About the Owner
Leo Lyn aka yongeWok
Born in an apartment near the Don Valley I've lived around the GTA all my life. As a lifelong musician I began training on drums at 10 years old. My obsession with sound and music took root long earlier and was influenced strongly by my grandfather Len Roy Lyn. A mechanic by trade he was also a passionately creative hobbyist, playing in a local steel pan group and collecting instruments such as Dizi, Erhu, Violin, Keyboard, Autoharp and Accordion. He was also a skilled painter and sketcher, often carrying around a scrapbook from which I sourced the bamboo and reeds of the SoundLynx Production logos.
My producer tag yongeWok refers to Yonge Street along which I have grown up throughout my youth and adulthood. From my infancy in Newmarket, to my adolescence in Richmond Hill, through my high school years at Yonge and Sheppard and ultimately in adulthood during recovery treatment near Yonge and Queen, the so-called 'longest street in the world' has been my stomping ground at my highest highs, in my lowest lows and through thick and thin.
Finally, ‘Wok’ is a play on the old ‘melting pot’ trope, representing my mixture of Irish and Chinese-Jamaican ancestry. As opposed to a stew pot, the curved walls of a wok keeps flavours concentrated and mingling in the centre. While my birth name is Niall Lyn-McKee, I've come to use Leo Lyn professionally for memorability; Leo (Liu 六) became my de-facto Chinese name after learning Mandarin and working at a local Chinese market.
Having part Jamaican roots I was exposed to Marley, Tosh, Ranks, Levy and Belafonte from a young age; as such, my instrumentals demonstrate an affinity for Caribbean, Hip-Hop and Afrobeats, although from 10 years old I've also been a hopeless Rush fan. Throughout my academic career in music, I have been familiarized and involved with practically all genres of music; classic rock, punk, metal, ska, jazz, classical and military band (civilian musician with The Queens Own Rifles of Canada Regimental Band and Bugles).
At Cardinal Carter Academy for the Arts (CCAA), my training shifted toward Western Classical music, learning orchestral and mallet percussion performance, developing ear training (relative pitch), practicing sight reading, studying basic theory (Rudiments I and II, Harmony & Counterpoint post secondary) and ultimately my first composition summer class in grade 11. My studies at CCAA would continue into post secondary, studying performance at York University where I took an elective course in Digital and Electronic Media featuring the software Propellerheads Reason (5th edition at the time).
For reasons both personal and academic, my interest would begin to shift towards digital production. This shift was driven by a realization that my interest in composition could be more effectively developed by the use of digital media. Digital production offered more tonal and textural control, immediate playback, more precise timing/spotting and the flat investment of a computer and software license, compared to the ongoing costs of classical composition (printing parts, compensation for rehearsals and recordings, and costly rentals of large recording setups).
I left my performance program and enrolled in Recording Arts Canada (RAC). At RAC I learned the works about music production; types of microphones, how to use them, cable repair, session preparation, the importance of pre gain vs cranking the faders, stemming and summing on analog boards, digital to analog conversion (and vice versa), acoustic treatment, audio codecs/file types, signal processing, foley production, fx spotting to video, stereo and surround mixing, fundamental concepts of mastering and much more.
Since graduation I have continued to develop my skills, particularly in the area of signal processing such as strategic use of compression, tactical assembly of effects chains, advanced/alternative use of side-chaining, creative generation and utilization of CV triggers, and loudness targets in mastering for streaming platforms (maintaining LUFS target levels).
At present, is with great humility and gratitude that I have accepted a partnership with The Recording Factory. This partnership represents an unprecedented opportunity for me to establish a recording and production service to the professional standards I wish to provide my clients.