audio artist. When did you start making music and what kind of music do you like creating the most? Which other Newgrounds audio artists are you a fan of, and would possible like to work together with in the future?

Lich:

"Back in 2011 when I first started out making Music, I kind of went through a phase where I wasn't completely as to what I should make and this also included re-branding my project name several times over. I first started off known as 'Lichhood' while I was first learning how to use FL Studio 9 and make a few tracks here and there. While they sound too horrible to ever post online now (except one track I'll mention shortly) back them I was pretty amazed that I could make anything at all in a sequencer. It was a pretty good time and I couldn't wait to see how I could progress from here. Around September 2011 I done my first track upload for a track called Skeletal Immortality which can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qeR0lRiIRYk

Around late 2011 I tried making a Black Metal EP called Nekromantican. Oh my lawd it sounds pretty bad listening to it now but I did have great fun making it. It was never released as I discontinued project 'Lichhood' after I first joined Newgrounds as 'LichLordMusic'. A short Nekromantican 'preview' from the old days I left on one of my old Youtube channels just to remind me what I started off as. It's pretty fascinating in a horrible way I supose haha. A video link to the badness is available here for anyone interested in listening to my begginer roots: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=huIq7hNg6fs

Over the years I have probably had the most fun playing around with Electro-Industrial. It's got the sheer potential to be absolutely savage and unforgiving sounding or brooding and atmospheric in the right scenario. Admittedly I didn't really start off being able to make it, my older stuff sounds like some half-way lackluster hybrid per-say and it's not really untill around late 2013 that I was able to think "Right, I think i've got it now!" Some of my favorite tracks I have made and uploaded can be found on my newgrounds page. If anyone would like to listen to my current audio I would suggest listening to the tracks 'Host Victim', 'Our CyberLord & Savior' and 'The Artificial Demise'.

I am fan of Katmaestro, Anchorwind, Deshiel, TheHeartgrinder, industrialplayground, L3ak, LeoMDK, LashMush (plus many more) and I am also very fond of the voice-acting work that Piper has done for both me in the track 'Thou 9th Circle' and all of the other projects she has been involved in!

For future collaboration work, I would love to form or be a member of a Newgrounds Audio Super-group between four or five users working on tracks together as a big team. I think it would be a case of whoever is really up for the idea of making one would be the type of person who sounds dedicated towards such a thing and that is the kind of person I would love to collaborate with!"

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Seems like you use a huge variety of programs and plugins to create your music. Which programs would you recommend for people who are are just starting out their musical endeavors?

Lich:

"I've literally spent thousands upon thousands on owning and using a huge variety of Soft-Synths, FX Plug-ins and Mastering Plug-ins. I currently use FL Studio 11 x64 as my primary sequencer while I use Adobe Audition CC for my general vocal-recording work and Post-Mastering station for any final touch-up's before a track is released.
My main weapons-of-choice for the tracks I use would be Tone2 Gladiator2 (My workhorse synth unter the pretense as a HCM Soft-synth which is basically a a fancy wave-table with time-morphing tools and other monstrous features), Adam Szabo's JP6K (Roland JP-8000 Supersaw emulator, especially nice for the classic 90's sounding Supersaw leads and bass-work), the Arturia V-Collection (a group of pricey very-close emulations of some of the older sounding hard-synth put into soft-synth form including the Wurlitzer, the Jupiter-8, the Oberheim SEM, the CS-80 and several other emulations), Spectrasonics Omnisphere (still probably the most powerful Cinematic Sample-stacking and Synth-engine to date) and IL Sawer (a very HQ sounding niche soft-synth made by Image-Line which is capable of producing some absolutely brutal-sounding detuned leads, basses and pads), Battery 4 (My favorite Sample-Loaded and Sample-manipulation Drum machine) and Superior Drummer 2 (I have the Metal Foundry pack as well, another favorite of mine as a drum machine, especially for the real and awesome drum samples recorded for it).I have plenty more which I use from time to time (I do run Kontakt and have a couple of Native Instruments, Pinknoise, Sonokinetic and 8DIO libraries) but I could go on forever about them.

For the FX and mastering side, I am mainly a Waves fan-boy. I have the Waves Gold Collection which contains over 30 plug-ins of varying uses along with some individual purchases like NLS, Center, Scheps 73 and the One-Knob series. On the cheaper end of the market I also have alot of Minimal System Instruments compressors to work with which are incredible value for money for the work they are capable of doing, I also have a few Antares plug-ins like Auto-Tune Live, Harmony Engine EVO, Mutator EVO, Mic Mod EFX, Choir AVOX and Duo AVOX. Less used but still handy bits I have include the whole Creative Sonitus FX suite, Ohmforce's Ohmicide (used in all of my Vocal-work for Distorted Grit and Saturation), IL Vocodex, Amplitube 3 Metal Pack (for guitar work) and a few freebie bits here and there for specific uses.

Honestly for users who wish to start making music you will want to probably stick to easier-to-use and powerful solutions either 1st party which can be found in your DAW (for FL Studio users I would recommend PoiZone, Harmor and Sawer) or 3rd party solutions like Sylenth1, Tone2 ElectraX, DUNE 2, LuSH-101, U-he Zebra and please ignore using a ROMPLER like reFX Nexus (flame shield activated), it's good-to-go sounds is very nice and all but I personally think being able to see and understand how synth patches are built up and how parameters work and interact with each other is a very important lesson which will especially help you later on when more appealing and complicated solutions catch your eye.

One more thing for aspiring Musicians, please get a good sound system so you can actually hear what is going on in your Mix. From personal experience I would honestly say if you are a Windows user to invest in an ASIO Soundcard (The M-Audio Audiophile 2496 is going for £40 on Ebay currently as an internal solution or you can use a Focusrite external unit as another solid ASIO and recording Solution) and then get a pair of decent Studio Monitoring Speakers (I'm currently using a Pair of ADAM A5X's but for beginners a slightly cheaper pair may be a more sensible option to look around for)."

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Aside from being active on Newgrounds, you also have your own Soundcloud. Which features of Soundcloud would you like seeing implemented for the Newgrounds Audio Portal?

Lich:

"I think Soundcloud's flexible options of turning Downloads on and off is a very handy feature mainly for people who want to show off uncompleted demo's or showcase specific work they don't want mass distributed easily (yes there are workaround ways as to puling audio straight off of a page unfortunately). The option to see which country your listerners/viewers are coming from is a very nice feature which I would be happy to see on Newgrounds if the admin team ever considered adding new features for both audio and flash artists."

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You are currently working on your very first album, Dystopian Hivemind. Tell my readers what kind of work goes into planning and working on an album and what obstacles and successes you had over the time you worked on it so far.

Lich:

"I'm sorry to say that Dystopian Hivemind ended us as a failure due to a bad combination of inexperience, little planning, rushing it and just sheer disinterest for getting it finished as time went on. But I am back on the road as the current album-in-work 'Ascended In Agony' is around 80% done now, all I realistically need to do is finish off one more track, abit of mastering and vocal work and then I can release it.

For those who are planning on releasing an album, the first and most important rule would be to set a clear direction as to how you want your album to progress, sound and feature. If you can think of an awesome idea for one or two tracks and then get completely lost with the rest of it, consider releasing a small EP or something instead. You'll want all of your tracks to have the same high quality of standards to feature throughout the whole production.

The second thing to consider is if you are going to set a deadline. One reason why Dystopian Hivemind flopped for me would be how I tried to rush a release for it and didn't put my absolute best into it. While one or two tracks sounded pretty good, the rest of it was an unfortunate flop.

The last and final thing about making an album is don't get too upset if it ends up as a failure. It's a pretty shitty moment when you finally have to admit to yourself, "Yep, I've fucked up. No release would be better than a half-ass release". Take a break, release some individual tracks here and there instead, better yourself as a musician and then try again in a year or so when you have some fresh and better ideas and management for it all.

Anyway, with Dystopian Hivemind out of the way I have almost finished Ascended Through Agony. A little trick which has kept me going is to actually make and release to Newgrounds sort of Pre-release editions to try and get a general idea as to how it is going to sound. 'Host Victim' is one example, I made that for three different reasons in one (mainly for the album). All you have to do is just release a lossless High Quality WAV version upon the release with the rest of the album and offer a reasonable deal. I'm offering the whole album for free to any of my subscribed fans on Newgrounds and for everyone else, a very cheap and reasonable price where 100% of the earnings for it will be re-injected into making even more awesome music for the fans in the future. Music is a hobby, not a job so I like to pace myself nowadays and have fun doing it. Otherwise it'll all end up like Dystopian Hivemind, a rushed failure."

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Every person has secrets. Can you tell one of yours or something else that we didn't know about you yet?

Lich:

"When I drink and get absolutely trashed I like to load up Spotify or even the Newgrounds audio portal and Industrial Dance to tracks while wearing my mask, spiked goggles and either my Nachtmahr or God Module shirt just for good luck. On the secret of course haha.

Alternatively I have a few recordings of me trying to rap utter nonsense down my Shure SM58 Mic. They shall never be released to the public for a variety of reasons I'm not going to share.
Lastly, I am capable of singing clean in the tone and style of a Futurepop singer but I'm too weary of getting a bad response for it to immediately release a track of it all done and recorded onto Newgrounds. Sometime soon I shall man-mode the rest of the track and recording and upload it anyway no matter how bad it is!"

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What can we expect from you in the future, Lich?

Lich:

"Well apart from the eventual release of the album 'Ascended Through Agony', I have a few other bits being processed in the background including my entry into the NGAU contest in the audio forum, a few metal tracks which have been a long time coming for release, a Futurepop track styled in the influence of Rotersand & Icon of Coil and many more collaborative releases with other Newgrounds users.

I'll be sticking around on Newgrounds for hopefully a long time so for anyone who is interested in asking me any questions, fell free to ask away and I'll be happy to answer anything to the best of my ability. I would like to thank you Asandir for giving me the opportunity to be interviewed and the community of Newgrounds for being awesome as well. See you all around!"

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Now you are filled with more knowledge about Lich, dear reader.Feel free to leave a comment here, saying what you think about the interview, requesting users to get interviews is also appreciated. Tune in next week :3

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