This page is meant to tell you a little about myself and my experience with music, sound and everything around it. In detail we shall talk about:
- The business model
- The guitar and bands
- NTFC Studio
- The web, magazines and blogs
- The next projects
I started playing guitar and studying electronics at 14. Since then the two passions have chased and intertwined seamlessly, heavily influencing the important choices that were about to arrive. Ehm… my name is Emiliano Girolami.
The business model
As the years passed, I found myself deciding whether to pursue a career as a musician or to deepen my electronic skills and let music and art remain free to evolve without constraints. I went with the second alternative.
I did formal studies in Rome (I am an electronic engineer graduated from La Sapienza University) and very informal music studies (apart from a few months at the University of the Blues in Dallas with Ken Wheeler).
You can find all the information about my career as an electronic engineer on Linkedin. Here we talk about the musical and sound engineering part which, as you imagine, is inevitably intertwined with the other.
The guitar and the bands
I play the guitar and sing and I have had the pleasure of sharing the stage with many high quality musicians (some even famous). I have played (and continue to do so) in the worst clubs in Italy.
and sometimes even abroad
As of today (January 2025) I am busy with four bands:
NTFC band is my historical group. It has existed since 1997 and has seen in its staff many great musicians (including Carlo and Matteo Di Francesco and Enrico Cosimi, just to mention the most famous). The band currently has three members (Tanja Di Bernardo on vocals, Massimiliano Corradi on keyboards and synths, myself on guitars and guitar synths) and we make considerable use of technology to make everything more interesting.
Soulfools it is the latest addition and is growing rapidly. We are fool about Soul music and we believe that Flavia Medici’s voice is perfect for the genre. Patrizio Panfili plays keyboards and piano, Fabrizio Serrecchia plays bass, Fabio Riccioni plays drums and I play guitars. At the moment we do covers but we are working on original songs. Follow us for relevant updates!
Soundserif is a group that plays original music (Power Pop and surrounding areas). Luisa Ferrari and Paolo Ciarlo sing and play the guitar. Fabrizio Serrecchia on bass, Daniele Arcolin dedicates himself to synth and piano and Francesco Miletta completes the rhythm section with his drums. Needless to say, I play guitars.
With Soundserif we had the opportunity to participate in the International Pop Overthrow in Liverpool in June 2024. We play original music (by Fabrizio and Luisa, mainly) and we are working on the new album.
LEaF is a trio that plays songs from different genres in a jazzy mood. Luisa (the “L”) sings (wonderfully) and plays the Cajon, I (the “E”) play the guitars (and sing in a piece from the repertoire) and Fabrizio Serrecchia (the “F”) plays the double bass and does the choirs.
Soon you will hear more about us (live events coming soon)
NTFC Studio
The studio was born around 2005. It has undergone various evolutions and has been in its stable version for a few years. We use it to record vocals and guitars and for mixing and mastering in Stereo (possibly also for vinyl) and Dolby Atmos formats.
All the albums released by NTFC Band took shape at the NTFC Studio as well as selected projects that you can listen to on digital platforms.
The studio is also used for all the trials and tests of musical instruments, amplifiers, effects and audio systems that I have done in my career as a music journalist which I will tell you about in the next paragraph.
Below are a couple of productions created at NTFC Studio
The web, the magazines and the blogs
In 2008 (more or less) I started a collaboration with accordo.it, a famous musician’s site that talks about guitars and guitarists. At the beginning it was just a few articles but then it became more regular and led me to consider engaging with other publications as well.
I had always read Chitarre magazine and getting to collaborate with them (I did it from 2010 to 2015) was, for me, both an honor and a great pleasure. Accordo and Guitars joined for a while. In that period I had the opportunity to try instruments, amplifiers and effects and meet great musicians (Ian Paice of Deep Purple, to give an example but searching the web you will also find interviews with Scott Henderson, Jeff Berlin, Dominic Miller and many others) or famous Sound Engineers. Among these Antonio Paoluzi and Maurizio Nicotra who I met during the period in which they worked for Jovanotti’s Ora Tour.
Continuing on this area, I also started to deal with professional audio, starting an interesting collaboration with the synth guru Enrico Cosimi and his Audio Central Magazine. In this context I found myself talking about the technical aspects of the guitar sound in a seminar at the Master of Sound and Entertainment Engineering at the University of Tor Vergata in Rome.
In recent years (until 2023) I have worked for the Milk Audio Store Blog. The occasion was useful for exploring topics related to modular synths and sound design, recording studios and music and soundtrack production.
This is the period in which the passion for music and that for electronics met and gave me the opportunity to deepen and broaden, hands on, my skills on hardware and software systems used in the studio and live . The possibility to meet with some of the leading musicians on the world scene have instead broadened my wealth of knowledge and experience of the aspects most linked to creativity.
What’s next
The majority of my current activity is with the bands I talked about above and the live and studio activities that follow.
I am collecting material for the definition and creation of a digital art project which should involve music, video and live performances. This is going to be a long one but I’m already having a lot of fun.
I’ve also written the scripts for a podcast on digital guitarists and almost finished an e-book on modular synthesis.
Shall I be able to find the time to do everything? Keep following me so we can find it out together.
See you soon!!
