I'm an Italian pro musician (I play 10 & 12 strings Chapman Stick & Grand Stick, 4, 5 & 6 strings fretted and fretless electric bass, upright bass, synth bass, acoustic and electric guitar, keyboards, percussions, programming), composer, arranger, sound engineer and music producer, with over 30 years of experience on stage and in the studio, more than 140 official recordings, and over 20 years teaching music.
I was born in Termoli (Molise - Italy) in 1969, and I moved to Florence (Tuscany - Italy) in 1988, where I lived and worked until the end of 2020. In December 2020, I moved to Granada (Andalucía - Spain), where I've opened my own music production studio (Garden Studio Granada), and where I actually live.
Throughout my career, I've had international collaborations and tours in various European countries (Italy, Spain, France, Germany, Belgium, Austria, Switzerland, Slovenia and Liechtenstein), playing live and in studio with some very important Italian and international artists, musicians and producers, such as JERRY MAROTTA, ARTICOLO 31, SHEL SHAPIRO, PAOLO VALLESI, IRENE GRANDI, GRAZIA DI MICHELE, DOLCENERA, MAURIZIO VANDELLI, GEMELLI DIVERSI, ANDREA MINGARDI, KURTIS BLOW, WALTER SAVELLI, PAOLA FOLLI, FRANCO GODI, FAUSTO COGLIATI, FOFFO BIANCHI, FRANCESCA TOURE', MARIELLA NAVA, DJ BLADE from JESTOFUNK, NICO GORI, FRANCISCA, LEO PIERI, LUCA CIARLA, CLAUDIO GIOVAGNOLI, OSVALDO DI DIO, DONALD RENDA, TOMMY GRAZIANI, BRUNO FARINELLI, ALDEVIS TIBALDI, LELE FONTANA, BERNARDO BAGLIONI and many more, often sharing the same stage with some of the most important Italian and international artists, such as SANTANA, MOTORHEAD, SHAKIRA, LENNY KRAVITZ, BLACK EYED PEAS, PROCOL HARUM, AVRIL LAVIGNE, ZUCCHERO, VASCO ROSSI, MAX GAZZÉ, CARMEN CONSOLI, ELISA, DANIELE SILVESTRI, SUBSONICA, 99 POSSE, BIAGIO ANTONACCI, CESARE CREMONINI, GIANLUCA GRIGNANI and many more.
Mike Vitulli
About Me
Garden Studio Granada
Garden Studio Granada
The Garden Studio is my creative space in my house (Granada, Andalusia, Spain), where arrangements and productions are created with passion and attention to details, regardless of musical genre or artist stature. All artists are treated as such, whether professional or not, because all matters. Artists are like flowers, deserving to be cared for with love so that they may grow in all their beauty.
The services I offer range from simple recording and/or mixing (including tracks recorded elsewhere) to complete production, which also includes arrangements and recording of all main instruments, according to the artist's needs, and composition (if required).
It's a small but efficient studio, acoustically well treated, with a good recording booth and a confortable control room, various instruments and the best softwares, designed for writing, arranging, recording, producing and mixing "in-the-box", in order to achieve pro-quality fully customised records, from the demo to the master.
No Borders. No Limits. Just Music
The Chapman Stick
The Chapman Stick, which I play since 2009, is currently my main instrument, and I'm one of the few musicians in Spain who plays it, and actually the only one active in Andalucía. It's a 10 or 12-string instrument, a double-hands tapping hybrid of piano, guitar and bass, fully electric and dual mono, which means that it's splitted in two parts (the Bass Side and the Melody Side), with two different outputs and a different routing for each of the two parts. It also has a special double tuning (inverted fifths for the Bass Side, perfect fourths for the Melody Side), which allows the musician to play up to three different parts simultaneously (harmony, bass line, and melody). It's an instrument that is played by tapping the strings with both hands simultaneously, normally using three or four fingers (sometimes all five fingers) on each hand, as on a piano, through a special technique called Free Hands, which is part of the tapping technique family. Both the instrument and the Free Hands technique (along with its particular double tuning), were invented in 1969 by Emmett Chapman, a brilliant musician and inventor. As a talented jazz guitarist, he was looking for a way to play harmony and melody freely at the same time, and he was definitely one of the pioneers in the development of the tapping technique, long before it became famous. He invented this instrument so that he could put his ideas into practice, and he realized that he also had to invent a new technique for playing it, and a special tuning that would allow him to do so (as a matter of fact, this was the first double tuning in the history of musical instruments). The Chapman Stick is, to all intents and purposes, a very rare-to-see numbered custom-designed instrument, and can only be purchased through Stick Enterprise (Los Angeles, CA, USA), the company founded by Emmett Chapman and continued by his daughter Grace Chapman after Emmett's death in 2021. You can find all the necessary informations about the instrument, how to purchase it, how to learn to play it, and an extensive discography of the main Stick artists on the Stick Enterprise website (www.stick.com)
Live Projects
Chapman Stick live performances
Solo Performances
Collaborations
I am currently starting various new projects of different kinds, in duos or trios, in collaboration with other artists (musicians and/or singers). In some cases, they will be based on a repertoire consisting of covers of various genres (jazz, blues, soul, pop, rock, latin, etc.), in others on completely (or almost completely) original music. As they take shape, they will be added to this section.
Instrumental solo project based on 20th-century covers, including a large variety of genres.
Chapman Stick Solo Performance
FluidBox - Music from the Last Century is a truly unique solo show in Spain. In this performance, I play the Chapman Stick - in most cases along with two electronic sequencers - to showcase my instrumental interpretations of some of the most famous songs and themes of the 20th century, blending various musical styles and paying tribute to the main artists in the history of modern music. With over 150 themes grouped into medleys, sprinkled with anecdotes detailing the genesis of the songs and the lives of the artists, the result is a show that never repeats itself. It's a journey that starts with the jukebox and ends with the fluid music of the streaming era, with sounds that range from chill-out to smooth jazz, from pop-rock to soul-r'n'b, from new-age to sophisticated IDM electronica, suitable for all types of audiences and situations, whether theaters, jazz clubs, house concerts, restaurants, and in general any kind of venue offering live music.
The repertoire, constantly evolving, features songs written or made famous by artists such as Beatles, Pink Floyd, Dire Straits, Steely Dan, Fleetwood Mac, Led Zeppelin, Cream, Jefferson Airplane, Love, Doors, Eagles, Animals, Who, King Crimson, Genesis, Alan Parson's Project, Sting, David Bowie, Bob Dylan, Elton John, Paul Simon, Cat Stevens, Joni Mitchell, Carole King, Roberta Flack, James Taylor, Jackson Browne, Crosby Stills Nash & Young, Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, Santana, Bob Marley, Stevie Wonder, George Michael, Michael Jackson, Prince, Marvin Gaye, Bill Withers, Ray Charles, Otis Redding, Al Green, Curtis Mayfield, Aretha Franklin, Gloria Gaynor, Mamas & Papas, Earth Wind & Fire, Bee Gees, Jamiroquai, Incognito, Alicia Keys, U2, REM, Cure, Tears For Fears, Depeche Mode, Simple Minds, Eurythmics, Radiohead, Soundgarden, Nirvana, Blur, Tracy Chapman, Suzanne Vega, Cindy Lauper, Madonna, Eddie Brickell, Lenny Kravitz, Alanis Morrisette, Eva Cassidy, Norah Jones, Pat Metheny, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Charles Mingus, Duke Ellington, Thelonius Monk, Bill Evans, Paul Desmond, Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong, George Gershwin, Cole Porter, Burt Bacharach, Antonio Carlos Jobim, Toquinho, Djavan, Ketama, PFM, Fabrizio De André, Pino Daniele, Fabio Concato, Lucio Dalla, Edoardo Bennato, Claudio Baglioni, Paolo Vallesi, Bruno Martino, Luigi Tenco, Domenico Modugno and many others, including music from famous soundtracks such as “Jesus Christ Superstar", “Hair”, "Fame", “Mo' Better Blues", “The Godfather”, “Blade Runner”, “The Blues Brothers”, "The Piano Lesson" and more.