“And now for something [slightly] different.” For today’s Wrock Talk, I had the pleasure of chatting with Bruce Geller of the band Mirror of Erised, based out of Las Vegas. While still very much inspired by Harry Potter, Bruce’s music is a little bit different than your average wrock fare, for much of it is instrumental! Wizard rock is truly a malleable genre, and Bruce’s tunes illustrate this fact; all you really need is some creativity and a dash of love for Harry Potter, and, boom, you’re good to go.

Paul: So let’s go back to beginning! How did Mirror of Erised come to be? And how’d you come up with the name? It’s quite appropriate for your ethereal tunes!

Bruce: It was a dark and stormy night. JUST KIDDING! No, seriously, it was early Spring, 2007, a warm sunny afternoon here in the suburbs of Las Vegas and I had just finished reading HBP for a third time. Then as I was searching for HP book 7 news on the WWW, there was an article about a HP Wrock concert in the theatre of a midtown (Vegas) library that featured headliner Matt Maggiacomo/The Whomping Willows. This kind of concert seemed so strange and mesmerizing! The Pottetesque theme was intriguing and I had some free time, so I went! The audience treated all the bands like rockstars and their music was fun and highly creative. By comparison to those on the wrock stages, I’ve been a performing rock and contemporary instrumental songwriter since the 80’s. Anyway, I went home and started writing instrumentals, my version of an HP movie soundtrack, and I couldn’t stop. I wanted a pseudonym that would match with the mysterious music I was making, so I chose Mirror of Erised. A few months later I hosted my own live wrock concert at a local coffeehouse and attracted two other wrock groups to play with me, one was from Los Angeles and another from here in Vegas. Next thing I know I’m on a plane to play in Orlando with some amazing wrockers. Since then I released two albums of instrumental wrock.

Paul: How do you come up with your instrumentals? You said that you’ve been rocking out since the 80s and wrock out since 2007; has your songwriting process changed over time?

Bruce: For me, I sit at the piano and a musical theme will happen. I’ll also sit in front of my synthesizer workstation and I’ll start programming a new sound that piques my interest for something, potentially, from the books or from a scene in a previous HP movie. Using other samplers and synths, I build on what I’ve just created and I look deeper at the melody, harmony and counterpoint. The result is, hopefully, something that will spark imagination and be worth listening to.

Paul: That’s impressive! (For comparison, whenever I sit down at a piano, I play the opening riff to “Flamingo” by Kero Kero Bonito, get bored and then wander off. ) What about the technical stuff? How do you record your music?

Bruce: My primary DAW (digital audio workstation) for over two decades has been Sonar 8 Producer edition on a homebuilt 4-core Intel Windows PC, using an M-Audio 192 audio/MIDI PCI card, and I’m utilizing Roland, Alesis and Yamaha hardware synths and samplers. Currently I am using an octa-core AMD PC with a MOTU Audio Express I/O/MIDI, M-Audio 192 card, Muse Research Receptor 2+, Cantabile 3 as my VST host, as well as a few hundred gigabytes of VST instruments and efx (Native Instruments, Waves and IK Multimedia and many others) and both a Roland baby grand GP 609 and Roland RD-700SX stage piano. My latest addition was the Seaboard 49 Rise running Equator. I am looking to switch from Sonar 8 to Presonus Studio One 5 primarily because Avid Pro Tools is just too damn expensive.

Paul: So fancy! I started off with a microphone taped to a music stand! OK, let’s shift gears here a minute and talk about wrock at large: What is your favorite part about the fandom?

Bruce: The Wrocker community, it’s astounding! Their imaginations rival that of our Muggle recording artist contemporaries! While some wrock songs are complex, yeah, some are simple and easy, but that does not diminish anything. It’s all about the tunes, the lyrics and the humor! The audiences feed the excitement, and while they feed-off the wrocker’s music, I know the wrockers reciprocate, building momentum on both sides.

Paul: What are your thoughts on live wrock? Are you a live concert kinda person?

Bruce: Yes! It’s one thing to write wrock songs and record them onto a computer, but it’s entirely another thing to stand up in the wrock crowd and play your songs for a live audience. COVID did an effin* number on our society, economy and impact against live music ( * Hey now, if Dursely can say “effin” so can I!) so returning to the heady days of live music is something we need to get back to, ideally sooner than later. As for my little contributions, I love to perform and to see the interest in the eyes of my audiences. I am not a recognized name in wrock, namely because my music isn’t not really wrock in the traditional sense, but the fans seem to have accepted my kind of instrumental flavor, I mean, they aren’t raising middle fingers or throwing rotten produce, and thankfully they still applaud my music, so… good times!

A big ‘thank you’ to Bruce for chatting (and putting up) with me! If you’d like to support Bruce and his lush instrumentals, check out his Bandcamp here!