The Story Behind Corporeal
Published July 13, 2007
You've probably seen the YouTube video of a group of kids playing the Halo theme at their high school talent show. And you probably saw them opening the Microsoft Press Briefing for Peter Moore. What you may not know is how five talented teenagers got from the Libertyville High School talent show to the hottest show at E3.
Dave Verlee and Robb Leu started a band their freshman year at Libertyville (Go Wildcats!). Over their high school careers, the band went through many incarnations until senior year when the band locked down with members Dave on guitar, Robb on bass, Dave Bedell on drums, and Marty Geirczyk on vocals. Cut to Spring 2006. The school talent show is coming up and the boys who are major Halo fans—though they prefer system link to Xbox LIVE® play—notice there is an electric guitar in the Halo theme.
Dave Verlee had received a new guitar effects pedal for Christmas and thought the Halo theme would be an excellent chance to show it off. So he spent many, many hours listening to it over and over again, transcribing the guitar part and then writing a part for electric violin. Hanah Stuart was in Dave's music theory class and he recruited her to play electric violin for the talent show. Hanah was very impressed with the wah-wah pedal, and happily agreed to play.
So, the talent show comes around and Corporeal was selected to play the finale (it's a showcase, not a competition). Everyone was blown away with their rendition of the Halo theme. A fellow student put the video of their performance on YouTube, where it received massive traffic and caught the attention of none other than original Halo composer Marty O'Donnell. Marty sent a congratulatory and very encouraging e-mail to all five members of the band. It blew everyone's mind that Marty had contacted them.
Two weeks ago, they got an e-mail from Microsoft saying, "We want to fly you to Los Angeles to do something that we can't tell you about until you sign a non-disclosure agreement." Intrigued, they signed the NDA, and were on their way to Santa Monica.
Getting all of them out here was a challenge. Hanah is supposed to be at the Aspen Music Festival all summer. She had to get permission to leave for a few days—without telling anyone where she was going or what she'd be doing.
After their moment of fame, it's back to the grind. Hanah is studying at Juilliard, Dave V. is studying Electrical Engineering at the University of Illinois, Robb is studying Mechanical Engineering at the Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, Dave B. is going to Carthage College in Wisconsin, and Marty is majoring in Music Business at Western Illinois University.
As far as gaming, they haven't ventured a lot beyond Halo system link. Hanah was sucked into gaming by her bandmates and claim they use her for target practice. The most hardcore of the bunch is Robb, who goes by VTEC KICKED IN on Xbox LIVE and beat Gears of War® in four days.
If you haven't yet heard Corporeal open Microsoft's E3 briefing, make sure to do so now!
Article by TriXie
