331Erock / Eric Calderone

About

331Erock is the YouTube handle of metal guitarist Eric Calderone who reinterprets a variety of pop songs and opening themes to TV shows and video games as metal songs, often infusing his own original solos into the arrangements.

Online History

On November 5th, 2009, Eric Calderone uploaded his first video to YouTube^[13] (shown below) in which he performs a metal cover of Hans Zimmer’s “He’s A Pirate,” which was featured in the original soundtrack of the 2003 fantasy adventure film Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl.^[2] Calderone noted in the description that the arrangement was originally written for a classical guitar trio, but he could not help giving it a metal spin. He also uploaded the arrangement to Scribd^[1] so other fans could play this version. As of February 2013, this video has more than 1.4 million views.

In October 2010, Calderone launched a Twitter account^[8] and an official Facebook fan page^[3] which has gained more than 105,000 likes as of February 2013. Later that month, he uploaded a cover of Lady Gaga's 2009 single "Bad Romance" (shown below) which gained more than 70,000 views within four hours.^[5] The success of the video also gave a significant boost to his subscriber count, multiplying from 400 subscribers to 4800 subscribers. It was subsequently featured on Viral Viral Videos^[10] and Tampa Bay Soundcheck.^[11] By December 2010, the video had become the fourth most-watched music video in the world.^[12]

Calderone launched a personal homepage^[4] in February 2011 as a hub site for his audio clips and gear information. In September of that year, Calderone hosted an Ask Me Anything (AMA) in the Metal subreddit^[19] during which he shed more light on his creative process, influences and response to his popularity. In 2012, two unofficial fan pages for Calderone’s videos were launched on Facebook^[6][7] with more than 1600 likes combined. Since 2009, Calderone’s videos have been featured on Smosh^[14], the Doctor Who Facebook fan page^[15], Geekologie^[16], Reddit^[17] and CBS News.^[18] As of February 2013, Calderone’s cover songs have been played more than 20,000 times on Last.fm^[9] and his YouTube channel has more than 410,000 subscribers and 58 million video views.

Notable Videos

Personal Life

Eric Calderone (born March 11th, 1985) began playing electric guitar in 2001. After attending high school, he earned his first bachelor's degree in orchestration for television and film from the Berklee College of Music and in 2010, he graduated from the University of Tampa with a second bachelor's degree in music, focusing on classical guitar. In addition to being a prolific YouTuber, Calderone is a guitar teacher.^[12]

Search Interest

External References