Meet Sofia Coyle

We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Sofia Coyle a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Sofia, we’re thrilled to have you on our platform and we think there is so much folks can learn from you and your story. Something that matters deeply to us is living a life and leading a career filled with purpose and so let’s start by chatting about how you found your purpose.

I think my purpose has always lived within me but was not fully realized until high school. When I was a child I was very musically in tune. For as long as I can remember, I knew how to sing and harmonize. I taught myself piano at 4, and always had a sense of rhythm. Music was always something I felt my soul understood when everything else didn’t come as naturally in school. I was homeschooled in kindergarten and my mom balanced all of our subjects well, especially when it was music time. As I got older, I joined band, and I sang and played piano at coffee houses. My big realization came near the end of high school. I was a junior and just finished my music theory class. I found out that I was able to continue to AP Music theory. My teacher said he recommended students to take this class if they were going to pursue music as a career, and asked me if that was the direction I was going in. “Yeah, actually…wow” I said. It was the first time I fully realized that music was more important to me than a hobby. As I continued in college, I was home for winter break and my mom pulled up a home video from when we were homeschooled. I was feeling a little down about my purpose at the time. She pulled up a video of when we had music time, and we were all marching around the living room to Led Zeppelin. We were laughing when my mom gets a little quiet and goes “but watch this”. As my mom was playing the tambourine, my four or five year old self started to tell her she’s “doing it wrong”. Now as I was silently watching this, even I said to myself “My mom isn’t playing the tambourine on time”. After the video is done she looks at me with a smile and goes “You want to know what you were saying to me?” She then continues saying exactly what my adult self was thinking. She said “You were tuned in enough to the music to tell me that I wasn’t playing on beat”. Watching my younger self feeling and understanding the music reignited the fire inside me that I was always meant to do this.

Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?

My name is Sofia Galadriel Coyle and I am a composer for multimedia, and concert music. Whether it’s creating music to picture or for a performance in a concert hall, music is the story of sound. If you’re reading a great book, you are reading the creativity of their mind through writing. Music is the same but the storytelling is listening to someone else’s mind through sound. “Where words fail, music speaks” is such a wonderful quote by Hans Christian. I would describe my style of composing as cerebral, lush in harmony, atmospheric, percussive undertones and melodically driven. One of my favorites kinds of scenes to create for is ones where there is no dialogue. It’s the actors’ facial expressions and body language through which my music conveys their inner dialogue, without it being spoken audibly. The most special part about being in this field is how composers are an important puzzle piece to creating the mood of a film scene, but when it all comes together, it is one story/message that a viewer experiences on the screen. We are significant and insignificant simultaneously. The music is not the sole focus, but without it, a viewer would feel the film was off in some way. The greatest advice I’ve received about scoring for film is that the best film scores are when you do not notice the music at all. The music’s job is to blend effortlessly with the film, quietly enriching the story and emotional depth without it overpowering the focus. That’s how you know you executed the film score well.

Recently I was a top ten finalist for the Indie Film Music Contest, released a score to picture titled “Revontulet”, and had a world premiere of my piece “Rise, Resurge, and Rest” for flugelhorn, and marimba.

Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?

Have a strong sense of self, be curious, and work with dedication and passion. These are three qualities that have been the most impactful in my music career and life in general. Whilst pursuing my masters degree at NYU, there are many things that were new to me. I was only a composition major during my bachelors degree, so learning about Logic Pro, Pro Tools, and sound libraries in grad school was a technical world I never knew. This is where the dedication in being curious, and passionate was prevalent for me. Growing up, I was the kid that asked a million questions if I didn’t understand something or wanted to dive deeper into a subject. I was made fun of for it, but oh boy, am I grateful that I did not change that about myself. Being curious and asking questions helps you to grow outside of your own bounds. I wrote music only on notation software during my undergrad. I pictured my music to film but never had the software. Entering NYU was an eye opener that I needed to grow to meet my film scoring dreams, and the standards of the industry.

I can’t emphasize enough how important it is to always remind yourself that you are on your own path in this life. As I’ve mentioned, I taught myself my musical qualities, but there are plenty of people that have had the proper musical instruction since they were very young. It can feel daunting to observe that people can be or seem far superior at skills than you. Although intimidating, I was taught that it’s okay to not be the smartest in the room. There is so much to learn and grow from one another. In life, people will be better than you, you’ll also be better than others. We have to get over it and realize everyone is on their own journey. Life is a truly beautiful thing when you are not comparing your uniqueness to others uniqueness.

Before we go, maybe you can tell us a bit about your parents and what you feel was the most impactful thing they did for you?

My parents encouraged me to go after my dreams. Most peers I know said their parents blew up at them when they found out about their musical intentions, and made them do something else. My parents always knew that I had a natural affinity with music. They believed in individuality and making sure my siblings and I embraced that. Growing up, they were not critical about how I dressed in my mixed patterned clothes to school, they did not try to dampen my quirky personality, and just overall let me be who I am. Having a strong sense of individuality is important as a child, because as you grow up, you’ll always know yourself at your core. I encourage parents to let their kids follow their heart, and let them be themselves. Music can be a hard industry to join, but you just have to work hard. Even though my parents knew the difficulty of my industry, they gave me the fundamental lessons on how to dedicate oneself to hard work and discipline toward those goals. I will always my grateful for that.

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My friends, mom or I took them

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