About Filippo Vicarelli

General Informations

Filippo Vicarelli is a polyhedric artist and mostly a music composer, multi instrumentalist, writing music both for his own CD albums, as well as for Video Games, Documentaries, Multimedia, Websites, interactive CDROMs, and other projects. He specially love to write soundtracks and produce sound effects for freeware and commercial games. He is also starting sells his self-produced CD albums (either on CD or as digital download through various outlets) for pure enjoyment, and not for living, with hope to deliver his music around the world for people's pleasure. He tries his best to go for an original sound - kind of melodic, inspiring and well suited for defined context and atmosphere.

Filippo Vicarelli also work in design field as webdesigner, and he has been creating Websites, Logos, Pixel Art graphic for Video Games, Comics and other projects. Note: his latest original comic 'Another Breed' will benefit of an original soundtrack available on CD in the near future, so check it out.

Lastly but not leastly, Filippo Vicarelli is also working on his videoludic projects under his software house 'Rettilon Videogames' led by himself and best friend and coder Gionathan Pesaresi (http://www.kiwicode.org). He manage music, sfx and co-work for graphic, game design and story/character design.

Photos

If you want to see more updated photos, go at my place on MySpace!

Terms of Use

All content on this site, including downloadable media files, was created by Filippo Vicarelli, if not stated otherwise. All content is copyrighted © 2007-2008 Filippo Vicarelli. All rights reserved. Distribution and copying of the provided textual content is allowed as long as it remains unmodified and the original author is indicated.

The author claims no liability for any damage or financial loss directly or indirectly caused by the download or usage of the content provided on this server.

Contact Me

If you would like to send a letter with questions, suggestions etc. to Filippo Vicarelli, feel free to send email to: info @ filippovicarelli.com

Music Studio

Here's my music studio! This is where I create all my music. Let's have a look to what I'm using to work, basicly I got all the outboard, synths and DAW in one single rack. This keeps everything nice and tidy.

Synths

In the upper (and easier to access) part of the rack, I have some hardware synth modules. Top to bottom:

Motif Rack ES - Plenty of good acoustic and electronic sounds. Compared to my other Yamaha synth, this one provide more modern and contemporary feel, and got some solid and crispy sounds. It's got some nice arpeggios too.

Fantom XR - Modern and classic Roland sounds. I expanded this baby with Studio Session card, which gave me some totally new studio-quality sounds and drumkits, Dynamic Drumkits card filled with outstanding acoustic durmkits and Ultimate Keys featuring big variety of sounds from past Roland's expansion cards.

MU100R - My first synth (to be honest that was a S-yxg50 softsynth replaced later with SW1000XG soundcard - same sound-set of the MU100R) and I have a special feeling with it. It's starting to get a bit old nowadays, but I still think it sounds pretty cool and above all it have the PLG100VL expansion, physical modelling for some interesting and original monophonic sounds and good emulation of wind instruments.

XV5050 - Derived from the famous Roland XV series. I got this synth mainly due to the high number of sounds and effects often used in videogame music, and I'm really pleased to be able to use them on my recordings. One regret is the fact that can't be expanded with SR-JV80 cards.

Proteus 2000 - This one is for "bread and butter" sounds. Altough I rarely use this for acoustic sounds, I like it for its personality derived from old Emu and Ensoniq synths, very different from japanese synths. It also have unique filters and editing capabilities.

Orbit V3 - This amazing module featuring the Proteus 2000 engine, has got any sort of electronic classic and original sounds (many of them signed by Rob Papen), and lovely clear and warm overall sound, 16 arpeggiators totally independent of each other! Mine is expanded with Xtreme Lead 1 ROM card, which adds other techno-based sounds and arpeggios. Funnily enough this card sounds more powerful and crispy rather than when I have it mounted inside the XL-1 rack.

Outboard

In the lower part of the rack, I have some outboard and interfaces. Top to bottom:

Sansamp PSA1.1 - Analog guitar preamp able to produce a wide range of quality sounds. I use it when I've got no possibility (because of noise-limitations) to record with a real guitar amp. Actually it have no cabinet simulation, so I need to use some good real cabinet sampled impulses. I forgot to mention another guitar preamp, the Rockman Sustainor (not pictured) for unique 80s style sound. You can hear it on The Entrance.

Chameleon Labs 7622 - Vintage sounding dual microphone preamp with lovely sound when used with my AT4050 mic. Actually I also record electric bass straight into its DI input to have clean and deep sound.

MOTU Midi Express 128 - Midi patchbay with eight input and output channels. It's perfect for the job, I use it to control all my synths from one master keyboard and for timing synchronization when I use synths own arpeggiators.

MOTU 24 i/o - The "core" of my studio. This versatile unit handles 24 analog inputs and outputs and give possibility to mix and route all the signals via software having a clean studio quality sound.

Synergy Origin - This audio-optimized PC is built with quality hardware components to hold intense work sessions and be absolutely stable and quiet.

Miscellaneous

The Adam A7 are a good pair of speakers able to translate very well in any audio system I have heard. I also use AKG 240 headphones. They're useful for tracking session and as second reference, but never trust headphones too much for mixing, as they tend to give wrong impression of bass frequencies. I use them to adjust levels and panorama instead.

My Fatar master keyboard. 88 semi-weighted keys that give good feeling both with piano and synth sounds. Extremely useful are the programmable faders and potentiometers I mapped to have access to the most common features of my hardware synths.

Guitars

And here are my axes:

the Yamaha RGX820z, versatile electric guitar with Sperzel locking tuners, Seymour Duncan pickups and Piezo for simulating some acoustic sounds - but I would not really use it for this purpuose. As acoustic guitar I use an Ibanez Artwood AW40 and get a nice natural sound when recorded with a good condenser microphone. Then I also own a 5 string Yamaha RBX765 active bass for my serious works.

Software

Software! An important part of any digital recording studio, I use it mainly to record and sequence music, mix and add effects such as reverb, delays, compression, equalizer etc. but also to make use of big sound libraries.

Cubase 5 - My main sequencer since many years, I feel it very comfortable and have great MIDI and Audio features I never found anywhere else, plus it handles nicely my hardware synths. Other important things like realtime audio pitch and tempo correction, convolution reverb, and complex routing capabilities are integrated into the sequecencer.

Motu Ethno and Symphonic Instruments - Must-have for every composer, you can't rely on hardware synths for this stuff. I love these MOTU instruments as they're so playable, lively sounding and easy to tweak mantaining a good level of realism.

FM8 - Great piece of software, reproducing those digital sounds of old Yamaha DX synths. FM synthesis is also the kind of sonority I grow with, so can't live without it. I found that very creative for videogame sound-effects too.

Stylus RMX - This thing is able to add the right groove to every track I write, and so it became indispensable. The great thing is that all the loops included can follow dinamically the tempo of the song without losing quality. I also got all the expansions from Spectrasonics - good stuff.

Liquid Saxophone and Trumpet - As above, these licks and phrases can follow the tempo and the tonality of your song (!) being really useful when a real player can't be engaged.