We were lucky to catch up with Tiffany Tan recently and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Tiffany, really happy you were able to join us today and we’re looking forward to sharing your story and insights with our readers. Let’s start with the heart of it all – purpose. How did you find your purpose?
Before I decided to do music, I worked as a bank teller and in various other office clerk jobs. Although those jobs could guarantee a stable lifestyle, I didn’t enjoy them and couldn’t find my value there. At that time, I asked myself: What’s my true purpose? Where do I want to see myself in 5 or 10 years?
I took a break from work and came to the US to seek out more possibilities. I met lots of inspiring people while I was taking courses in UCLA, and many of them were undertaking career shifts. These people, young and old, from all walks of life, were following their hearts and giving life their all. That inspired me deeply.
After lots of trial and error, I discovered my true calling in music. I feel connected to myself when I compose music, a feeling I didn’t have in my previous jobs. It took me around five years to get into this industry, but the longer I do it, the more I feel right about my career. I think once you find what you love to do, you’ll have endless motivation for it. Just like those amazing people I met that inspired me, I hope my story will inspire you as well.
Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?
As media composers, our job is combing music into visuals to tell stories. We have to capture the characters’ various emotions through the language of music. This is subtle but indispensable task. A good musical score should be virtually unnoticeable, but once it’s pulled out from the picture, you suddenly feel something is missing. We as composers are constantly searching for a balance between writing resonating music whilst not overpowering the on-screen visuals. It’s really an interesting and challenging job.
One exciting thing about this career is that we usually work on irregular hours. There are times we are on tight deadlines and have to work around the clock and burn the midnight oil for two or three months at a time, but there are some other times when there’re no projects coming in, and we feel as though we’ve been “laid off”. Most of the time, we can work on our own schedules, but it also takes a lot of self-discipline to push forward and meet those deadlines.
After graduating from Composition for the Screen master’s program at Columbia College Chicago, I interned with award-winning composer Nathan Wang in LA, and wrote additional music for the web series Chinatown Detective 2. Later on, I participated in arranging and orchestrating Jackie Chan’s new movie A Legend. It was a challenging yet rewarding experience. For a continuous two months, we worked around the clock to meet deadlines, and constantly revised as the pictures were changing. After all the cues were done, we recorded the strings and brass over several recording sessions. It was lots of fun to watch what you wrote in your computer come to life thanks to those live musicians.
Besides working with Nathan, I’m also writing music for Sick Muse Music, a music library company providing music mainly for Warner Bro’s Discovery Channel. I also serve as a mentor for the Los Angeles Inception Orchestra, a music education program that cultivates the next generation of up-and-coming composers. Juggling these different jobs equips me to work in various roles in music, and pushes me to expand my repertoire as an eclectic composer.
There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?
The first quality is Passion. Every composer I know who chose this career comes from a place of deep passion for the craft. I’m no exception. Plainly speaking, it’s a very tiring job and you can’t see results over the short term. Unlike steady jobs that guarantee you a steady pay, you have to deal with irregular working hours, lots of pressure and unpredictable results. We choose to prevail through the exhaustion purely for the love of the art of composition. When you see your music come to life at the skilled hands of musicians, or when it is played on the big screen, every effort pays off.
The second quality is Perseverance. We choose this career because of passion, but to stick with it through perseverance. That’s what keeps me moving and has carried me all the way through. It’s definitely a long journey for most people in this line of work. For me, becoming a composer was always a long shot. I started out in a non-music career, working in a bank for three years before I decided to do music full time. It took a long time to make the shift as I had to pick up music theories and learn all the orchestration skills from scratch. Although I had played piano and guitar for many years at that point, it was not easy to transition from an instrumentalist to a composer. There were and still are many uphill battles during this journey, and I couldn’t come this far without perseverance.
The third quality is Curiosity. Curiosity keeps you constantly on your toes. Just like in many other industries, film music is constantly changing too. Before the 80’s, film music mostly involved pure orchestration. I started out in this industry by doing orchestral music too, and that’s still my main voice. But as more various new project came in, I began to delve into the world of synthesizing and had lots of fun making music in a totally different way from traditional orchestrating. And now as AI music is emerging, I start to study how it works and try to use it to facilitate my workflow. For a song I recently worked on, I used AI vocals instead of hiring a real singer, which is a huge time and money saver. Driven by curiosity, we keep learning and expand our frontiers.
How can folks who want to work with you connect?
I constantly look for like-minded individuals to collaborate with. You can be a music composer, a musician, a director or producer, or just a cool person with a creative idea in your head. We can sit down and see where it takes us. My website is tanyufan.com. Here, you can find my work samples and contact info. I’m very much looking forward to further collaborations and more interesting folks to connect with.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.tanyufan.com
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/tyftiffany/
- Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/tanyufan
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