| Can you tell us what you do when you don't
compose music or deal with your Admin work at Lara's Home? |
 |
| Well, composing takes up a huge amount of my time. At the
moment I'm spending about 15 hours a day, 7 days a week doing it because I have some tight
deadlines to meet. I also run a web development business which pays the bills when I don't
have any inspiration to write music. |
|
| What do you do in your spare time? |
|
| Ha! What spare time? I don't get much of that! When I do, I
read a lot of books (horror novels mainly) and I also enjoy watching movies (also horror).
I wish I had more spare time, because I'd really like to try building a TR level of my own
one day. |
|
| What was your reason to start to compose
music? Have you ever thought about other jobs? |
|
| I've been musical since I was about 5 years old, so no, I
haven't really thought about other jobs. My first job was as a flautist in an orchestra,
then I went on to do sound engineering in studios, then I started writing my own tunes. So
as you can see, it's always been in my blood. |
|
| Do you have pets in your home? |
|
| Yep! I have a really cute Persian cat called Flumpet (and
he's sitting on my shoulder at the moment, drooling in my ear. He does that a lot, lol...) |
|
| What kind of levels do you prefer when you
have time to play TR? |
|
| Traditional ones. I like levels that actually have me
raiding in tombs or mystical environments instead of city, base or lab levels. My
favourite custom level of all time is still 'Firewalk' by Inchdix. (Editor's note: This
level inspired the track of the same name on The
Edge of Human). |
|
| How much time do you spend with music? |
|
| As much as I can! It makes me happy to do something so
creative. Sometimes when I have to do other things, like working on web projects for
customers, I can feel really stifled because I'm not doing what I want to be doing. |
|
| How does it feel to perform live on stage? |
|
| It scares me to death. Seriously! I suffer from stage fright
really badly, and it usually starts about a month before I'm due to play live (like now
for example). The first two or three minutes on stage are the worst. I feel absolutely
terrified and my guts turn to jelly. After that though I'm OK, because the adrenaline
kicks in and I forget the audience is there. I start to have fun and enjoy myself at that
point. |
|
| How much do you earn with music? Enough to
pay your monthly expenses or do you have other earnings? |
|
| It depends how much music I compose. Sometimes I just don't
feel inspired to write anything, so of course at times like that I don't earn a penny, and
that's why I have to do web work as well. Really, I'd have to be releasing at least 2
albums a year to make a decent living out of it, but I can't force myself to compose if I
don't have any inspiration to do so. People think that you earn loads of money if you're
lucky enough to be signed to a record label, but that's not the case unless the record
label you're signed to is a huge one like Sony. The label I'm with is a small independent
one which specialises in instrumental music, so it's not likely that what I write will
ever make it to the top of the charts. It's more likely that you'll hear what I do on TV
adverts etc. |
|
| When did you start to compose music? |
|
| I wrote my first song when I was about 7. It was rubbish
though, lol! |
|
| What instruments do you play? Do you have a
preferred instrument? |
|
| I play synthesisers, piano, flute, and saxophone. I like all
of them, for different reasons. The flute's the most convenient because I can take it
anywhere. Synthesisers and pianos are great because they're polyphonic, which means that I
can play chords instead of just one note at a time. Woohoo! And the saxophone... well,
it's just a sexy instrument, isn't it? |
|
| You also composed music for Tears of the
Dragon. How difficult was the composing of the music for the movie? |
|
| Very! What I found really difficult was trying to make the
music somewhat abstract in places. I found that difficult because the thing I do best,
musically, is write melodies. In this case though, if the music had been too melodic,
people would have spent more time listening to the music than watching the movie, and that would have been
bad! I also found it quite difficult to work to time limits for each scene. For example,
a scene might be exactly 38 seconds long and I would have to write a piece of music that
was exactly 38 seconds long. That's definitely not as easy to do as it sounds - can you
imagine trying to capture a scene's mood and atmosphere in that short amount of time? Very
tough! It was fantastic fun though, and Nick and Val are two of the most wonderful and
talented people it's ever been my pleasure to befriend. |
|
| What can people expect from your fourth solo
album, The Edge of Human? |
|
| Something entirely different from the last one, Innersense. I wrote Innersense because I was
heartbroken and I needed a way to express how I was feeling. Music was the outlet for all
of those emotions. The Edge of Human is a
much happier album, but it's still very much "me" in that it's extremely
orchestral and melodic. |
|
| When did you decide to launch Lara's Home? |
|
| It was about 3 years ago. Actually, I'd always planned a
full TR site and not just a forum. I still do, but I have no idea when it'll be finished! |
|
| What was your reason to install a Tomb
Raider forum? |
|
| Initially it was because myself and a few friends were
starting to feel unhappy on another TR forum, so I thought "well, why not start one
of our own?" LH was only ever intended to be a meeting place for maybe half a dozen
people. I can't believe that we have almost 1000 members there now, and that new TR fans
are joining almost every day. Amazing! |
|
| What problems did occur at the beginning of
LH? |
|
| At the beginning, none at all, mainly because there were so
few members. Of course, as the forum has grown, there have inevitably been a few
personality clashes and the occasional argument. But you get that in any large
"family". It used to upset me a bit, but these days I don't mind so much, mainly
because the LH staff do such a wonderful job of making sure things run smoothly. I
couldn't run LH without the support of those staff. They're all fantastic. |
|
| Lara's Home is the one of the sites that
hosts a lot of Unofficial levels. Compared with other sites LH is a good source for
information and help about Unofficial levels. Are Unofficial levels more important than
Official levels at LH? |
|
| They're not more important but they are equally as
important. People who build levels spend lots of time on what they do and we appreciate
the results, no matter whether those results are official or unofficial levels. |
|
| How difficult is it to be the Admin of LH?
How much time do you spend on the forum? More time with reading the posts or more time
with source code, uploading stuff and so on? |
|
| It's actually quite easy these days because as mentioned
earlier, the LH staff take a lot of pressure off me. We really do have a great team at LH.
Because of other commitments I can't spend as much time as I'd like to at LH, but I'm
there as often as I can be. I'd say that I probably spend about the same amount of time
with the source code and uploading as I do reading the posts. |
|
| How would you describe LH? |
|
| An online insane asylum full of fun and smut! The vast
majority of our members are genuinely lovely people. Without them LH wouldn't exist at
all. They fund the server, and they make LH what it is - which for me is one of the most
fun places to visit online. |
|
| Why do some people use the name Lettucehead?
Is there a story about the nickname? |
|
| I think it started when Torry found an avatar for me, which
was a picture of a woman with a lettuce on her head. The concept kind of stuck from there
for some reason! I don't mind being called Lettucehead though. Believe me, I've been
called far worse, lol... |
