Gavin Dunne: How the Cork man's Miracle of Sound project became a billion-hit phenomenon
Cork music star Gavin Dunne, aka Miracle of Sound, is about to go on tour. Picture: Larry Cummins
A white and gold Gretsch twelve-string guitar leans up against the wall in Gavin Dunne’s open-plan kitchen and living room. Gretsch may not be quite as household a name as Fender, but it’s a high-end guitar make known for its twangy, country sound and flashy customisations. Very Nashville.
“Oh, that’s Dolly,” Dunne says with a laugh. “She looks like something Dolly Parton would play, doesn’t she? I think I’ve literally only recorded one song with her. I’ve just never found her place. Maybe I’ll use her on the next album.”
Stashed almost out of sight, on the ground behind Dolly, is what is surely the coveted modern equivalent of the platinum record: a golden plaque bearing the instantly recognisable YouTube logo.
“That’s my million YouTube subscribers,” he says. “They post it out to you, when you reach a million. I don’t really know where to put it; I suppose I’ll have to get it hung on the wall somewhere.”
It’s the afternoon, and the house is quiet. Dunne, wearing black jeans and a t-shirt, is sitting with a coffee in stockinged feet at his kitchen counter, in what is a tastefully decorated but not overly opulent house in one of Cork’s suburbs. He works from home, and today he is tired.
“I might not have great answers today, because I’ve only had three hours sleep,” he says with an apologetic shrug. “I’ve had insomnia since I was a little kid, and when I’m very busy it gets really bad because if I wake in the night, my brain just starts ticking over.”
Dunne’s brain is possibly ticking over more than usual right now because he is preparing to do something that he hasn’t done for a long time. Despite being a very successful studio musician, having released 14 albums in 13 years and living comfortably on the earnings of his music, he hasn’t played live in well over a decade. And now, he’s preparing for a world tour.
Dunne is a star by any reckoning, but his streaming and online success inverts the traditional order of the music industry where bands gig and tour for years to build a live fanbase before grabbing the attention of a record company. In fact, he has never played any of his biggest hits in front of an audience.
Under the moniker of Miracle of Sound, he had been writing and self-releasing music inspired by computer games with considerable success up until 2020: so much so that games companies had taken note, with one of his songs being used to play out the credits on post-apocalyptic role playing game (RPG) Wasteland 2, another appeared as a song-play option on the game Rock Band. Others ratcheted up millions of views on YouTube and streams on Spotify.
And then came the mega-hit, 'Valhalla’s Calling'. A rousing Viking song released in 2020, it was inspired by Dunne’s playing Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla. The Norse-themed hit now has a combined total of 215 million views on YouTube across different versions, and 158 million streams on Spotify.
“I’m not joking, I literally came up with the melody in the shower, and wrote the bones of the song in about half an hour,” Dunne says. “I was just thinking, I must write a Viking song now after playing Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla. I came up with it and I thought, this is so obvious, someone must have done it.”
Two weeks later, the song was released, and blew up. The rest of the intricate saga of 'Valhalla Calling' is as much about how the music industry has changed as it is about drinking horns and berserking.
There have been copyright infringements, and a recent public social media spat with fellow YouTuber Peyton Parrish, with whom Dunne recorded a popular version of Valhalla Calling: “No comment,” he says. “It was just a situation that got really messy and it was really unfortunate. We’re just both trying to move on from it because it had gotten to the point where our fans were fighting with each other and neither of us wanted that.”
Look up how much a YouTuber with over a million subscribers makes, and it seems the answer is nobody really knows. The platform offers drastically different rates per thousand views depending on whether or not they can make ad revenue from the video, and across different territories, different categories of content and even different content creators.
Like most YouTubers, Dunne is coy about his earnings. “It’s so crass talking about money, especially these days when lots of people are struggling,” he says “I’m not struggling, let’s put it that way. I’m doing well. But I’m also aware that music is fickle, and so I’m sensible with my money. I’m not out there buying Ferraris: next year, people might not listen any more.”
Dunne has assembled a band for his upcoming live tour, and practice is ongoing. He did an invite-only private warm-up gig in the Kino in Cork city on October 17, in front of an audience of friends and acquaintances.
It’s not like he has no live gigging experience. In his early twenties, he enjoyed some success as front man with a band called Lotus Lullaby who won the National Student Music Awards in 2006 and seemed to be hot-tipped for good things, only to call it a day in 2009. But Dunne is still suffering from nerves at the idea of going back on stage.
“Oh yeah, I am really, really nervous. Really scared,” he says. “I would always be nervous before gigs: nauseous and everything. My previous experience is that halfway through the first song, you go, yeah! And then you get into it. But everything leading up to that is just… aargh! I am a very anxious person anyway: I am actually diagnosed with an anxiety disorder. This tour is very much going to be about looking after my mental health: not drinking too much or doing any drugs.”
His wife Rachel, whom he married in 2019 and whom he describes as a calming influence, will travel with him. The tour so far has 19 dates booked between February and May 2025, starting in Dublin and Belfast, before moving to the UK and Europe, including Berlin, Oslo, Paris, Helsinki and more.
If he is so nervous, why on earth is he putting himself through it? Surely he could keep releasing songs from the comfort of his own home studio without the agony of the pre-gig nerves and the touring?
The answer, he says, is a combination of factors: he was approached by international metal touring agency Cobra a couple of years ago, and he politely declined their offer, but the idea began to percolate.
“It very much sowed the seed: knowing I would have a good booking agent was a part of it,” he says. “But I always felt a little bit sad that these songs hadn’t gotten to be played live because there are really good songs there: big, anthemic choruses designed to be played in stadiums. They are not subtle, introspective singer-songwriter songs. They are big, cinematic rock songs and I feel they deserve to be heard on a live stage and I need to just get over my anxiety and get out there.
“There’s also the fact that so many other bands are covering my songs now, especially in places like Germany, and I keep seeing videos of my songs being played to these massive audiences of tens of thousands of people and part of me is going, I think I’d like to have a go at that,” he says with a grin.
Despite the nerves, there are already plus-sides: practicing with fellow musicians again has been “so much fun,” he says. “My band are the loveliest people: there are no egos, it’s just a nice calm bunch of people having fun.”
He also feels he will appreciate his success far more than he did in his twenties. “If this level of success had happened in my twenties, I’m not sure how I would have dealt with it,” he says. “I feel my ego might have gotten a little out of control but nowadays I’m pretty good at keeping that in check. In my twenties, I was always trying to be the big rock star, but when Lotus Lullaby fell apart, I was done with being a persona.
“I went: I’m a nerd, I’ve always been a nerd, I’m going to make nerdy music and be comfortable with that. And then I started being successful, after that. So I know that, even though it’s a protective mechanism, you really don’t need the persona to go out and do a great gig.”
- As well as a number of dates in the UK in 2025, the Miracle of Sound tour will play the Academy in Dublin on February 15, and the Limelight in Belfast on March 7. See miracleofsound.rocks/en-eur
Playing keys and singing from the age of eight, Pepa Fletcher-White has a degree in Popular Music Vocals from MTU Cork School of Music. Having joined the Miracle of Sound live project as a session musician, as a songwriter, she continues to release her own music under the stage name Gerron.
Hailing from Rosscarbery, Peter O'Sullivan started out playing tin whistle and mandolin as a child. He’s currently finishing up a BA in Popular Music at MTU Cork School of Music and has worked as a session musician since he was 17, playing with bands including Kingfishr, Dukkha and Saidi Sessions.
Eoghan MacSweeny is a member of synth-pop trio True Tides alongside his brothers Cian and Conor. The band were nominated for an RTÉ Choice Music Prize for their single Survive, which hit the top 10 in the Irish national radio charts. He has also been Gavin Dunne’s band-mate in the past: both were in alt-rock five-piece Rakastan in the late nineties.
Conor Duggan studied Music, Management & Sound in Coláiste Stiofán Naofa. He now runs the Rebel Frequencies showcase gigs for emerging artists in The White Horse in Ballincollig.
With elements of doo-wop and Buddy Holly style rock’n’roll, 'Going Nuclear' is a surreally upbeat little number inspired by Bethesda Games’ post-apocalyptic RPG Fallout 4. It was released on the Level 6 album in 2015 and to date it has 1.9 million views on YouTube and 598,352 Spotify streams.
Life imitates art imitates life. Miracle of Sound’s high-octane rock song in homage to the protagonist of Valve Corporation’s shooter game Half Life was released on his Level 1 album in 2011, only to be eventually included as a song in another game: Harmonix’s Rock Band. The original has 839,000 views on YouTube and 436,771 Spotify streams.
Released on Miracle of Sound’s Level 1 album in 2011, 'Commander Shepard' is a catchy space-age synth-pop tune named for the main protagonist in Bioware’s Mass Effect series. The song has amassed 4.9 million YouTube views and 3,819,459 Spotify streams.
Hear that tumbleweed rolling past: a little nod to Ennio Morricone’s Spaghetti Western soundtracks is evident in 'Cries of a Dead World', which was released on the Level 5 album in 2014. Inspired by the post-apocalyptic Western Wasteland 2, it became the play-out credits track for the game. There are 900,000 views of the original and another 724,000 views on another version on YouTube, and it has 552,858 Spotify streams.
Shades of folk and medieval influences inspire 'Wake the White Wolf', one of Miracle of Sound’s earlier viral hits released on the Level 5 album in 2014. The song is a tribute to the character of Geralt of Rivia from CD Projekt Red’s action RPG The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Level 5. The song has 18 million views on YouTube and 21,640,023 streams on Spotify.
A recent release, 'Purest Gold' saw Dunne’s fellow Youtuber Elizabeth Zharoff, AKA The Charismatic Voice, lend her operatic vocals to an epic seven minute symphonic metal song inspired by FromSoftware’s fantasy RPG Elden Ring. The track has 1.6 million views on YouTube and 732,339 Spotify streams.
