RichaadEB Shredded His Way Into a Music Career
By Justin Tiemeyer || contributing writer
RichaadEB (pronounced ri-shaad-e-b, per the bio page of his web site) is the stage name for professional metal guitarist, Richard Bichler. Though the musician now lives near Los Angeles, he has local roots, having graduated from Lowell high school in 2008 and Ferris State University in 2013. Music is now Bichler’s primary source of income, a dream that many aspire to but few ever accomplish, but he does not act as if he was fated to live this kind of life. The way Bichler describes his humble origins, he may have stumbled, or even bumbled, his way into the rock life.
“I like being obnoxious,” Bichler said. When he says this, he is trying to sum up a youth filled with musical foibles. In his youth, he asked his parents for a drum kit because he liked hitting things, but like so many kids, he struggled with sticking to one thing. As a result, the drum-set dream, like the skateboard and the snowboard and so many other things before it, never manifested. His father had a cheap acoustic guitar, and Bichler would strum it while his dad was at work. If there were a piano around, he would bang on the keys. He also briefly showed interest in band class during middle school, but he could not get the trumpet to work, so he gave up.
When Bichler turned fourteen, he picked up a guitar that he could call his own. Some friends had played guitar in the middle school talent show, and he enjoyed playing, even though he described himself as bad. Bichler can absolutely shred now, and he really could not back then, so it stands to reason that he was bad, at least according to his current standards, but we will have to take him on his word for it.
Shortly after Bichler earned his degree in network administration is when his guitar playing took off. He had taken on a part-time job at a closed-captioning company as an IT Lead, and much of the time, he was on call. This meant that he could receive notice at any moment that a stenographer, covering a live sporting event, had to step away from the keyboard, and he would have to troubleshoot for them, but more than anything, the job left Bichler with a lot of time on his hands.
In his down time, Bichler played a lot of guitar, covered existing songs, recorded his work, and talked online with other musicians with similar interests. He resided in a shared-living environment, which meant that he had numerous opportunities to go out with friends, but Bichler found himself turning down social invites. If he was not working, he was playing music. After speaking with fellow YouTube music producers, Bichler took the leap of faith and moved out to San Diego, California in 2015, and it just so happened that his YouTube channel blew up at about the same time.
Bichler’s favorite music genres are metalcore, progressive metal, and deathcore, and his biggest influences are Paul Waggoner from Between the Buried and Me, Protest the Hero, Born of Osiris, and Dream Theater. The rich, devout stylings of these niche American metal subgenres are evident in Bichler’s music, even though the tunes he is best known for are video game or anime theme song covers, which traditionally, lean toward brighter Japanese metal, or J-Metal guitar work. The confluence of the two is a niche within a niche, and it stands to reason that it has contributed significantly to Bichler’s success. After all, his music career began in earnest after people started flocking to his YouTube channel, following his release of a number of metal covers of songs from the RPG, video game Undertale’s soundtrack, a 2D RPG that draws heavy influence from classic JRPGs, but it was made by an American indie developer named Toby Fox.
This is probably why Bichler is able to reflect upon a youth filled with bad grades, watching TV, and playing video games without as much remorse as many of us might, because every official soundtrack from a classic SquareSoft video game, and every hour he spent playing Chrono Trigger, was homework. He was passively absorbing music that he would later rework and make his own. Bichler’s list of influences is not complete without considering those skilled video game composers like Koji Kondo (Super Mario, The Legend of Zelda), Yoko Shimomura (Kingdom Hearts), Yasunori Mitsuda (Chrono Trigger, Xenogears), Nobuo Uematsu (Final Fantasy), David Wise (Donkey Kong Country), and Grant Kirkhope (Banjo-Kazooie).
Though Bichler attributes quite a bit of his musical ascent to luck, he is not averse to discussing the things that a creative person can do to transition from a mundane career to making a living off of art. For example, though he never really felt like he was sacrificing anything, he spent years immersed in music, doing it every spare moment. While others were grabbing drinks at a local bar, he was learning a new song. While others spent hours on the couch playing Candy Crush, he was making connections with other musicians online. It also did not hurt that he played to a very specific niche.
“If you’re an artist who wants to make a name for yourself on YouTube, now that it is so saturated,” Bichler said, “a way to get eyes on you as a shortcut is to do a cover. If you’re covering the Legend of Zelda, people who like the Legend of Zelda will watch your videos.’ Covers, to Bichler, are a form of marketing. Even if the bread and butter of a person’s musical opus has nothing to do with this video game or that television show, the cover brings people to the channel and provides an audience for everything else.
Though Bichler does have original stuff out there, and he has been in bands periodically, his covers are his passion. Just like any job, there are some things that he has to do—covers he does not feel particularly inspired to do and that he would not pursue if someone had not offered him money to do so. However, as the proverb goes, “a bad day fishing is better than a good day at the office,” and Bichler finds himself fortunate to play guitar for a living.
Bichler never intended to be an international phenomenon, but the recording industry is much more distributed than it was when the Beatles made it big. To make money as a musician in those days, you had to make music that appealed to everyone, and once you reached a certain level of local fame, you made a plan to introduce your music to another market—for the Beatles and other UK groups, that was the British Invasion of the US. For others, it was a regional or national tour. The moment Bichler’s channel went viral, on the other hand, he had market penetration simultaneously in multiple countries, and his horizons were opened in curious ways. He was invited to play a short Japanese tour in big venues like Tokyo, Kyoto, and Osaka, all expenses paid, but then COVID hit, and things fell apart. He was also invited to play a convention in Cyprus, and random celebrities direct message him from time-to-time.
Bichler would not have made it this far without the help of his wife, Rachel Bichler, his videographer, editor, and social media manager, who dabbles in a little bit of everything. Though the two would be content doing what they are currently doing for many years, they are always trying to one-up themselves. Looking forward, Bichler is interested in doing more original songs and possibly getting involved with composing for video game companies. The Bichlers have met a number of people in this field, and they have toyed with moving to Japan to pursue this end.
Those interested in learning more about RichaadEB can head over to his website at richaadeb.com. His music can be found on Spotify, iTunes, Amazon Music, and Bandcamp, as well as on his YouTube channel @RichaadEB.
