Alot of people always ask about how I came up with these ideas for the
songs and skits. In all honesty, most of these were made on just a couple
hours from start to finish. Perhaps a little bit of insight will help
into each track. But why Everquest music????? Well, here is the story
of how I got started in music.

My first exposure to making music was in Jr. High School as a floutist
( that’s flute player ). I sucked at it completely and couldn’t get the
air to flow over the soundhole correctlly. Around that time, I had surgery
on my ear to close up a perforated ear drum. I wasn’t able to play in
the band for six weeks after because of it… And so everyday I went to
class, listening to the band play music…wishing I could play with them.
I learned to read the music, to hear the different parts and the harmonies.
I began to pick up the big picture. After six weeks, I was very far behind
and so I was forced to pick a new instrument. I wanted to play Saxophone
but it was so expensive to buy one. Eventually, I bought a used Clarinet
and learned to play it.

It was great! Finally I could play along to the music. I caught on very
quickly and I loved it. I moved from 3rd chair to 1st chair. I knew I
was hooked! At the last concert of the 6th grade year, Mr. Wooten, our
band instructor, surprised me with an award for “The Years Most Improved
Musician.” Yeah, it was only a little 6th grade award certificate
but it really meant alot and did much to solidify my interest in music.

I played in band through 8th grade and when I got to High School, I gave
it up to pursue the golf and tennis team. I started learning how to remix
music using a cheap turntable and a radio shack Audio Mixing console.
I also made some tapes known as “Sean Gay” which will never
be released due to their content hehe. It consisted of interviewing a
gay guy on the telephone and having him answer with funny lines from popular
pop songs. Everyone who listened to them laughed incredibly hard and loved
em. I made sequels for all of the long trips to sporting events. I think
I made 7 total! They are hiding on a collection CD in the back of my CD
collection in the attic. LOL

I know what you are thinking… “Richie, what about guitar?”

Well believe it or not, I have not been playing guitar that long. I meet
my best friend, Jade Hoy, in my General Biology class in my freshman year
of college. He was a long time player of acoustic guitar and would often
bring over his guitar to play at my house. I really digged the sound of
the acoustic guitar. Plus, on campus, playing guitar attracted female
attention! My first guitar I bought was from a pawn shop. It was an Oscar
Schmidt and it had a MASSIVE fretboard and neck on it. I have small hands
and so it was difficult to learn how to play. I could not do barre chords
and I only learned E, A and D at first.

Jade was supportive of me picking up guitar even though I sucked pretty
bad at first. Still though, I was determined to have fun with it. How
does one have fun with playing music? Well, you record it! Our first song
ever written on the guitar was a really stupid song called “The Stiffy
Song.” It was written and recorded in a total of 15 minutes. The
recording quality was awful due to my crappy equipment. A week later,
I learned two new guitar chords and wrote a dumb song called “My
Doggy Got Ran Over”, which was a tribute to my deceased childhood
pet, D.J. On my birthday, Jade gave me his old 1969 Ovation Deep Dish
Guitar. Thanks Jade!

Now about this time, I decided the new Everquest Expansion, “The
Ruins of Kunark” was coming out and I purchased it with overnight
shipping. I was never really a hardcore Everquest player but I did enjoy
the game and spent an hour or two a day playing it. The release date came
and passed without the expansion pack arriving. The second day, no expansion
pack…. Well the third day I was logged in on a Rainy Friday morning
when I was off from classes. I died to a cyclops due to going linkdead
while camping an enemy named “Lord Grimrot” to complete an in
game quest. I tried to get my corpse and the server went down due to a
problem. I got sorta pissed heheehe. Then I got this idea. I’d record
this funny song and send it to my guild buddies!

“An Everquest Song” was my first successful song. It was recorded
in 15 minutes and I just started banging on my guitar singing whatever
came to mind. I recorded a second vocal track to provide some harmony
filler and sound effects to it. I mixed it down and was ready to send
it to my buddies. WHOPS! My crappy ISP webpage wouldn’t hold it! The file
was too big. So I signed up for an MP3.com account and shoved it up
there and sent the link to my guild buddies. They all thought it was great!
So, feeling satisfied having vented my frustration and making my guild
buddies laugh, I left it alone. A week later, I start getting a TON of
emails from Everquest players telling me how much they loved the song!
I was shocked! MP3.com contacted me and told me my song had been downloaded
over 10,000 times in one day. You could have knocked me over with a feather…

Shortly thereafter, I wrote “If I Had a Billion Platinum”,
a song that was both a tribute to the Barenaked Ladies and a parody of
collecting wealth in EQ. It was twice as popular as the first song and
started generating press for me. I was overwhelmed by the sheer amount
of fan mail I received. I tried to get back to everyone but it was difficult.
My 3rd song, “Rat Killer”, was written in about 3 hours on
a Saturday morning. It was my first attempt to play with my new cheesy
Stratocaster Squire and 6″ amplifier. “Rat Killer” was
a huge hit and people would log on and sing it in OOC chat. My fan mail
doubled. One night, out of curiosity I put my name into Napster to search
for my music. It came up with “Too many matches to list” with
over 100 listings. I was like “wow, this music sucks but people still
love it and trade it online?!?!?! Wow…” I found out I had topped
the MP3.com comedy charts at #1 for 3 weeks in a row.

So what does one do? Well release more music! I wanted to break away
from the comedy music and see if I could do something serious. I wrote
“Norrathian Sky,” a love song with multiple multracked harmony
parts and multple instruments. Jade played piano on it for me too. When
I released it I really thought everyone would hate it because it was a
mushy song. I was wrong, it generated twice the traffic. I started getting
emails from people asking me to play the song at their wedding. The song
went to the top of the MP3.com Easy Listening charts overnight and stayed
there for quite awhile. Non Everquest players became interested in the
music and started sending me fan mails. Lots even idolized me and I didn’t
know how to handle it. After all, I was ( and still am ) just a normal
guy, working his way through college and just tinkering around with his
guitar and cheap microphone…

One complaint people had was the “clipping” from my microphone
where I would yell into the microphone and the recording level would max
out. The only way to combat this was to upgrade my recording equipment.
I bought a vocal mic and a gold plated condenser mic. I also got a new
guitar and dual 12″ Marshall Amplifier. It made a huge difference
in recording the music. The clipping stopped and I gained considerable
experience in producing music with the software I was using.

I then decided to write “TRAIN!” I sat down, wrote the lyrics
first in about 20 minutes and then spent another 4 hours laying down the
tracks. This was also the first musical piece with a skit contained within.
People loved it, it went #1 on the comedy charts again, and I got alot
of compliments on the little skit part within the song. This lead me to
tap into my crazy side and write “When Beggars Attack.”

People just LOVE the Beggar skits. No one had ever heard such a thing
before. It’s amazing to hear people quote the lines from it. I get alot
of questions on how I produced these skits. When Beggars attack was written
in 3 hours and 22 minutes ( I timed it ) and contained 49 seperate vocal
tracks and 1 music track. People always ask if I write a script for it.
I did no scripting at all. This was done on the fly and was a “Stream
of Consciousness” work. I did all of the voices and sound effects
myself. I did raise the pitch of my voice for the wood elven track ( come
on, there’s no way I could talk that high unless you kicked me in the
nads hehehe ) but everything else is unaltered!

“Revenge of the Beggars” was even more popular and contained
even more tracks! over 70 to be exact! Talk about crazy, this stream of
consciousness work took 4 hours from start to finish and is surround encoded.
Try it! You can hear the position of every character with respect to Richardo
in the track. I have a THX system in my room and it really gives you that
“you are there” feeling. I think people dig this skit because
they can imagine it in their own minds happening. It taps in subconcious
imaginations of listeners. In addition, everytime you listen to the track
you hear something new! Heck, I still discover new things in it everytime
I listen to it! Revenge of the Beggars enjoyed a 8 week run at #1.

Around this time I decided to release “Glass Fantasies”, my
first attempt at writing dance music. I was in my kitchen and hit my glass
with a spoon by accident. It resonated this really nice bell tone and
so I made a dance track out of it. My girlfriend reviewed it at work and
approved and so I released it. Sure enough, it went #1 on the electronic
charts! I still have a few dance tracks in the works.

After the dance track, “Words of Love” was made and although
the song only made it to #2 on the Easy Listening Charts, it still holds
a special place in my heart. Shortly following that was “The Server’s
Down Again”, which hit #1 on the comedy charts also instantaneously.
It’s about EQ players feeling the frustration of the servers being down,
forcing them to go out and experience real life. Although I wrote the
song with EQ in mind, it could very easily apply to just about any online
game, hence the popularity.

My most recent track is “All That You Are” and has done very
well. Considering it is a 2 chord song, it still is layered nicely and
sounds good to me. It’s still listed as a beta version though as I would
like to add some strings and some more harmony tracks to it near the end.

So, there you have it! You’ve discovered the secret behind the music.
I write what sounds good to me and makes others laugh. I don’t confirm
to any standards or conventions, if it is music to the ear and it makes
me smile, then I run with it! I will get off my butt and write more soon.
In fact I have a few tracks already in the works. And YES! I know the
album isn’t out yet and YES I know you all have been waiting for it for
2 years now! But It’ll be worth the wait