With their haunting instrumentals and their unique perspective on popular songs, Belmont duo the Khromatiks will be one of four acts taking the stage at Monday’s Commercial Music Showcase.
Senior Kayleigh Moyer and alumni Kyle Pudenz hope to make their name better known in the Belmont community with the upcoming performance, which sees them as the only duo to be entered this year.
“The unique thing about The Khromatiks is that we can fill out the sound of an entire band with just two people. We use a looper pedal to build tracks live and sequence them into a song,” they said in a message to the Vision.
Both music majors, the two met during their first semester at Belmont and started playing music together in the spring of 2012 with Pudenz on the violin and Moyer on the drums, covering popular songs with an instrumental vision all their own.
“Kyle had written a loop arrangement of ‘Paradise’ by Coldplay on 7-string violin and wanted to see what it would sound like with drums, so we recorded a YouTube video of it,” they said. “Since then we have made 17 more videos and have acquired over 150,000 views on our YouTube channel, The Khromatiks.”
After going through two rounds of auditions for the Commercial Music Showcase in the fall of 2014, Moyer and Pudenz spent months practicing and improving on their sound with the help of their coach Tracy Silverman.
Because their covers usually average between five and seven minutes in length, one of the main challenges was “condensing” their songs so that they can play as many as possible during their set.
Song length isn’t the only thing that will change in the duo’s style for the upcoming showcase, however. In addition to working with and practicing their songs, the duo has also built new instruments to use during the show and will be accompanied by other Belmont musicians for part of it.
“Most of our songs are designed to be performed with just the two of us, but for this show we will be featuring three members of the Belmont Jazz String Quartet on one of our original pieces,” said the duo.
The Khromatiks hope to gain more followers through the event, introduce more people to their unique style and encourage those interested to check out their videos on Youtube.
“We hope our performance will be something that the audience has never seen anything like before,” they said.
To learn more about the Khromatiks, check them out online on Facebook and on Youtube.
The commercial music showcase will be held at the MPAC at 5:30 p.m. on Feb. 2. There is no charge for admission.