World Of WarCrafts Making Music For Guildies And Friends

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World of WarCrafts spotlights art and creativity by WoW players, including fan art, cooking, comics, cosplay, music, fan fiction and more. Sample the whole spectrum on our Arts and Crafts in WoW page.



What do you get when you mix highly creative musicians with WoW? Why, WoW-themed musical creations, of course! Meet The Efts, a husband-wife geek-pop music team who just happen to play World of Warcraft and have penned several tunes about their favorite video game. Shannon and Loretta Fike, the husband and wife who make up the duo, have written everything from guild themes like the one shown above to songs for fellow guildies and love songs for each other. Shannon was kind enough to give us a few minutes and answer a few questions about his work and how the group's unique sounds are created.



World of Warcrafts: So Shannon, how exactly did you get started making music?



Shannon Fike: We got started making music 15 years ago when our friend Dylan Assael joined us in purchasing some second-hand instruments at a pawn shop. The three of us (Shannon Fike, Loretta Rose and Dylan Assael) became Braceface (pre-dating the terrible cartoon of the same name by several years) and mostly made feedback-filled grunge in Dylan's basement while we were attending West Virginia University. Eventually, Loretta and I (who have been married for 16 years) moved away and started using Cakewalk's Guitar Pro software to try to record some of our creations.



You've got a really unique sound. What do you use when you're creating your music?



Dylan showed me how easy it was to make music using GarageBand on a Mac during a visit to his apartment in Brooklyn in 2004. Within two weeks of that tutorial, Loretta and I had purchased a Mac and started writing music under the moniker of The Efts. Over the course of the last six years, we've built an extensive array of loops to use within GarageBand and continue to enjoy the same Mac purchased in 2004. Extreme mining Almost all of the songs on our site were made with GarageBand except I Remember Intellivision, which was a Braceface song from the 1990s recorded using Guitar Pro software.



What's your favorite track to date?



My favorite song we've written is probably Lyon Among Wolves. I wrote it for my great friend John Lyon, who has played WoW with me since vanilla. For the first couple of years of our WoW experience, John used a terrible laptop that overheated after just a few minutes of play. He was able to stutter through the game at 4 frames per second, had no spacebar or enter key, and cooled his laptop with enormous box fans placed strategically on his playing surface. Even though he dealt with a terrible system, he was still (and is still) pretty much the most talented WoW player with whom I've had the opportunity to play.



Loretta just reminded me of Not a Handsome Man, which was a Valentine's Day song we wrote for each other with a lot of WoW connotations throughout. Lolo sings on this tune! I wrote my part and gave it to her for Valentine's Day 2010. Within a week, she had her part worked out. After 2 hours of tinkering, she presented a different version of the song to me with her voice added to it. I was overwhelmed. I'm really hoping this prompts more duets in the future. The way Lolo overlayed her voice worked out great. She's a natural!



It was also an exciting song for us because it commemorated our 20th Valentine's Day together. 20 years! We're awesome. We played MUDs back in the '90s, moved on to Ultima, Everquest, and a bunch of other MMOs until we landed on WoW. We always seem to play the same roles (she tanks, I heal). Funny how life imitates art.



You mentioned you've written songs for guild members; it sounds like you're a really close-knit group. Can you tell us a little about the guild?



I wrote a theme song for our guild, Hordiculturalists (US-H), very recently. This was difficult, as a six-syllable word like Hordiculturalists is hard to gently place into any kind of lyrical flow. It was a labor of love (like all of our songs), as we've greatly enjoyed the company of our various guildies throughout the last six years. Our guild is primarily comprised of a group of real-life friends and family from all over West Virginia, but recently, we've expanded to include many other folks from our server.



For several years, I owned and operated an indie video game store in Petersburg, West Virginia, called Wild Wonderful Video Games. Our guild was born there when I opened up an unused back room for LAN parties. Customers (now fellow guildies) started living in that back room during business hours, playing WoW all day, every day. At the time, we were on Shattered Hand server, but we moved to Ravenholdt soon after the server went live and have been there ever since. We're not hardcore raiders, but we always have fun. Our focus has been 5- and 10-person action with a lot of PvP thrown in for good measure.



To check out more from The Efts, visit their Youtube channel and their blog. Thanks for your time, Shannon; we hope to hear more tunes from you soon!



World of WarCrafts spotlights art and creativity by WoW players, including arts and crafts, fan art, WoW-themed recipes, comics, cosplay, music and fan fiction. Show us how you express yourself by emailing [email protected] with your not-for-profit, WoW-inspired creations.