The next best thing to experiencing something yourself is to hear people talk about their interests, sharing their experiences and stories. And the best stories are those that come from passion - striving to overcome obstacles on your way to succeeding in your chosen field, funny anecdotes, hardships endured. "Release The Geek" is our weekly forum to chat to people who are geeky about something - they could be successful, semi-so, or on their way to achieving a level of it but they've all got one thing in common - passion. Can't replicate it. And we want to share their experiences, their hurdles, their stories with the greater geek populace (or anyone who would care to).
http://www.releasethegeek.net/blog/
episode 137: Episode 137 Composer Geekery with Carlo Mombelli
Our last RTG episode spotlighted Gina Nelson, lead artist on the new mobile game Dragon's Watch. During our chat, Gina discussed what the design team were looking for when it came to the theme music for the game - they really wanted to music to be more than just 'background noise', but an enriching aspect of the game.
As it happens, Gina's father, Carlo Mombelli, is a South African bassist, composer and educator - she suggested that he submit some samples to game design team and they loved what they heard. Gina also gave some insight to Carlo's history, which sounded incredible.
We reached out to Johannesburg based Carlo, and had an incredibly entertaining discussion about his path to musical geekdom. As a quick example - as I record this intro, the largely self taught Carlo is currently in Bern, Switzerland, where he's performing in a series of concerts.
Carlo was incredibly gracious with his time and we chatted about many things including how he fell in love with the bass guitar, how he created the soundtrack to Dragon's Watch with acoustic instruments (sometimes, custom made for the sound), and how he got his first performance gig - singing at a restaurant as a the lead-in entertainer for one of South Africa's well known exotic dancers.
To find out more about Carlo and his music, head on over to his website!