Andrea Martorelli, born in Salerno in 1990, has turned his passion for guitar into a professional career.
He holds a bachelor’s degree in Jazz guitar from Saint Louis College of Music and completed a master’s degree in Music and Sound Design for video games.
Andrea Martorelli after experience in various indie projects, moved to Düsseldorf in 2021 to work at Ubisoft, where he was responsible for, among many other things, a chapter of the Assassin’s Creed IP. He currently works in Italy as a composer, freelance sound designer and lecturer.
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Hi Andrea!
How did you meet and what made you choose to study music at Saint Louis?
I started in high school by playing guitar, and after graduation I decided that I would start a career path in professional studies. Wandering around online I had been struck by William Stravato’s style so I moved to Rome so I could study with him at Saint Louis.
From there, I came into contact with a reality composed of various professionals who were able to direct me in the best way to be able to follow my passions and to achieve my goals of becoming a composer and sound designer for video games
What were your first jobs?
I worked my way up through the ranks working on smartphone games and apps and then moved on to actual video games developed by indie teams. From there I landed at Ubisoft where I was part of a large audio team where I was mainly responsible for the sound design and implementation of Assassin’s Creed Nexus. As an audio team we have also been responsible for other projects such as Avatar Frontiers of Pandora, Star Wars Outlaws and others not yet announced that I cannot mention.
After several years abroad, you decided to return to Italy as a professional musician: what are you involved in today? How do you handle customer research?
Working abroad has many merits, but I am very attached to our territory – with all its shortcomings – so I decided to return to Italy, abandoning the “permanent position” to devote myself to freelancing both as a Sound Designer and as a Composer
Fortunately, during my journey I came into contact with many small and large Game Developers that allowed me to have the right connections to be able to find work.
How important is music theory in your current work?
Knowing the theory is definitely a fundamental building block in the development of one’s professional activity, indispensable if one’s path is that of a musician or composer and certainly of enormous help in other fields as a sound technician or sound designer where it allows you to better interface and “speak the same language” with other professionals.
What were the lessons that proved most useful for your professional development and your current work?
For the kind of path I took, certainly the most important lessons were those in the area of music technology.
Thanks to Maestro Silvio Relandini, who is a formidable teacher as well as a wonderful person, I discovered and delved into the world of MIDI programming, the use of DAWs, virtual orchestration and so on, which gave me a huge advantage when I had to deal with other realities.
Have you ever collaborated with other Saint Louis students? Tell us about some projects and how the idea of working together came about?
Yes! After graduating from Saint Louis and other educational paths, I had begun to take my first steps into the world of work, and through Maestro Silvio Relandini I got in touch with a student in the Composition and Applied Music course, Andrea Caranfil, who was looking for a sound designer for a video game developed through crowdfunding, and from there came one of the most beautiful and heartfelt projects I have ever worked on, Path of the Midnight Sun.
What are you working on now?
With some former Ubisoft colleagues, we founded an Audio Services company, GCRadix, which offers a comprehensive overview of services primarily for video games but also for other media.
In addition to Sound Design, we mainly deal with Audio Programming, Implementation, Dedicated Tool Creation, QC and so on.
I chose this path because it is a job that allows you first and foremost to work remotely, but more importantly to participate in smaller and more varied projects.
You’ve also had teaching experience: what would you recommend to people who are studying music right now?
I have always stressed the importance of the right mindset when entering the world of work. There is first and foremost a need for discipline, both in studying and in organizing the steps you need to take to reach your goal and in networking, and it is also important to have resilience as it can be a path made up of many “NO’s.”
Personally, I would add that having a dream is important, but not achieving it does not mean failure; the essential thing is to live in the present and especially one’s affections.
Who is your musician of the heart? and why?
During my years of study, I have listened to and crossed various genres, fixing on a different musician each time, but if I have to name one artist who has always accompanied me without ever tiring, it is definitely Fabrizio De André.
What is your favorite song you could on Noah’s Ark?
Very difficult question.
I think for content, arrangement and meaning my choice falls on Anime Salve by De André
