Meet Diana Chow

Diana, thanks so much for taking the time to share your insights and lessons with us today. We’re particularly interested in hearing about how you became such a resilient person. Where do you get your resilience from?
I love this question as I consider resilience to be one of my strengths. Coming out on the other side of challenges, mistakes, and failures has cultivated my resilience. I’ve pushed myself to do things at the edges of my comfort zone. Some examples include performing on stage, taking classes that stretched me in areas I didn’t feel strong in, taking on different types of projects and gigs, leaving my former and more lucrative career to pursue a new one and start over, and moving to Los Angeles to do that. I made mistakes and learned from them. The most important thing I learned is that I’m okay no matter what happens. I’ve survived everything I’ve been through and am confident that I’ll continue to. Challenging experiences and periods in my life have stretched me and taught me how resilient I actually am and I’m becoming more and more comfortable with the unknown.

My parents also modeled resilience to me. They immigrated here from Taiwan and dealt with their own challenges while raising two kids. My dad moved to America without having a job lined up. My mom always told me I could do whatever I put my mind to. They taught me how to work hard, embrace the unknown, and never give up.

Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?
I’m a music producer and artist. I make music for other artists and brands, and I make songs for my solo artist project under my own name. My music is a combination of Alternative Pop and Alternative R&B. My songs are based on my personal experiences and feelings around love and relationships usually. They’re quirky, fun, and use a combination of organic and electronic elements. I mix and master all of my music and have done that type of work for my clients in addition to producing and enjoy those aspects of music making as well.

I also help foster the local music production community here in Los Angeles by co-running a workshop called Hyperflow with my friends Johnathan Zhu and Tomas Wischerath. We’ve recently partnered with Apogee Electronics to host workshops and events for music producers and songwriters and it brings me so much joy to see and hear the creativity and connections that come out of these events.

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?

In no order: following excitement and joy, education and training, and curiosity.

They all sort of feed into one another. My advice is to follow what excites and brings joy to you and invest in training or classes around those things. Then be open and curious, don’t be afraid to keep trying new things and keep learning.

Also, if I may add one more to the list, it would be to be kind and respectful to others. Relationships are important in any career and life in general, and this is foundational to having good relationships.

Do you think it’s better to go all in on our strengths or to try to be more well-rounded by investing effort on improving areas you aren’t as strong in?
I personally identify with the more well-rounded approach. I have a lot of curiosity and enjoy exploring things I haven’t done before and am less familiar with. Change is the only constant in life, and I like being adaptable and not pigeon-holing myself into one strength or asset. As long as I’m enjoying the process and following my curiosity, I’m good. 

I wear lots of hats as a music producer and artist. I am a music producer, composer, recording engineer, vocalist, songwriter, mixing engineer, and mastering engineer. And this is just in terms of the music itself. There’s the marketing component and creating content for that whether that’s on social media or elsewhere. I enjoy doing all of it but it is a lot of work. Some people hone in on one area. I’m not sure how sustainable it is for me to keep doing all of this in the long-term but I feel it’s helpful for me to have first-hand experience with it all before potentially bringing on help for any of it later.

They can influence and feed into one another, too. Learning to mix and master music has better informed the production and composition choices I make, like the sounds and musical notes I use in my songs. I’ll select instruments, sounds, or notes that fit better together in the frequency spectrum to begin with rather than spend a lot of time addressing that in the mix. I’m also learning to be a better vocalist and recording engineer in terms of getting cleaner vocal takes after doing more vocal production and mixing vocals as well.

I also respect and admire people who focus on their strengths. People who follow either approach contribute in different ways to the fields they’re in. Both approaches have their place in the world in my opinion.