Bernard Torelli (13 October 1955 – 18 January 2016) was a French guitarist, composer, audio engineer and record producer.

Life and career

He was born in

Nice Nice ( , ; Niçard: , classical norm, or , nonstandard, ; it, Nizza ; lij, Nissa; grc, Νίκαια; la, Nicaea) is the prefecture of the Alpes-Maritimes department in France. The Nice agglomeration extends far beyond the administrative c ...

, the younger half-brother of musician and record producer

Jean-Pierre Massiera Jean-Pierre Massiera (10 July 1941 – 28 December 2019),Jean Garand, Larsen Nick, Liner notes for ''Jean-Pierre Massiera: Psychoses Freakoid (1963-1978)'', Mucho Gusto Records, 2008 sometimes referred to by his initials JPM, was a French mus ...

. When Massiera established a new 16-track

recording studio A recording studio is a specialized facility for sound recording, mixing, and audio production of instrumental or vocal musical performances, spoken words, and other sounds. They range in size from a small in-home project studio large enoug ...

Antibes Antibes (, also , ; oc, label=Provençal dialect, Provençal, Antíbol) is a coastal city in the Alpes-Maritimes Departments of France, department of southeastern France, on the French Riviera, Côte d'Azur between Cannes and Nice. The town of ...

, Torelli began recording with him as guitarist, playing on the 1974

concept album A concept album is an album whose tracks hold a larger purpose or meaning collectively than they do individually. This is typically achieved through a single central narrative or theme, which can be instrumental, compositional, or lyrical. Som ...

''Visitors''. Torelli joined the band

Rockets A rocket (from it, rocchetto, , bobbin/spool) is a vehicle that uses jet propulsion to accelerate without using the surrounding air. A rocket engine produces thrust by reaction to exhaust expelled at high speed. Rocket engines work entirely fr ...

in 1976, and featured on their debut album. The following year, he played on another album coordinated by Massiera, ''Atlantide'', and then on the cult

psychedelic Psychedelics are a subclass of hallucinogenic drugs whose primary effect is to trigger non-ordinary states of consciousness (known as psychedelic experiences or "trips").Pollan, Michael (2018). ''How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of ...

album ''L'Etrange Mr. Whinster'', credited to Horrific Child. Torelli worked with the prolific Massiera as musician, composer, arranger and occasionally co-producer, on numerous

prog rock Progressive rock (shortened as prog rock or simply prog; sometimes conflated with art rock) is a broad genre of rock music that developed in the United Kingdom and United States through the mid- to late 1960s, peaking in the early 1970s. Initi ...

and

space disco Italo disco (variously capitalized, and sometimes hyphenated as Italo-disco) is a music genre which originated in Italy in the late 1970s and was mainly produced in the early 1980s. Italo disco evolved from the then-current underground dance, p ...

albums and projects during the late 1970s. These included the albums ''Turn Radio On'', ''Phantasmes'', ''Space Woman'' (credited to the act Herman's Rocket), ''Galactic Soul'' (credited to Venus Gang), and singer Jessy Joyce's ''J. Joyce & Co.'', among others. On the 1978 prog rock album ''Human Egg'', Torelli played guitar, bass and keyboards. Max Cole, "A Guide to the Unhinged Genius of Jean Pierre Massiera", ''Red Bull Music Academy'', 14 January 2015
Retrieved 7 December 2019 Savinov, "Jean-Pierre Massiera", ''JPMDiscogs''
Retrieved 7 December 2019 In the 1970s, Torelli also worked as a

session musician Session musicians, studio musicians, or backing musicians are musicians hired to perform in recording sessions or live performances. The term sideman is also used in the case of live performances, such as accompanying a recording artist on a ...

in Paris, with Manu Dibango among others."Bernard Torelli", ''LesRockets.com''
Retrieved 8 December 2019 In the early 1980s, Torelli moved to California. After he was introduced to French singer

Michel Polnareff Michel Polnareff (born 3 July 1944, Nérac, Lot-et-Garonne, France) is a French singer-songwriter, who was popular in France from the mid-1960s until the early 1990s with his penultimate original album, ''Kāma-Sūtra''. He is still critically ...

, he worked with him as his guitarist and engineer. He also worked with

Stanley Clarke Stanley Clarke (born June 30, 1951) is an American bassist, film composer and founding member of Return to Forever, one of the first jazz fusion bands. Clarke gave the bass guitar a prominence it lacked in jazz-related music. He is the first jaz ...

, the

jazz fusion Jazz fusion (also known as fusion and progressive jazz) is a music genre that developed in the late 1960s when musicians combined jazz harmony and jazz improvisation, improvisation with rock music, funk, and rhythm and blues. Electric guitars, ...

band CAB, and others. He later worked as a recording engineer at Track Star Studios in

San Diego San Diego ( , ; ) is a city on the Pacific Ocean coast of Southern California located immediately adjacent to the Mexico–United States border. With a 2020 population of 1,386,932, it is the List of United States cities by population, eigh ...

. Around 2000, he founded the

software Software is a set of computer programs and associated documentation and data. This is in contrast to hardware, from which the system is built and which actually performs the work. At the lowest programming level, executable code consists ...

company Nomad Factory, responsible for creating programs and software for

audio recording Sound recording and reproduction is the electrical, mechanical, electronic, or digital inscription and re-creation of sound waves, such as spoken voice, singing, instrumental music, or sound effects. The two main classes of sound recording te ...

, mixing and mastering. This included developing audio software processors and plug-ins for DAWs (

digital audio workstation A digital audio workstation (DAW) is an electronic device or application software used for Sound recording and reproduction, recording, editing and producing audio files. DAWs come in a wide variety of configurations from a single software pro ...

) such as

Cubase Cubase is a digital audio workstation (DAW) developed by Steinberg for music and MIDI recording, arranging and editing. The first version, which was originally only a MIDI sequencer and ran on the Atari ST computer, was released in 1989. Cut-dow ...

and

Pro Tools Pro Tools is a digital audio workstation (DAW) developed and released by Avid Technology (formerly Digidesign) for Microsoft Windows and macOS. It is used for music creation and production, sound for picture (sound design, audio post-productio ...

. "RIP Bernie Torelli, founder of Nomad Factory", ''Gearslutz,com'', 20 January 2016
Retrieved 8 December 2019 In 2016, Torelli died as a result of cancer, aged 60.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Torelli, Bernard 1955 births 2016 deaths French record producers French rock guitarists French audio engineers